Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

kapwing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 731 posts

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#681

Post by FirmwareBurner »

WalterBright wrote: post #585
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They say they "use AI to match the keywords in job description". If recruiters only pick up your resumes based on keyword matching themselves, what is one to do, if not adapt their resumes to said keywords so they can at least try to get to a human interview? Not talking about India specifically, but in general. Hiring is broken, so everyone tries to fix it in their own ways to maximize their chances.

Recruiters have gone beyond keyword matching, they're now using AI to judge the resume. > Hiring is broken How would you, as an employer, filter out the frauds?

I don't know. Depends on a case by case basis. Maybe someone has solid credentials, maybe someone has some FOSS contributions.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#682

Post by FirmwareBurner »

WalterBright wrote: post #655
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you still had to get an interview first, which is often the most difficult part. Not everyone is so lucky to get such a chance. What then? Go homeless or lie till you get an interview? The funny thing is I'm not even a mechanical engineer, but a a CS engineer, just mostly experienced in a stack that's not used much anymore but it's not like I can't learn another stack, I just refuse to put up with discriminatory…

When you're got a thousand resumes, it is not possible to interview them all. You'll pick the most promising handful.

That's why you lie to make sure you get in the promising handful.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#683

Post by FirmwareBurner »

motorest wrote: post #664
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I managed to get stellar reviews form my boss and colleagues after getting the job. Maybe not everyone is incompetent. Maybe some people who are good at doing one thing, are also gonna be good at doing other things, but HR and recruiters are terrible at screening for adaptability and transferable skills, or they are just risk adverse and play it safe for an easy pay cheque, so you end up missing out on jobs…

You touched on an important topic: if a candidate has potential but HR has no way to tell if that candidate is any good, should they hire him? How can they tell apart a candidate with potential but an abismal CV from a candidate who is utterly incompetent and a bonafide scrub? The problem is that this is not a HR problem. This is a you problem. Why are you failing to stand out and prove your value? The problem with H…

>Why are you failing to stand out and prove your value?

Because HR has no technical understanding of transferrable skills in the tech sector. They don't know what a Github is, they don't even know the difference between Java and Javascript, they only know to look for "5+ years of Java experience" because that's what the job description says, that's all they do.

I also couldn't believe that myself until a recruiter posted a video of herself on LinkedIn showing why "It's hard to find good SW engineers", and all she was doing was pattern matching and filtering based on buzzwords and years of experience.

How do you stand out in such cases? Are you gonna write a one extra page on your resume where you are explaining the value of transferable technical skills to a 20-somethign year old humanities graduate who has 30 seconds to review your resume?

>How can they tell apart a candidate with potential but an abismal CV from a candidate who is utterly incompetent and a bonafide scrub?

Easy. For example, if someone has good experience in Java, they most likely can be a good C# programmer. But that needs some technical knowledge, beyond matching keywords like a baboon. Even ChatGPT would be better at assessing resumes and potential of candidates than the clueless HR people.

>Their problem is that they need to justify their choices with objectively verifiable data.

Other than some officially signed credentials like accountants, doctors or lawyers have, there's no data on a resume that's instantly objectively verifiable on a quick glance since everything there could be a lie until further proven. I could say I was CTO of Google. When they get 50+ applications for one position, they're only gonna skim through resumes to pick the best fitting one, not start doing checks on all of them.

>What are you giving them to work with?

Just like lawyers and bean counters, HR's job is to protect the company and their careers and to minimize risks. I'm giving them a white lie that fits to their biases and covers their ass in order to pass to the technical stage. That's what I'm giving them. It's a constant cat and mouse game in this racket.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#684

Post by FirmwareBurner »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #512
gosub100 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not surprising that humans are still okay with harming others to personally get ahead. Recruiters are harming me by taking a cut of my salary and offering nothing of value other than screening some calls and adding my resume to a spam listing and robodialer. Do you think I care about harming them

I'm sorry you feel hurt or harmed by someone. I've felt that, too, and it really sucks. It's not a good feeling. I avoid recruiters unless they can serve me well, too (increased salary, signing bonus, etc), instead preferring to applying directly to individual companies whose mission is interesting and whose culture matches mine. That said, I don't think hurt is a valid justification for hurting someone else, like th…

Nobody's getting hurt when you can do the job. In fact you're doing them a favor by taking a job and making money for them.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#685

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #491
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's time to buy a suit Yeah, no. I'd deduct points if the candidate wears a suit. What a huge red flag, missing all sorts of context and appropriateness cues.

