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Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

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Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#781
post #125

It's funny how employers try to rationalize this -- take Coinbase, for example: https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-coinbase-is-embracing-ai-i... > While some worry AI will dehumanize the hiring process, we believe the opposite. Deploying AI will enable more quality interactions, more quickly for the candidates who are the best fit for our jobs– without unnecessary administrative tasks or distractions. We fully believe…

>Let’s face it: the candidates who want to work at Coinbase are as enthusiastic about AI as we are.

Perhaps. But their enthusiasm is not to talk to themselves alone int a room to a chatbot, but to work on solving interesting problems. Hopefully alongside other enthusiastic people.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#782
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 think “what is an interface” would trip me up actually, haha. My thought process was: Well, most of the code I use uses a Reverse Communication Interface. But, I think these are pretty old-school projects, maybe I should start by talking about the Object Oriented interface to the library that we recently did. Or maybe I can talk about the file IO based interface that I did, it was extremely cursed but kind of funny…

An interface is a layer of translation between two things.

In Object oriented programming, it's a contract between two encapsulated modules: you define how one should be used, without exposing internals, and the other will have only this contract to manipulate the module.

Otherwise, for a graphical interface, it's a translation between what the machine can do and what the human can see.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#783
I mean given how even 'real' interviews go... what's the point of dealing with an AI Interviewer?

If anything, I'd argue it's a long term short for companies doing that; they are going to get mostly people who learn to game the AI.

Especially in the current hiring landscape...

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese socialism is interesting and I think works quite well. Absolutely new stuff is basically unrestricted. Go build, have fun, make money. Intermediate stuff is partially state controlled, including cost, profits, pollution, and more. Essentials are effectively state owned, cost controlled, and 'very stable'. Also, the USSR was the first time it was tried. It succeeded some ways, but failed in others.

It works quite well in China, assuming of course you are not so unlucky as to want to protest on Tienanmen Square. Or have useful organs someone higher up might want to harvest. Or are an Uygur. Or a Tibetan. Or live in a place downstream of a large dam. Or want to express an opinion. Oh, and you know how Nazi Germany was the first time that Nazism was tried as well? It also succeeded in some ways, and failed in othe…

What are the aspects of Nazi Germany that you think have merit and we should try again? You can't just pick and choose when the aspects are intrinsically linked though.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but still pay the same or more." Yeah margins in groceries are great.

For those who don’t get the reference: Grocery stores have low margins. It’s the textbook example of a business that many assume is high margin and rolling in profits, but when you look at the numbers they have very poor profit margins.

I don't know if you'll be able to answer this but;

I've been wondering about that conventional wisdom lately. In my area, and in most of the developed world, the prices of frankly most food I buy has doubled in the last 7 years. Meat is almost quadruple. This is despite ~3% inflation yearly over that time (higher in covid years, lower elsewhere), for an aggregate inflation over that same period of 44%. So the costs are rising way faster than inflation. indeed, my pay has not doubled.

Lets assume that its true that supermarkets etc where I am report very low profit margins (I haven't personally checked, but I suspect they indeed do). Where does the increased cost go? The general excuses given are covid, ukraine, etc. But those are market explanations - i.e. oh, there is less supply of this stuff, so the price goes up. But that means that SOMEONE is making a lot more money than they used to -- or the amount of effort to make the same amount of product has gone up. So which is it?

Other explanations i've considered:

- Hollywood accounting i.e. the profit margin is much higher but funneled into weird supplier companies also owned by investors/higher ups of the supermarkets.

- Middleman bloat. A bunch of extra steps where people take their "small margin" repeatedly have been inserted into the supply chain, the same product now passing through more hands (combine if you like with the above if you like)

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#786
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?)

It was this one I believe:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44716414

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#787

> 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:…

Having thousands of applicants is only an issue if you give yourself the contrived problem of hiring the best person who sent you a resume. Your true objective is to strike a balance between cost of search and hiring someone from the top N% of potential people. Nobody has ever walked into a grocery store and bemoaned that there's no way they could locate the ripest banana in the building. You pick a number, evaluate…

One of the refreshing things about the Amazon/AWS hiring approach was basically this. Did we agree this person can do the job? First one to get to a yes gets an offer. No interviewing all the candidates and stack ranking and trying juggle them to have a plan A and plan B (though people could influence that somewhat through scheduling). First qualified candidate succeeds and everyone gets back to work.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#788
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?)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44716414

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#789
post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, I suppose same way you reduce spam and abuse anywhere else. Raise the cost enough it's not worth it. Some middle ground could be requiring mailed in applications. That's a marginal cost for a real applicant but a higher cost for someone trying to send swathes of applications out. It might seem backwards but there are plenty of solid non technical solutions to problems. You could also do automated reputation che…

The people are usually real in my experience, although I’ve dealt with fake people a few times. Different person showing up to the office vs the video interview, man obviously just off camera giving answers. That second one is probably AI now.

HR attempts to prescreen on resume match. I’ll never see the person who matches on half the skills and is a real person. I’ll only see the fraud until I accidentally find someone who has ever used the technologies on their resume.

Re: Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers

#790
post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interviewing. I'm just not getting answers back. I have 9 YOE now so I've done the usual gauntlet hundreds of times by now. Paet of it is that a lot of places just aren't hiring to begin with. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that those who remain either have poor processes (maybe some by design) or don't know how to find what they are looking for.

> I have 9 YOE now so I've done the usual gauntlet hundreds of times by now. I'm not sure how to parse this.. you've done hundreds of interviews, as the candidate, in 9 years of experience?

If they move jobs every two years, that’s 5 periods of interviewing. 40 interviews per period doesn’t seem too out there.
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