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Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

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Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#1

Post by elevanation »

As technology permeates the world more and more, the hiring process is becoming more dehumanized, IMHO. What can we do as an industry, to make hiring more efficient for everyone?

Some of the pain points I observe are:

1. Applicants must wade through large volumes of job postings, which are often poorly written, and frequently lacking key information which is important to the applicant.

2. Employers are overwhelmed with large numbers of applicants, most of whom don't meet the requested minimum requirements.

3. Employers are then too overwhelmed to reply to all the applicants.

4. Applicants are then annoyed with the lack of replies.

5. By the time an employer finds a potential match, the applicant may be difficult to reach, or is no longer interested.

6. By the time an applicant hears back from an employer, they are disappointed in the quality of the response, and already have a bad impression of the employer.

What is working well today to address these pain points?

What are other Possible Fixes?

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#2

Post by p1esk »

In one of the startups I worked at, when we really needed to find good people, CEO raised the referral bonus from 3k to 10k, paid 90 days after start date.

In another startup, management asked every IC on hiring teams to find at least one potential candidates - every week. Time to find them was allocated into sprints. The referral bonus was raised from 2k to 3k.

The first example was more successful from what I remember.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#3

Post by elevanation »

p1esk wrote: post #2

In one of the startups I worked at, when we really needed to find good people, CEO raised the referral bonus from 3k to 10k, paid 90 days after start date. In another startup, management asked every IC on hiring teams to find at least one potential candidates - every week. Time to find them was allocated into sprints. The referral bonus was raised from 2k to 3k. The first example was more successful from what I remem…

That sounds like a good idea. I wonder what percentage of companies are offering substantial referral bonuses?

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#4

Post by lp0_on_fire »

> Applicants must wade through large volumes of job postings, which are often poorly written, and frequently lacking key information which is important to the applicant.

> Employers are overwhelmed with large numbers of applicants, most of whom don't meet the requested minimum requirements.

> Employers are then too overwhelmed to reply to all the applicants.

Employers should stop casting such a wide net, then. If you post on a site like monster and say the position is remote then obviously you're going to get a lot of applicants. If you're not prepared for that you should post locally or tailor your advertisement better.

IMO the job postings are often deliberately written that way because the people doing the hiring a) don't understand what they're looking for (see: "we need 10 years of experience in [technology that was released last year]) or b) they know they need a body but don't want to lock that person into a particular "role". It's just another version of "and other duties as required".

The remaining points in your OP can be solved when employers solve the problems in 1-3.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#5

Post by punkbit »

In my opinion is lack of empathy! Before requesting the interview I usually check the persons work online, e.g., repositories, etc. I personally don't find the twitter activity interesting, but some people give that extreme importance. If I'm in charge of interviewing, and in touch with somebody, that means the person has a very high chance of getting the job, never failed me!

The last thing I want is waste the other persons time.

It's disappointing being interviewed by people who are assh*les, really makes other people feel like sh!t!

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#6

Post by Oras »

I’m working on a platform to filter out applications by:

1. Geo restriction (when required).

2. Skills required in the job (listed by employer). Any resume that don’t meet a percentage of required skills will be notified immediately after uploading the resume.

3. Filtering questions. That could be anything from skills, required certifications, ability to start in certain times.

It is an attempt though, I don’t know if it will work but to explain the reasons behind the platform:

1. The application rate of online jobs is less than 8% due to complicated long forms. Which means employers are missing many talented applicants. See this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33341263

To fix, I implemented an easy apply similar to LinkedIn. You only upload the resume, it will be parsed to validate skills.

2. With the remote work, there are companies who want to limit the remote to their own country or certain time zones. Writing that in the job description doesn’t stop people from applying. As you mentioned, ghosting is one of the main reasons why candidates apply to as many jobs as possible.

To fix, there will be a message saying the job is not available in your region when applying from outside the designated regions.

3. The skills filtering will help candidates to understand immediately why they had been rejected instead of just being ghosted. It will help in reducing the number of unqualified applications.

4. Filtering questions will be for things that can not be identified in resumes. That could be ability to relocation, having certain certifications, security clearance … etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#8

Post by web3-is-a-scam »

p1esk wrote: post #2

In one of the startups I worked at, when we really needed to find good people, CEO raised the referral bonus from 3k to 10k, paid 90 days after start date. In another startup, management asked every IC on hiring teams to find at least one potential candidates - every week. Time to find them was allocated into sprints. The referral bonus was raised from 2k to 3k. The first example was more successful from what I remem…

Am I the only one that isn't incentivized by referral bonuses? The last thing I want is the blame for a bad hire because I somehow referred someone ended up not being a good fit for whatever reason.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#9

Post by stuckinhell »

Part of my job responsibilities is hiring, retention, and unfortunately layoffs.

Hiring is only going to get worse in technology related fields.

The competition has increased 10x in the last couple months compared to the last year for a single jr - mid developer position at my company. That's going from 1000 applications to 10,000 applications.

I even created a jupyterhub notebook to do some analysis on the unfiltered resumes over the weekend. I can easily see over half are liberals arts majors who switched careers in the last 5 years via bootcamps or masters programs. The next 25% are are mostly people who were laid off. The final 25% are new graduates with either no experience or an internships.

A lot more jr developers basically, I imagine the senior devs are being kept happy, or weren't laid off. Yet those are the only people a bunch of our tech teams want to hire . . . .

Also yes we filter out a lot of resumes using keywords, but the latest batches of interviews didn't go well. So I've been re-evaluating our processes.

Re: Ask HN: Why is hiring so dehumanized, and what can be done?

#10

Post by sfe22 »

web3-is-a-scam wrote: post #8
p1esk wrote: post #2

In one of the startups I worked at, when we really needed to find good people, CEO raised the referral bonus from 3k to 10k, paid 90 days after start date. In another startup, management asked every IC on hiring teams to find at least one potential candidates - every week. Time to find them was allocated into sprints. The referral bonus was raised from 2k to 3k. The first example was more successful from what I remem…

Am I the only one that isn't incentivized by referral bonuses? The last thing I want is the blame for a bad hire because I somehow referred someone ended up not being a good fit for whatever reason.

Well, you get it after 90 days, by then they will probably know if it is a bad fit.
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