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I automated my job application process

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Re: I automated my job application process

#741

Post by casenmgreen »

Etheryte wrote: post #307
drillsteps5 wrote: post #66

In the middle of fruitless multi-month job search, I manually view LinkedIn/indeed job sites daily and look for new positions, going through requirements, making sure I have the skills and experience (also helps with understanding if I need to upskill in certain areas), then look up the company, the industry it's in, etc. By the time I'm ready to apply to the position I know I'm interested in and a good fit for, ther…

Just for your consideration, in my experience Linkedin is pretty much the worst place to look for a job right now if you're a real human that actually knows how to do their work. Everyone just clicks apply to everything just to see what sticks and the signal to noise ratio is absolute garbage. If a company has a jobs section on their homepage, that should always be preferred.

A bit like Amazon with vast numbers of oddly named Chinese resellers.

Re: I automated my job application process

#742

Post by casenmgreen »

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

The AI resume - was it a real human resume which was optimized in some way for the role specification, or was it generated from scratch for the role specification?

Re: I automated my job application process

#743

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

dangus wrote: post #437

OP wants to automate the email send but should not do that. Sending bulk automated emails is a big no-no. There's a big reason why OP was fighting with providers to set up something to what amounts to marketing email without an unsubscribe link...because it's not something you're supposed to do. I don't think you should automate talking to a recruiter, anyway. At most this system should just generate email body and a…

That being said flagging e-mails coming from known IP ranges of those e-mail providers seems like a pretty good idea for ATSes to detect non-human spam.

Re: I automated my job application process

#744

Post by wsintra2022 »

chamomeal wrote: post #696
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…

Sorry about your search, and sorry to be another reply that you’ve already been inundated with, but in my experience job boards are nearly useless. Especially now that every job on LinkedIn has hundreds (or even thousands!!) of applicants. I’m sure indeed/zip recruiter/dice are all similarly flooded. During my last job hunt I applied to nearly 300 jobs. Then I recruiter I met at a tiny JavaScript meetup messaged me a…

I think that’s the gold standard for finding engineering (software) and work. Get out into the world by attending meet-ups about technology and start contributing to real world open source projects or volunteer at the many projects looking for devs. It may not be a job overnight but it will keep you busy enough to not stagnate and you will also open yourself to bumping into someone who may be looking for someone at one of the meet ups.

Re: I automated my job application process

#745

Post by captainmuon »

haspok wrote: post #685
captainmuon wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I absolutely read cover letters. But I work in Germany which has different customs around applications, so maybe that's the reason. We get a lot of low effort applications so I look for something why the candidate wants to work at our place. Did they research the position at least a bit before applying? Do they have an idea about the work, and does it mention how they can contribute? If it looks like copy-paste…

> ...why the candidate wants to work at our place. Sorry to be blunt, but - to earn some money to feed their family? Just like applicants are not unicorns, neither are companies - unless you are FAANG nobody really cares about your shitty company really. (Maybe not even if you are FAANG.) If the CV matches the JD, why do you have doubts if they have an idea about the work? They obviously haven't the faintest idea, bu…

It's totally fine if somebody just wants the money. We are all in it for the money to some degree or another. No need to fake enthusiasm. Actually, many applicants I see want to work part time (e.g. 2/3) and just want something to pay the bills and be able to pursue their hobbies.

But I'd like to know, why did you send your application to our company and not one in another industry?

I work for a university data center. Many of my colleagues have a scientific background. If not in academia, they could do coding, R&D, devops, science communication, product management, finance or many other things. They are 'lateral entrants' in any profession.

If people can't answer "why did you apply here specifically", it means one of two things: They don't have a clue what their job would be, and they and we are likely to be dissappointed when they show up. Or: they sent their application to everybody indiscriminately. That signals that they likely aren't a good match for the skills needed, and also that they have a high rejection rate.

