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I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

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Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#281

Post by aerhardt »

I build tech for Executive Search (headhunting) and I’ve recently written about this on my website.

Luckily in my niche the pressure to do this is not so high. Execs often have enough leverage to not have to put up with this kind of thing.

As others have commented, I am skeptical that this is any better than a form or similar. This could be a solution looking for a problem, or rather, relatedly, poorly allocated VC money looking to impress investors. Massive new entrants in the space like Jack and Jill are pushing this.

I guess there’s a vision where these interviewing agents truly become reactive and intelligent, so that they can both extract meaningful, deep insights about the candidate, while providing equally meaningful answers about the company and position. Color me skeptical, but not an outright denialist.

Regardless of the effectiveness for hiring companies, I think we will be seeing it for a long time. Even if it doesn’t produce meaningful improvements they will keep using it as long as it’s not too expensive, because the supplier and VC pipeline will press to keep using it.

I see some people are already doing OSS projects in this direction. I could be interested in exploring this and making a bot that really works on behalf of the interviewee. Agent-to-Agent communications may well be the future we are heading to regardless of our sensitivities to it, and I think the interviewee side of the market should and can get meaningful representation in this new world. Get in touch if you’d like to join forces.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#282

Post by xdertz »

JohnFen wrote: post #2

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

[dead]

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#283

Post by blitzar »

arctic-true wrote: post #16
JohnFen wrote: post #2

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

I had this experience when I was trying to find an apartment - multiple different buildings very clearly had AI-generated responses. (To all you builders out there: quick replies are great. Instant replies are suspicious.) I immediately stopped considering them as options. If you can’t be bothered to have a human respond to my email when I’m trying to give you my money, what level of service can I expect once I’m alr…

I get along well with the amazon returns / late delivery bot - I think I prefer it to the humans.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#284

Post by 1718627440 »

nicbou wrote: post #271
dice wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hiring at a small company and it's a nightmare. 1,000+ applicants for a software engineering position and we have essentially no help from recruiting. I'm filtering based on keywords, giving each resume a max of 90 seconds, and anything that even slightly seems off gets rejected. I only have the bandwidth to talk to a couple 10s of candidates since I have the entire rest of my job to do, so I can see the appeal o…

I used a simple “tell me what you had for breakfast” line to filter out people who don’t read. It required no work from the applicant but filtered out some of the spam. I wonder if an AI-resistant version could be made.

Asking for personal information or other stuff that isn't required for the application is weird and somewhat illegal, so maybe I would have ignored it even if I noticed it while reading.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#285

Post by xxs »

heavyset_go wrote: post #160
hansvm wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I was hiring I gave out a take-home test, and I thought it was the opposite of an imposition on candidates' time. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts: - It was designed to be fast to complete (20min max -- not a huge imposition if being hired is likely, obviously very expensive if you're taking one for every job posting). - I only gave them out after a resume screen. If you had a 0% chance then I didn'…

For every "20 min max" take home assignment, there will be people who are willing to spend 4+ hours doing it to outshine candidates who have jobs, families and lives. If you want to make it more of a fair consideration of time, consider moving your take home to interviews, that way there isn't a time cost asymmetry. You can enforce your "20 min max" claim this way, you can judge a candidate's performance, thought pro…

>For every "20 min max" take home assignment, there will be people who are willing to spend 4+ hours doing it to outshine candidates who have jobs, families and lives.

The ones we use have a clear scoring system and prepared inputs - all it matters is the generated output.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#286

Post by Steve16384 »

plagiarist wrote: post #15
CoastalCoder wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in principle. However, having been unemployed for over a year with a family to feed, I learned a little about what I'd put up with to get a job.

Yeah this. I hate this planet. So many problems would go away if people could actually afford to make choices.

We need Universal Income.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#287

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #266
9rx wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much economically extractable oil is available on earth is actually a fundamental property of the universe. Affordability requires something to exist. Once all the oil is used up it won't be affordability that prevents you from obtaining some. As oil still exists, your ability to afford it is entirely a social construct. There isn't some fundamental property of the universe that prevents you from having that oi…

> Affordability requires something to exist. Ok so jumping back to applies, say I have an apple and Mr A and Mr B want it. I'm going to give the apple to the person who pays me the most money. To keep it simple, this is the only apple. Maybe I've drawn a smiley face on it to make it an artwork, maybe there has been a breakout of Apple Plague, I dunno. How do you square that with this conception of affordability? Sinc…

[deleted]

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#288

Post by sethammons »

roenxi wrote: post #266
9rx wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much economically extractable oil is available on earth is actually a fundamental property of the universe. Affordability requires something to exist. Once all the oil is used up it won't be affordability that prevents you from obtaining some. As oil still exists, your ability to afford it is entirely a social construct. There isn't some fundamental property of the universe that prevents you from having that oi…

> Affordability requires something to exist. Ok so jumping back to applies, say I have an apple and Mr A and Mr B want it. I'm going to give the apple to the person who pays me the most money. To keep it simple, this is the only apple. Maybe I've drawn a smiley face on it to make it an artwork, maybe there has been a breakout of Apple Plague, I dunno. How do you square that with this conception of affordability? Sinc…

You chose to sell the apple. The most eager and capable buyer buys it. Capitalism.

You could choose to give the apple to the hungry person. You might choose that because you want their help in a different way. Or because you feel it is right. Or they are your kid. Or you give it to the strong person to have a better alliance.

Or you could have the apple taken from you. You might even have more taken, like your life. The other side has a say too! They both might believe that you shouldn't have it and (might makes right, right?) capitalism wont save you there.

That we don't (or do) take by force is a social construct. That we choose to instead honor an imaginary dollar tied to the intrinsic ability of our government to service its own debts is a social construct. Or the idea that maybe we should split the apple or plant it to make more apples. I can imagine a parent with two kids: "fine, nobody gets an apple, it goes in the trash since we can't agree." Nothing here is "one natural order." It is what people decide. And why they decide is based on squishy human reasoning. Social constructs.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#289

Post by ludicrousdispla »

BurningFrog wrote: post #198
JohnFen wrote: post #2

> If your potential employer is dehumanizing you before you’re on the payroll, how will they treat you once hired? For me, this is the key point. If a company can't even be bothered to show up for my interview -- when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward -- that bodes very ill for how I'll be treated if I were to work there.

I once worked at a company that received 1500 SWE applications per day. There simply wasn't enough people around to give everyone the personal treatment they may think they deserved. Taking this as a personal insult is not a great sign that I'd want to work with you...

It's surprising to me when companies become less competent when given more data.

Re: I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

#290

Post by encom »

diacritical wrote: post #187
fwipsy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To avoid overhead for many small payments, start a platform where users can buy many credits at once by contributing larger amounts to charity. Then, you burn your credits to apply to companies (or cold message applicants) to show you're not just spraying and praying.

Some more thoughts before I go to bed. This could also be used for combating spam elsewhere, like posting in forums, comment sections and so on. To preserve privacy, something like zero-knowledge proofs could be utilized. I don't know how the cryptography would work exactly, but if you can't double spend a credit and you can choose whether to keep it anonymous or not, it could work, too. It would be best if for a giv…

https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

Check all that apply.

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