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When the job search becomes impossible

jeffwofford.com

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Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#341

Post by alimahmoudhu »

eclipticplane wrote: post #238
jofer wrote: post #148

As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…

The number of fake resumes is insane. During reviews I ended up passing a number of fake profiles through because their CVs looked real. None of them showed up to the initial screening call. There are now AI CVs mimicking real people, so the CVs point to real Linkedin profiles, Github profiles. Not sure what their end game is unless it's to continually test CV creation or find woefully inept companies that will hire…

> I ended up passing a number of fake profiles through because their CVs looked real. None of them showed up to the initial screening call.

That's just crazy. Probably those were for collecting data to analyze what makes a CV pass. Mass apply everywhere, combine the results, and analyze the results manually or using LLMs. Selling these data can be profitable

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#342

Post by arccy »

yobbo wrote: post #290
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just recency bias. People often tend to think that present trends will continue indefinitely even though past trends did not.

What does the moment look like when one trend ends? ZIRP is one example of a decade-long trend that is ending.

zirp ended a while ago when all the big layoffs happened and we're slowly seeing news of rates going down again.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#343

Post by infecto »

smegma2 wrote: post #282
infecto wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that means what you think it does. That’s not liquid dollars and does not mean those home owners have savings for emergencies.

The median American also owns $39,000 in liquid financial assets. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf23.pdf (page 22, “Financial Assets” section)

Again I don’t think that means what you think it means. It says “value of all financial assets” which includes banking accounts, cds, stocks, bonds etc. that is not liquid.

The next exact line it calls out those bank accounts and the mean at $8,000. That is not a lot of liquid emergency savings for a household let’s say of 3.

So I don’t think your point stands.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#344

Post by arccy »

scorpioxy wrote: post #264
foxfired wrote: post #217

This past year, I noticed people reaching out to me whenever my employer is hiring. These seem to be new graduates, and there is a pattern in the way ask for a reference or a job: - "Hey, I applied, could you hire me?" - "I have a compsci, I'm qualified, I sent a resume" - "can I use you as a reference?" These are people I've never met, yet they are so direct to the point of being rude. But to the best of my knowledg…

I'm guessing it is due to the advice that getting a job is a "numbers game". When I was hiring somewhat recently, I talked to a worryingly high number of people that didn't know what role they're applying to, had perfect resumes and were taking the fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude to its limit. I mean I get there's a sales aspect to an interview, in a way, but this was pushing it way too far. It was a very frustrati…

tbh a lot of roles are pretty similar where it doesn't really matter that much...

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#345

Post by arcbyte »

neilv wrote: post #131

A colleague, who is very accomplished in tech industry (but not rich, for good reasons), said he would be in town, and asked to meet. He strangely didn't say why (not even "to catch up"), so I thought it was probably that he had a new startup or executive role, and he was going to pitch recruiting me again. But immediately after sitting down in the cafe, he said he was looking for work, and asked for my advice. I hop…

> simply getting permission to apply their hard-earned valuable skillets

I dont think its this. I think its just brutally hard to earn a return on investment right now. For whatever reason, innovation has disappeared from the market. There's a lot of things changing with generative AI right now but very few actually valuable ideas have come out.

The real challenge today is finding problems to solve that people will pay money for.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#346

Post by squigz »

hansvm wrote: post #287
saulpw wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 1200 applications, a couple hours translates to less than 10 seconds per application. In the age of LLMs, why do you think you'd be able to discern whether an application was fake in 10 seconds? Remember, it's not "obviously fake", it's "designed to con you" fake.

I don't know which 1200 applications they saw, but IME they're a lot better at trying to con you than succeeding. LLMs aren't great for a lot of use cases (yet?), and this is one of those areas where reality doesn't match the dream: 1. ~10% of applications are over-tailored. Really? You did with exactly matching our job description at $BigCo 3 years before the language existed and 5 years before we pioneered it? The…

> Those are quick scans, well under 4s each on average. We've used 80 minutes of our budget and are down to 600 applications. Of the remainder:

4 seconds each? You are... fast.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#347

Post by Balgair »

carlosjobim wrote: post #262
saulpw wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 1200 applications, a couple hours translates to less than 10 seconds per application. In the age of LLMs, why do you think you'd be able to discern whether an application was fake in 10 seconds? Remember, it's not "obviously fake", it's "designed to con you" fake.

How about 50 per hour? That's just 24 hours of work and a reasonable first look at one minute for each application. Very little time to spend for an important company decision which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That's a half week of work without breaks at one resume per minute-ish.

I agree that it is a very important decision, but that's also unreasonable for a manager to set time aside to look through. You've just set the other projects that you're already behind on (that's why you need to hire in the first place) back another half week or so.

It's like a reverse rocket equation here. You need time to make more time, so you take time, but that time needs time, so ...

The cost isn't really borne by the hiring manager though, it's just their budget (that they argued for) that they need to spend down. The decision makers really don't care that much about the numbers, just that they don't go over.

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#349

Post by AndrewDucker »

I don't understand why LinkedIn haven't stepped in to this market more strongly.

They can verify if people are real. They have the information on what experience people have. If I was them then I'd be saying that your LinkedIn profile was your CV, and persuading companies to make LinkedIn be their route to applying for jobs.

(Not a shareholder, don't really use LinkedIn myself, just feels like such an obvious step for them to take.)

Re: When the job search becomes impossible

#350

Post by user1999919 »

jofer wrote: post #148

As someone who's recently been hiring (sorry folks, position was filled just a few days ago), it's wild to me how distorted things have become. We had 1200 applications for an extremely niche role. A huge amount were clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic. Another huge portion were just unqualified. The irony is that there actually _are_ a ton of exceptionally qualified…

> clearly faked resumes that far too closely matched the job description to be realistic.

Then why would have unrealistic expectations in the ad?

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