Re: I automated my job application process

#746

Post by captainmuon »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #646
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an abundance of tech workers. There is a shortage of good tech workers. It is incredibly difficult, at the resume stage, to tell the difference. When you post a job online, you get hundreds of applications in a few days. Imagine you are a good tech worker. You applied to a company, along with 200 other people. Your resume gets swept into the trash because they had to automatically delete several applicants a…

>There is a shortage of good tech workers. I wish someone quantified what 'good' is. Ask 2 tech workers to rate each other and they are most likely to rate each other mediocre by each's standards. Each would nitpick on what the other didn't know.

If you are not FAANG or some other large company, the question is not if somebody is "good". It is if they are "good enough".

I feel there is often a bimodal distribution of applicants. Those who can do the job and those who are completely not suited. There is a shortage of workers, so you try to get as many as you can from the first bin. It doesn't matter if they are 10x rockstars or Joe Blub.

You just try to sieve out the ones who apply for a DevOps position and then it turns out they are "good with MS office". Or those who neither speak the local language nor English good enough to communicate with anybody. Or those who show up on day 1 and are clearly not the person who interviewed.

I's a luxury to have more than 4-5 good candidates who you'd have to rank. (But to be honest, I'm in education / public sector and the pay here is not competitive with big tech...)

Re: I automated my job application process

#747

Post by fsckboy »

frizlab wrote: post #347

Why do people ask “please” to an LLM is beyond me. It’s a machine, it does not care about politeness! Treat it as a machine ffs.

>Why do people ask “please” to an LLM

did you ever notice how your google-fu got worse over time, as google adapted their technology for the mass market? I predict your LLM-fu will also deteriorate.

I'm not saying "good for Google, what they did there", I'm talking about how you will experience the world.

Re: I automated my job application process

#748

Post by vvladymyrov »

ein0p wrote: post #482

I know this form of procrastination and action avoidance. :-) Never in my life have I applied to more than 3 companies, and never in my life did I need (or receive, as a hiring manager) a cover letter. My CV was always quite sufficient. The most idiotic part of the whole process (besides the interview loop, that is) is that I can't just submit my LinkedIn profile and be done with it, every single company insists that…

I really miss StackOverflow Careers because they had exactly this feature - I enter my career details once and SO Careers allow me to generate nice CV in PDF format. Personally I’ve found couple great jobs though SO Careers, it is sad that SO decided to shutdown Careers business.

Re: I automated my job application process

#749

Post by ghaff »

wsintra2022 wrote: post #744
chamomeal wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry about your search, and sorry to be another reply that you’ve already been inundated with, but in my experience job boards are nearly useless. Especially now that every job on LinkedIn has hundreds (or even thousands!!) of applicants. I’m sure indeed/zip recruiter/dice are all similarly flooded. During my last job hunt I applied to nearly 300 jobs. Then I recruiter I met at a tiny JavaScript meetup messaged me a…

I think that’s the gold standard for finding engineering (software) and work. Get out into the world by attending meet-ups about technology and start contributing to real world open source projects or volunteer at the many projects looking for devs. It may not be a job overnight but it will keep you busy enough to not stagnate and you will also open yourself to bumping into someone who may be looking for someone at o…

Whether you consider this "networking" or not, the approach is to know relevant people in whatever way. Code, write, talk to people at events, etc. Ideally before you really need a job though because, as you suggest, it's not an overnight thing.

Re: I automated my job application process

#750

Post by no_wizard »

wsintra2022 wrote: post #744
chamomeal wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry about your search, and sorry to be another reply that you’ve already been inundated with, but in my experience job boards are nearly useless. Especially now that every job on LinkedIn has hundreds (or even thousands!!) of applicants. I’m sure indeed/zip recruiter/dice are all similarly flooded. During my last job hunt I applied to nearly 300 jobs. Then I recruiter I met at a tiny JavaScript meetup messaged me a…

I think that’s the gold standard for finding engineering (software) and work. Get out into the world by attending meet-ups about technology and start contributing to real world open source projects or volunteer at the many projects looking for devs. It may not be a job overnight but it will keep you busy enough to not stagnate and you will also open yourself to bumping into someone who may be looking for someone at o…

Both this and the OP you responded to are good advice if you aren’t in a situation where you needed a job yesterday.

What about situations where you were laid off and can’t really wait months to get a new one?

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