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I automated my job application process

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Re: I automated my job application process

#561

Post by Volundr »

maeil wrote: post #138
Volundr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's highly dependent on the manager I'm afraid and impossible to guess who's on the other side of that. The process outlined in the post also isn't a path to writing a good cover letter. You don't want to just go over your resume again you want to either talk about things that wouldn't be there (e.x. why you want this job specifically, because your 100% applying because this is the unicorn job for you, not because y…

> (e.x. why you want this job specifically, because your 100% applying because this is the unicorn job for you, not because you need money to feed yourself) In 99.9% of jobs in the world, there are zero applicants for who this truly holds. You might be working at a company hiring for a job that's part of the 0.1%, not sure. Otherwise, you're just selecting for those who are willing to lie as blatantly as required.

> Otherwise, you're just selecting for those who are willing to lie as blatantly as required.

That's a pessimistic way of looking at it, but I'm not going to claim it's wrong. I think my phrasing made it very clear that in most cases I expect if someone includes something about this their interest is going to be ahem embellished.

All the same look at it from the hiring managers side. Say you have two candidates, who appear to otherwise be equal. One seems to think the job is just like any other. The other actually seems genuinely interested in the details of food brokering, knows of your companies involvement in 's success and has thoughts on how they can apply their background in data analytics to the challenges you face.

Which candidate do you hire? Or do you really just toss a coin?

Re: I automated my job application process

#562

Post by thomasfromcdnjs »

Cross posting a comment I left

---

Just wanted to share that I've been working on a schema for job descriptions.

https://jsonresume.org/job-description-schema

I released about 6 months ago, hopefully some of the models use it in their training data. So you can just say "make an example JD, return it in the jsonresume job schema"

---

Just realized I should call it jsonjob or something

Re: I automated my job application process

#563

Post by warkdarrior »

WD-42 wrote: post #465
fijiaarone wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs can’t write unit tests. They can’t even tell what you intend. If your code is already correct, you don’t need the unit test, if it’s not, the LLM can’t write the unit test. If you thing an LLM can write tests for you, you can be replaced by an LLM.

> if your code is already correct, you don’t need the unit test This is a hot take. I'm 100% not onboard with.

Correct. Unit tests are not only for the current version of the code, but also to prevent regressions in future versions of the same code.

Re: I automated my job application process

#564

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #540
bane wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolute insanity. Something has to give, or we're about to see some big changes in how hiring is done. I don't want to retype my recent experiences, but I have a thread from about 6 weeks ago that goes into my specific details here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42137229 I was in a good position so I could take my time, but I honestly don't know what I would have done if I had needed a position quickly.

All of you are being fed nonsense. During my 10 years of being a salaried employee I interviewed for only the first one. All of the rest including Faang companies I went in without any interviews by knowing people and pulling strings. You shouldn't have to "apply" for anything.

You can get away without applying, yes, if your network is strong enough to get referred wherever you want to work. FAANG and similar companies absolutely will not hire software engineers without interviewing them, since the cost of a bad hire is too high.

What I have seen on occasion, especially for more senior people, is a carefully constructed charade. We're not interviewing you, that would be so uncouth, we're just having a chat!

Re: I automated my job application process

#565

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #139

I worked on a side project that generated the AI resume and cover letter. I did a controlled experiment applying for jobs with the generic vs AI customized resume. The AI customized resume out performed the generic resume by 4x. https://customizedresumes.com/custom-vs-generic-resumes

I don't want to hate on your side project, but the AI is clearly hallucinating things to fit the job description. In the ServiceNow result (first I saw with an interview/reject difference), the custom resume claims Jenkins experience, which is in the job listing but nowhere in either the AI base or generic resumes. Same for NinjaTrader and distributed systems + Scala + Github Actions, Upside and data engineering, BigTime and C#.

Re: I automated my job application process

#566

Post by teitoklien »

selimthegrim wrote: post #275
mvanbaak wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow Platform Engineer here, and I can relate 100% with your comment. We decided to stop announcing our engineering jobs and go back to mouth to mouth for sourcing candidates for now. It's a move I didn't want to make as, like you said, it means a lot of less networked engineers will not know about it and all. but for now this was the only way we got rid of the constant stream of letters from AI.

>mouth to mouth for sourcing candidates for now Well, I certainly hope your revival rate is better than your hiring success rate.

hahaha, i was thinking the same when i read it, such an odd way to phrase it.

“Mouth to mouth” lol

Re: I automated my job application process

#567

Post by mettamage »

ripped_britches wrote: post #33

As someone who automates everything and normally loves this type of thing, my approach for job hunting has been way different. Instead of spray and pray, I spend a week or so deeply researching where I want to work and figure out how to get there role-wise. Everything 100% manual and focused, no more than 8 total companies. Maybe spray and pray works if you’re more junior, but later in your career you’ll want to be v…

So do you network yourself into the companies then to get an interview? Or do you apply online?

I'd like to know more about a manual approach.

I think both approaches are valid. I took the automated approach to online dating, married now. So that worked out.

Taking the automated approach for companies will probably work in a similar fashion as online dating. However, unlike online dating, I feel very strong targeted approaches have a chance of working better as long as you get to the interview stage.

Targeted approaches don't work with online dating as the biggest issue is figuring out with whom you have chemistry. For work, there's no such thing to figure out - not to the extent as it is required like romantic intimacy.

Re: I automated my job application process

#569

Post by cs02rm0 »

MrMember wrote: post #314

I'm seeing a lot of back in forth in the comments between hiring managers and employees discussing who is more responsible for the current situation, but from the perspective of someone looking for a job what should I be doing? I've been pretty aggressively looking for a job for the past six months or so. I have 10+ years of professional software dev experience so I've mostly been looking at senior dev positions. I h…

I've been looking for a few months. I've got 20 years of professional dev experience, including in an eye-catching domain and haven't used LLMs in the process either.

Since university I have never not been offered the first job I've applied for. For 10 years now I could ring any of the firms working in the niche I've been in and more or less set my rate. I still could, but I'm trying to get out of that niche into the wider world. I've put hundreds of tailored applications in and basically had nothing (literally a few interviews with Canonical, which is a complete car crash of a process and an HR screening call for a role on half my previous income where she said they were struggling with the number of applications, that I didn't hear back from).

It's an absolute bloodbath out there. I regret I don't have any answers, but good luck with your search.

Re: I automated my job application process

#570

Post by vunderba »

archagon wrote: post #497
vunderba wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With automated hiring spam and our industry's tenuous grasp of basic integrity with actual HN posts proudly boasting of their apps to help you cheat during interviews using LLMs, several of my friends who assist in hiring at their companies have already returned to "on site" interviews to cut down on the proverbial chaff. The kicker? These are 100% remote jobs - the interviews are being performed at shared workspaces…

> with actual HN posts proudly boasting of their apps to help you cheat during interviews using LLMs I mean, I don't disagree emotionally, but this is a lot closer in spirit to what the OG hackers did than most of the stuff you see on the front page.

I mean.... IMHO self titled "solopreneurs" throwing together a for-profit web app that runs in the background to feed an applicant answers from ChatGPT just so they can cheat en masse on an exam feels like a far cry from old school phreakers building blue boxes in their basement to stick it to Ma Bell.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/capn-crunch-whistle

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