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Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

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Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#641
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (the US) had a very successful, carefully designed system that seems to have been an unstable configuration. It was neither hammer and sickle nor single megacorporation: it was balanced on a hill between both. The combination of (1) checks and balances, (2) separation of money, religion, corporation, and government, and (3) regulation in moderation worked pretty well for around 200 years. Monopolies and labor abus…

200 years? And went wrong in 1970? The USA absolutely wasn't a good system in 1770, and has sucked for a lot of people for large fraction of those years. Who could vote was all over the place for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_voting_rights_in_t... Civil War was about as far from "balanced" as you can get, and the problems weren't even on the axis of "hammer and sickle" vs "single megacorporat…

And this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#642
post #422
post #89

I did one of these once. Once . I felt so bad afterwards that I swore them off forever. It's not like the 'interview' was terrible or anything. I knew it was AI from the start. It was just that when I got done with it, I realized that I had talked at a computer for ~45 minutes. And, yet again, I was going to be ghosted by the company (I was), and that I was never going to get those 45 minutes back. That was time I co…

I'd hate being interviewed by a bot. Talking to these stupid automated answering machines is bad enough. That said, the other side of the equation is also bad, for employers. I was asked to conduct some interviews recently. I asked the most basic of questions (like absolutely basic stuff, "what is an interface?" level basic). The number of people who said "I don't know" is far less than the number of people who tried…

If recruiting is so broken I expect more certification courses to appear or even language knowledge exams done by independent agencies in physical presence. Like it was done for TOEFL and similar exams in past.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#643
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd hate being interviewed by a bot. Talking to these stupid automated answering machines is bad enough. That said, the other side of the equation is also bad, for employers. I was asked to conduct some interviews recently. I asked the most basic of questions (like absolutely basic stuff, "what is an interface?" level basic). The number of people who said "I don't know" is far less than the number of people who tried…

"I'll have my bot call your bot". There's already a user-side AI program for talking to customer service phone systems. (Need to find the reference. Really good idea.) (I can't find the reference. It's buried under a sea of advertising for company-side chatbots. Anybody remember the link?)

This kind of race to expensive meaninglessness is hilarious in a similar way a human language modem would be.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#644
post #422
post #89

I did one of these once. Once . I felt so bad afterwards that I swore them off forever. It's not like the 'interview' was terrible or anything. I knew it was AI from the start. It was just that when I got done with it, I realized that I had talked at a computer for ~45 minutes. And, yet again, I was going to be ghosted by the company (I was), and that I was never going to get those 45 minutes back. That was time I co…

I'd hate being interviewed by a bot. Talking to these stupid automated answering machines is bad enough. That said, the other side of the equation is also bad, for employers. I was asked to conduct some interviews recently. I asked the most basic of questions (like absolutely basic stuff, "what is an interface?" level basic). The number of people who said "I don't know" is far less than the number of people who tried…

"What is an interface?" reminds me of one of my favorite interview questions: "What happens when you open a browser and visit a webpage?". There’s no single right answer and when asked in the right way I find it helps surface knowledge and skills candidates might not otherwise bring up. Some go into OS internals, others talk about networking, some focus on UI and page load performance. Even when candidates expect the question it still reveals how they think and what they spent time reading up on.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#645

> Still, stretched-thin HR teams say it’s the only way to handle thousands of applicants. You're doing it wrong if you're considering "thousands" of applicants. First of all ask your current good employees if they can refer anyone. If you need to go to resumes, sort by qualifications. Screen out obvious robo-applications, you know them when you see them just like you know spam email from the subject line alone. Hint:…

You are giving advice to some of the dumbest people in the country. I'm not saying its bad advice, but these people are universally stupid. I don't know exactly why things ended up this way, but I'd love to hear where this isn't a truth.

They are dumb and they are mean because they are empowered and they have access to secrets. And a department's designated HR person will not respond to questions from anyone lower than a VP, and when they do they'll point you to the company intranet.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#646
post #301

> It does 100 interviews, and it’s going to hand back the best 10 to the hiring manager, and then the human takes over,” he says. Yikes. One thing that's incredibly important about reaching the interview-stage of a job application has been that there is a parity, or even an imbalance favoring the candidate, in human time usage. The company's people (often multiple people at once) have to spend time with the candidate…

How do you square that against receiving, literally, 500 fake resumes, mostly from Indians, on day one? They all match the job posting.

You can’t filter by name because that’s discrimination. I suspect AI is being used to eliminate the fraud, this exact scenario.

AI can’t, yet, be accused of breaking equal opportunity employment laws.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#647
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of numbers if there is no unity? Since Covid, there are decent successes in forming unions and collective bargaining, but it is nowhere enough. How many IT workers (as an example) have unionized or even have positive opinions on unions? A handful of guys can effectively rule large groups of people for a long period of time, if the said large group can't unite, can't help each other.

> What is the point of numbers if there is no unity? Since Covid, there are decent successes in forming unions and collective bargaining, but it is nowhere enough. How many IT workers (as an example) have unionized or even have positive opinions on unions? That is right on the money. The problem is many IT people believe in meritocracy to an absurd degree, a degree not found anywhere else.

Not only meritocracy. A big part also believes that they are better than the rest. So they think these problems will never touch them.

I don´t know. Maybe we spend too much time alone in front of a monitor to understand what´s really going on.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#648
post #113

I’m not job seeking but someone emailed to offer an allegedly lucrative side gig working with some unspecified top AI lab to help them train their coding models. I thought what the hell. Uploaded CV, was immediately thrown into an AI interview (and asking for camera access). Quickly closed the browser tab and blackholed that company’s email domain. Hands down the most disrespectful thing I’ve faced in my career.

Off topic, but what is your process for blocking the entire domain in email? I want to start doing something similar.

Can't you do this with most email filtering systems with a rule similar to `.*@example.com` -> trash/bin?

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#649
post #102

From both sides of the table, I have a strict philosophy that the candidate's time is the more valuable commodity. Thus in any situation where a company is offloading internal effort but still requiring the candidate to put in time & effort, that's a company I would not want to work for. This is the ultimate expression of that bullcrap.

> Still, stretched-thin HR teams say it’s the only way to handle thousands of applicants. I get the impression this is because it's too easy for candidates to apply for a job. I wonder if there is a way to put pressure on job seekers to be more selective about where they apply? (Or otherwise for a company to allow a candidate that's only applied to a handful of jobs to skip the AI?)

In person applications could add some friction to both parties.
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