This is insane to read. You don't get brownie points for what you're wearing, but deducting points for someone trying to impress folks by dressing more formally than what you're typically used to?

Yes. I deduct points for people who can't into social cues and context. Such is life, we are social animals. I'd deduct points if a candidate showed up in beach shorts too. (A suit is as wildly inappropriate in this context as beach shorts.)

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#686

Post by amrocha »

tomhow wrote: post #670
amrocha wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I understand and respect your decision to moderate my comment, and I’ll be more careful going forward.

But I would like to point out that a rule that allows someone to openly state they discriminate during interviews but forbids a strong reaction to that statement might require some examination.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#687

Post by rcxdude »

ralferoo wrote: post #678
miki123211 wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that if everybody lies and you're the one not lying, you're worse off. In that scenario, the choice is between lying and being on even footing with everybody else, versus staying honest and getting an unfair disadvantage for it. If enough participants lie, some of the honest participants get pushed out of the system, which makes lying more socially acceptable, which causes even more participants to lie…

Not everyone lies. To say everyone does is just lying to yourself in an attempt at rationalisation. Tell the truth. If you perform poorly in an interview, you now know where your weaknesses are. Work on them. Do a hobby project that lets you gain experience in that area. Use that as an example in your interview. Not only can you be truthful, you'll be more confident as you'll actually understand what you're talking a…

Half the issue is companies where you won't even get to an interview without a juiced-up CV, and the rest is a interviewing and hiring decision process that doesn't penalize liars. If people felt your advice was the best way to get ahead, then they'd follow it, but when they see people who are just good bullshitters rocket past them in the system, they're not gonna feel good about it.

(How accurate this perception is is an important point: I'm inclined to believe that this nihilistic "everything is bullshit" philosophy is incorrect and self-defeating, but it's hard to deny many high-profile examples that show that bullshitting can be stunningly successful, while honesty and hard work can fail horribly)

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#688

Post by ohthatsnotright »

collingreen wrote: post #597
zellyn wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the perfect excuse if you get caught lying. “Oh shit, I ran it through ChatGPT one last time after proof-reading, and forgot to review the output carefully. Sorry!”

Lying, excused with more lying! What could go wrong?

Probably get promoted to C-suite.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#689

Post by never_inline »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #471
rafaelmn wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is one to do Find roles where your skills match the required skills ?

What if there are no open positions on my experience and I have to pivot to another completely different tech stack that I studied in my spare time? What then? Should I be unemployed? We're still taking about SW engineering here, not medicine or rocket science.

These people all have cushy jobs already. You haven't seen how people optimize for TC in the Indian market. There's a certain scale after which petty dishonesty starts to have a bad impact on overall environment and turn it into low-trust.

Re: Interviewing a software engineer who prepared with AI

#690

Post by sarchertech »

motorest wrote: post #657
sarchertech wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re comment was talking about performing under pressure and failing to perform with people watching them. In this context when you say perform I assumed (as would most people) that you’re talking about technical/work sample interviews not culture fit tell me about a time you did x interviews. If you’re talking about those, then yes every job in every industry does that. If you’re talking about stand at this white…

> If you’re talking about those, then yes every job in every industry does that. If you’re talking about stand at this white board and solve a problem that I know the answer to to while I watch. I think you're failing to understand what actually happens in hiring rounds. You stand in front of a whiteboard to showcase your knowledge on abstract topics like systems architecture. This is exactly what happens in the real…

You’re not understanding the point.

1. No other industry makes senior people perform “work sample” tests in interviews with the exceptions I mentioned above.

2. There is absolutely no comparison between whiteboard sessions in interviews and in reality.

I have never once had a whiteboard session where someone says “I’m going to give you a system to design. I have built 100 of these systems before, so I have fairly specific things I’m gonna to look for. But I’m not going to tell you exactly what those are. You have 45 minutes in which to do it. No you can’t think about it over lunch. No you can’t spend 30 minutes reading up on it. No we can’t do another session tomorrow.”

If you think this is anything remotely like designing a system in real life, I definitely don’t want to work anywhere you have.

>expected to showcase your skills

Yeah that’s my point. Other industries don’t do this for senior people because they realized it’s not actually predictive enough to be worth it.

Post reply on HN