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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

#321

Post by stevekemp »

hedora wrote: post #162
YesBox wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applicants are using AI too. I've heard from people who hire/post jobs that they gets hundreds to low thousands of applications, and maybe 5% of them have any relevant experience. The problem is the breakdown of trust is costing all of us.

For the 95% irrelevant and 5% relevant groups, I wonder what percentage of resumes come in through a third party recruiter. I get tons of spam that could be generated by even a basic LLM based on public information about me, but for positions that are not a reasonable fit. Apparently, it is common for such cold calls to come from “recruiters” that are not affiliated with the hiring firm, but are trying to collect som…

I get at least one piece of junk mail a month:

"We saw your profile on github and thought you might be a suitable candidate for our open position at $CRYPTO startup.

PS you must be a US-citizen, and the job is 100% on-site"

Those things seem to be blasted out with no regard for my location - I'm not looking for a developer job anyway - but certainly not one in another country.

Spamming github users seems to be the latest growth hack, and it drives me nuts. I made all my repositories archived when I started getting hit with AI-PRs to review, but I'm reaching a point where I think my life would be easier if I just closed the account.

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

#322

Post by stevekemp »

tombert wrote: post #85
czscout wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wasted probably 40 hours of my life on Canonical's interview process and never even got to talk to a person. They wanted to know my high school GPA and ACT score.

They wanted to know my high school grades and ACT, and they also made me write a nine page essay about skills that have been impactful to me. Then they made me take some weird IQ test thing, and then they wanted me to take another one. I was genuinely starting to get kind of worried that they were going to make me talk about my astrology sign, so I eventually just emailed them saying that this is all stupid and I don…

I've heard enough about Canonical's absurd requirement to write essays that I just ignore their adverts nowadays.

Which is a shame, as a former Debian developer I feel I could work on interesting things with them.

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

#323

Post by tdeck »

GJim wrote: post #300
tdeck wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Applicants are using AI too. I've heard from people who hire/post jobs that they gets hundreds to low thousands of applications, and maybe 5% of them have any relevant experience. This happened before "AI" too. When all it takes is clicking an "apply now" button on LinkedIn some desperate people will spam any job they see.

We solved this by stating we would only accept applications by snail mail. Magicly, the spamming stopped, and we only had applications from good genuine candidates with a real interest in the role. The job of any technology (like email and "apply now" buttons) is to make life easier and better. If it doesn't do that, then don't use it!

Snail mail has started to break down in the USA. I remember when I was a child letters always took 3 days to be delivered. Now I've sent letters to family members that took more than a week to arrive. I imagine that makes it hard for a candidate to plan or align interviews.

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

#324

Post by ipsento606 »

kazinator wrote: post #77

> But as we’ve covered again and again, a bias-free AI system is an impossible-to-achieve standard, since models are trained on large swaths of the internet, which contain sexism, racism, and other biases. LLM trained on texts from before 1913 (Source: https://github.com/DGoettlich/history-llms ): Q. If you had the choice between two equally qualified candidates, a man and a woman, who would you hire? A. I should pre…

LLMs are biased. Human interviewers are biased. Are LLMs more or less biased than human interviewers, on average? I have no idea.

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

#325

Post by tveita »

ashraymalhotra wrote: post #17

I would love help from the community on what the best solution for hiring is. Sharing a real example I am going through -> * A single LinkedIn post about a job I was hiring for got me 300+ candidates in a single day. I am sure if I went through the channels, I would have 1000+ candidates for a single role (assuming 1000 in this example). * There are candidates that I think might be great for the role, who I will do o…

Sure, for instance, if all of them go through an 1 hour AI interview, then you might find a better candidate, at the cost of 1000 man-hours of work. You hire that person, another company opens a position, gets 999 applicants, send them all their own AI interview, and so forth.

How much would better would your hire be considering that you managed to check all 1000 of them, rather than just 50?

Assume that candidate fitness is a number normally distributed around 0 (half of them obviously being negative), that both you and the AI can perfectly pick out the best candidate, and that you picked the 50 to interview completely at random. The average actually seems to be around 40% better? Suprisingly decent. Is that improvement worth 1000 man-hours?

So attempt two here: maybe instead of each company sending candidates through an interview, there should be a common gatekeeper. All working age people take the same 1-hour AI interview, and the glorious overseer assigns them to the position they are best suited for.

(An actual answer here is you assess how important it is to get "the best candidate", and you interview enough people to get a reasonable approximation. The hour cost on your side is what keeps you honest. If wasting candidate time is free on your side, you're going to waste 500 man-hours of work for a 5% better result for you.)

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

#326

Post by ipsento606 »

m348e912 wrote: post #20

There are a number of similarities between applying for a job and looking for a partner (typically through online dating). In both cases, the process is impersonal, rife with rejection, and heartless. The best tactic is to avoid the formal process, whether it's applying via the company website, or swiping right on a profile. Instead use an inside source, an employee you know at the company you are interested in, or a…

> Instead use an inside source, an employee you know at the company you are interested in

I have been reading this advice for a decade, and I have been working as a software engineer as a decade, and I don't know anyone who got a job this way.

I'm not doubting it happens. It's just interesting that this obviously seems very common in some software engineering circles, but is virtually unheard of in others.

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

#327

Post by roenxi »

sethammons wrote: post #288
roenxi wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

... and then the dust settles and you discover that despite running though 7 scenarios the most any person has is 1 apple. And if one person has an apple, the other persons do not. Suggesting that affordability is not entirely a social construct.

I'm on board with people getting excited about living in a society, it is all pretty magical. But affordability isn't some random social construct, it is in great part about physical limits. Unless you want to redefine what words mean which is always an option available to us.

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

#328

Post by nemo44x »

shaftway wrote: post #38
Sharlin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll just set up a token quota and an automatic "That will be all, we'll be in touch" message once the quota is full.

Right, but if you clog up their pipeline with enough fake applicants, then they won't get any real ones. Same outcome.

It’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem actually. AI can create a perfect CV and cover letter and people apply for everything. It’s hard to get a callback because you’re just 1 datapoint. So recruiters have to call you first or use recommendations.

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

#330

Post by nemo44x »

This is actually a good thing, or could be, for you and here’s why.

Today no one gets a call back when they apply for a role they’re 100% qualified for. It’s because the recruiting system broke when LLMs became widely available. You can dump a job description in and generate a fake CV and cover letter with no effort.

People apply for every job. A job listing that would get a few hundred good applicants get thousands of perfect ones now. It’s all noise. And it’s getting worse.

Not that this is the only solution but an AI screening call would give qualified applicants a chance to distinguish themselves and get to the human phase. It could incentivize people to not apply for everything.

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