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I automated my job application process

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Re: I automated my job application process

#821

Post by lumens »

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…

As someone who works on the other side of this... if you're getting through 10 phone screens and not getting an offer, something is wrong with the way you're interviewing.

You've gotten 10 phone screens, so you can probably double your activity and get to 20. If you're actually going for jobs you're qualified for, 20 screens should net you ~3 offers, if not more.

My suggestion: record yourself on your interviews and have friends review the recording and offer critique. You have blind spots you need to address to achieve the outcomes you want.

Re: I automated my job application process

#822

Post by chaosharmonic »

This is really fascinating to me, as this same problem drove an down a collection of side projects, ranging from a scraping pipeline[0] to a WIP full-stack application[1][2] for quick-swiping through results (also to better enable other use cases like scaling out to different data sources, but less about the auto apply). Development pace isn't at all breakneck, since I keep getting rabbit-holed into other ancillary stuff -- periodic bot detection issues, upstream pull requests (like user agent switching in Astral, for the bot detection issues), so on -- and have more broadly prioritized using the thing I've been tinkering on over throwing all of my energy into building it... but it's incidentally been a lot of different stuff to tinker on. I've been more intentional about DIYing over LLMs -- for the experiment of it, and to have stuff I can show off -- and it's gotten me into TypeScript for the first time, Deno KV, browser automation, and as an added bonus my understanding of selector logic has made enough of a jump that so far I've been building this entirely in vanilla CSS.

My other consideration is that I'm running on CPU and don't love depending on cloud services, so I've also been mostly getting stuff out of a DOM where I can... but it's occurred to me that there are scoped reasons to consider this, like deeper parsing from job descriptions, and I occasionally toy with it on stuff like HN posts. The prompt format here is a lot more thorough than what I've tried, and I might have to go back and experiment with this some more. I haven't gotten great consistency with this yet myself, and I'm not sure how much that's my prompting and how much it's that I'm using smaller (mostly ~7B) models. Which LLMs are you using for this -- ChatGPT throughout, or are there others?

I've been trying to avoid too much prior art while working on mine, but I'm definitely interested in hearing more about what you've been building around this.

[0] bhmt.dev/blog/scraping (warning: this is 10000 words + code samples, as it goes from browser console to browser automation and covers a few different side projects)

[1] github.com/chaosharmonic/escape-rope

[2] github.com/chaosharmonic/escape-rope-ui

Re: I automated my job application process

#823

Post by wisemang »

vijucat wrote: post #725
wisemang wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From iOS app, paid 4o > There are 4 Rs in “razzleberry.”

Follow up with, "Please check again"

You’re absolutely right to ask for a recheck! Let’s count carefully: • R in Razzleberry: • 1st R: In “Razzle” • 2nd R: In “Razzle” • 3rd R: In “berry” • 4th R: In “berry”

Total: 4 Rs in “razzleberry.”

No changes—still 4 Rs! Let me know if I can clarify further.

Re: I automated my job application process

#824

Post by wisemang »

wisemang wrote: post #823
vijucat wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow up with, "Please check again"

You’re absolutely right to ask for a recheck! Let’s count carefully: • R in Razzleberry: • 1st R: In “Razzle” • 2nd R: In “Razzle” • 3rd R: In “berry” • 4th R: In “berry” Total: 4 Rs in “razzleberry.” No changes—still 4 Rs! Let me know if I can clarify further.

However when I asked it to write and run a python script to count them, it got it right.

Re: I automated my job application process

#825

Post by moregrist »

charlie0 wrote: post #533
mattm wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works for desperate people. Sr people or people with other options would not take that risk.

But we've just established in this thread that even senior people are having difficulty findings jobs. This has nothing to do with desperation. Temp contract works both ways, if an employee doesn't like the company or finds another job within the 2-3 months, they are free to leave. This is more than fair.

Ignoring that this seems like a bad way to start a hopefully long-term relationship, this would largely limit your pool to people who don’t already have a job. If a senior candidate already has a job, why would they give it up for a sketchy 2-3 month contract and the vague promise of full employment?

Re: I automated my job application process

#826

Post by confidantlake »

Kerbonut wrote: post #431

I wonder if a type of escrow service could help solve the problem of hiring managers getting flooded with low effort applications and simultaneously solve the problem of applicants being passed over when they are obviously the most qualified for someone else who looks good on paper but who is actually mediocre. There could also be a case for some kind of ante that applicants have to contribute to when they apply. Pas…

I would get rich posting ghost jobs and winning the whole pot for myself every time.

Re: I automated my job application process

#827

Post by lizzas »

rockemsockem wrote: post #688
lizzas wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vocational education vs. academic. Basically you find a grad right now and make them do a coding test. Something is broken there. A degree could include the vocational qualification as a 1 year study, but having the vocation qualification alone would save youngsters a lot of money and reduce the burden on hiring. You could even still interview coding questions but the application process can remove the spam/ai bullsh…

And now you've moved the job of administering and evaluating coding tests to an organization that only does that. Who would want to work at such a place? Why would I trust the opinions of people who work at such a place?

It is good enough for plumbing, bricklaying, food service etc. Why not coding.

Re: I automated my job application process

#828

Post by ddalex »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #803
ddalex wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Just as doctors or lawyers or civil engineers can't do their jobs before being vetted by their own professional bodies it's time we do the same for software engineering.

If all you did was an entry level "bar exam, it'd be pretty much useless. A newly graduated CompSci student, is really just an apprentice, who may then (if they continue to work hard, and are given challenging work) go on to become a master craftsman/journeyman over the next 5/10/20 years. The same is true of those other fields too really - I certainly wouldn't want a newly qualified doctor operating on me, or lawyer…

Doctors go through residency after passing their exams, we should have the same for engineers. Civil engineers have layers of seniority and designs of junior engineers have to be reviewed and approved by senior engineers, we should have the same.

Re: I automated my job application process

#829

Post by LtWorf »

trod1234 wrote: post #800
LtWorf wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inquisition being as bad as you think it was was mostly protestant porn/propaganda. Protestant countries burned far more people and for centuries after the catholics had stopped.

You are very mistaken, and it shows you haven't studied enough to rationally discuss the subject matter. Of course later, in time, countries impacted more people. Population grows with time, and any rational comparison along these lines would need to be normalized against population, but the truth in the ambiguity of the latter phrase doesn't make the former phrase true. The inquisition lasted quite a long time (1478…

Let me take a wild guess and say that your upbringing is… protestant?

According to wikipedia (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisizione#L'Inquisizione_sp... they put to death 826 people, so that's less than 3 people per year and less than 2% of the people they judged.

We know this accurately because it was a legal proceeding that left paper trails which can be studied.

Your claim that it led to the collapse of portugal and spain seems quite wild. And certainly doesn't explain why you think it had no ill effect in protestant countries that kept burning people for 200 years more.

Re: I automated my job application process

#830

Post by LtWorf »

josephg wrote: post #653
LtWorf wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my whole career I've seen 0 correlation between effort and rewards.

How long has your career been? I’ve been doing software professionally for 20 years and the correlation I’ve seen is huge. Not necessarily inside a single company - but after awhile you get jobs from networking & people you worked with in the past. If none of your ex colleagues want to work with you again, it’ll become a lot harder for you to get hired & promoted.

15 years?
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