Live data from Hacker News

I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

theverge.com

431–440 of 496 posts

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

#431
post #193
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.

> 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.

except its click "apply now" and then re-input all your information in 3 different ways.

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

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting a lot of applications that don't meet your standard doesn't force you to raise you[r] bar. You still just need someone who meets your standard. I'm not sure that first sentence true. Let me play Devil's advocate: What's the primary cause of not being able to find someone who meets your standard when you already get lots of applications? It's that your hiring process is bogged down by the masses of unwanted…

Arbitrary filtering of candidates is always an option, but then you may as well do it as cheaply as possible. Throw out half the resumes.

I wasn't suggesting arbitrary filtering. That's a straw-man interpretation of what I wrote. Even if a firm cargo-cult copies the screening practices of the big-tech firms, they are going to be much better at selecting good hires than arbitrary filtering would.

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you had such a bad interviewing experience. You asked for feedback in your blog post, and since your blog doesn't allow comments, I hope you won't mind my responding here. You wrote something that I think is untrue of most tech companies, so I'd like to discuss it: > [As I and a friend spoke], I realised something: Three technical interviews went well, I was feeling confident going into the behavioural inte…

> mental model of the hiring process is that the company is probably going to sabatage your end-game interviews I definitely agree and it is not a mental model that I carry into any interview, I have good intentions and I'm super friendly! This was only a tiny (disillusioned) post-interview reflection. I would say most interviews especially with engineers have gone well but there has absolutely been a vibe shift in t…

> the first interview should be plenty screening for both parties

Most good companies will interview you multiple times simply because they understand that individual interviewers can be biased. If five different people all say hire this guy, that's a much more trustworthy signal than if one person says the same thing.

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

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry you had such a bad interviewing experience. You asked for feedback in your blog post, and since your blog doesn't allow comments, I hope you won't mind my responding here. You wrote something that I think is untrue of most tech companies, so I'd like to discuss it: > [As I and a friend spoke], I realised something: Three technical interviews went well, I was feeling confident going into the behavioural inte…

> Here's what I think. If you have a public blog, it's fair game at an interview. If you write mostly about data science stuff but you apply for a software engineering job, you ought to be prepared to explain the contrast. Understand that, for most top firms, hiring good people and getting them to stick is hard. Most employers will want some assurance that you are serious about the position you're applying for. If yo…

That's certainly one way of interpreting what I wrote.

My point was that potential employers are not blind to what you put out in the public space. If what you put out would cause a reasonable employer to have questions about your viability as candidate, you ought to be prepared for those questions. If you're lucky, they'll ask you those questions and you can dispell their concerns.

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

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and deal with that regulatory body's automated bot response. Customer service is bots all the way down.

I had some serious struggles with the delinquent landlord and property owners, and the dangerously incompetent builders that plagued our building in Alameda for years. While they were not always legally empowered to come and stop the skulduggery, the Alameda city council offices of planning and compliance were the only people who consistently and professionally responded to phone calls and emails and were available i…

The Republicans have spent 40 years with their intentional policy being to make government services worse so that the Republicans can then point to that and say 'we need to get rid of government'.

It's hard for government to function well when half of it is trying to sabotage itself. The fact it works as good as it does after 40 years of that is a tribute to public servants.

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

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you had for breakfast is not personal information, and of course nowhere near illegal. The worst employees are those who start out with an attitude that the employer is their enemy like this.

Requiring to disclose your breakfast habits for a job application has not anything to do with your merit to the company, and gives grounds to the possibility of choosing people on sympathy to their answers to that question. It became frowned to include a picture into a CV, because this feeds implicit biases, why should that be any different with alimentary behaviour? Honestly for dealing with job application spam, th…

You can just lie. There is literally no wrong answer here.

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

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any positive feelings about AI interviewers, but I don't believe your take is correct. I agree that it does filter as you describe, but it's just a side effect. I think the actual reason is simply that they're lazy and don't care.

Add to that the AI fad where somehow they find it cool to have AI do something they (or their employees) used to do.

Yeah, exactly. "We're leveraging AI! Efficiency gains!!" and who cares about the actual humans on the other end.

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

#438
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there can be an advantage in a bot too, if it can actually resolve some subset of problems faster and allows for more timely escalation of what is left. The problem is of course that is far too often not how they are used.

> The problem is of course that is far too often not how they are used. The underlying problem with today's world is that people only want to solve their problem at the cost of everyone else. Everything else (like bot's, ai) is only a tool which is used on the way to enrich an individual.

I think it runs deeper than that. Customers are overly swayed by the up-front cost of a product or service. They don't want to pay a little more for a product that has good customer service, at least not until that customer service is legendary in the industry, and often not even then.

We could have the Swiss model, which is a bit of a culture shock: the customer support line is a paid service like a premium rate 1-900 number. It's very hard to wrap your head around as an American, but it does result in customer support that's very fast, and they either solve your problem quickly or not. And there is an incentive alignment, where you pay for the good support as a separate service, so it should not affect the base price of the good.

In a competitive industry, paid support would be a win-win. High support customers pay for the support they use, and less demanding customers don't pay anything. And if the product needs lots of support because of quality, then customers can choose a competitor.

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

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electrical panel beeps an alarm constantly. Sent an email to the property management company. Guy comes over and presses a button to silence it for 24 hours. Rinse repeat for months on end. No method of escalation beyond the automatic replying inbox. I’m fine. twitch twitch Welcome to 21st century distopia!

I have not heard of a beeping panel box before. The only thing I can imagine are some newfangle AFCI or GFCI breakers that are either nuisance tripping, tripping from actual faults or plain defective.

This is on the building as a whole to be clear.

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

#440
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring to disclose your breakfast habits for a job application has not anything to do with your merit to the company, and gives grounds to the possibility of choosing people on sympathy to their answers to that question. It became frowned to include a picture into a CV, because this feeds implicit biases, why should that be any different with alimentary behaviour? Honestly for dealing with job application spam, th…

You can just lie. There is literally no wrong answer here.

Any data in an application affects the likelyhood to be employed, that is irrelevant whether that is actually true.
Post reply on HN