5 ms·

I'm coming down there

69 points by SandB0x 16y ago

presidentender 16y ago
While I was still in college, I had a resume up on Dice, hoping to land a job after graduation. It apparently flagged the recruiter bots, because I'd get calls... for contracts starting in a week, months before graduation. I know these things aren't human screeners, but you would think that a human would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on the call center worker who has to call and find out that the prospect is unavailable.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  a human would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on the call center worker Did your resume have "NOT AVAILABLE FOR WORK BEFORE [MONTH]/[DAY]/[YEAR], AFTER WHICH I AM AVAILABLE" written across the top in red ink? Presumably not. But, if not (and maybe even if so!) it would take way more time and skill for a human to (a) read your resume, (b) parse it, and (c) deduce that you were not available than for someone to type your contact phone number into a call-center system, awaiting the day when another human would deploy automated call-center software to place a call to you, ask "might you be available for a contract on date X?", and note down your answer. The other problem, of course, is that it's incredibly easy to represent a phone number in a database, and it's fairly easy to represent "we called Prospect X about Potential Contract Y but she said no" in a database, but it is awfully hard to represent "Prospect X has a resume which suggests that he will graduate on date Z, and most likely that means he isn't available before date Z, unless he is down on his luck or has gotten bored with school or we misread the resume" in a database.
  - presidentender 16y ago
    I suppose it's difficult to find "graduation date" in a million differently-formatted resumes.
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  > you would think that a human would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on the call center worker I bet dollars to donuts that it's cheaper to just call everyone on a list, rather than take the few hours to sort through the resumes and throw out all the chaff.
- madmaze 16y ago
  i had exactly the same thing happen to me when i was looking for an internship semester last year, i got calls from 3 cruise staffers, im a comp sci student.. and then i somehow got 4 calls for senior positions.. how does that happen, my resume said "graduating summer 2010" in the first line under my name..
Ygor 16y ago
How often are the job applications filtered throught some kind of an automatic process? Does it happen only in the big companies, or is it a common practice? Is it effective?
troymc 16y ago
I had a roommate who got an Electrical Engineering degree from Queens University (one of Canada's more prestigious universities). He then worked for Motorola somewhere in the USA (so he had the right visa) and had a few years experience. Then Motorola downsized, he got laid off and started looking for work. He wasn't getting many calls... He applied to grad school at Purdue University and was accepted. His resume now said he was at Purdue University, but he hadn't done anything yet besides show up. He sent off some more resumes and the next thing we knew, our (shared) phone was ringing constantly with people calling to offer my roommate a job. I guess the robot recruiters liked "Purdue"!
- noonespecial 16y ago
  I wonder if I could get the same results from 2 weeks at a chicken packing plant and a typo?
- anamax 16y ago
  > His resume now said he was at Purdue University, but he hadn't done anything yet besides show up. He had convinced Purdue to accept him. It's sort of like the bias towards hiring folks who are currently employed.
SandB0x 16y ago
How did this drop off the front page all of a sudden? One minute it was top, the next it's #35. I'm not really bothered, but this looks like a bug.

69 points by SandB0x 16y ago

While I was still in college, I had a resume up on Dice, hoping to land a job after graduation. It apparently flagged the recruiter bots, because I'd get calls... for contracts starting in a week, months before graduation. I know these things aren't human screeners, but you would think that a human would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on the call center worker who has to call and find out that the prospect is unavailable.

mechanical_fish 16y ago
a human would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on the call center worker Did your resume have "NOT AVAILABLE FOR WORK BEFORE [MONTH]/[DAY]/[YEAR], AFTER WHICH I AM AVAILABLE" written across the top in red ink? Presumably not. But, if not (and maybe even if so!) it would take way more time and skill for a human to (a) read your resume, (b) parse it, and (c) deduce that you were not available than for someone to type your contact phone number into a call-center system, awaiting the day when another human would deploy automated call-center software to place a call to you, ask "might you be available for a contract on date X?", and note down your answer. The other problem, of course, is that it's incredibly easy to represent a phone number in a database, and it's fairly easy to represent "we called Prospect X about Potential Contract Y but she said no" in a database, but it is awfully hard to represent "Prospect X has a resume which suggests that he will graduate on date Z, and most likely that means he isn't available before date Z, unless he is down on his luck or has gotten bored with school or we misread the resume" in a database.
- presidentender 16y ago
  I suppose it's difficult to find "graduation date" in a million differently-formatted resumes.
pavel_lishin 16y ago
> you would think that a human would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on the call center worker I bet dollars to donuts that it's cheaper to just call everyone on a list, rather than take the few hours to sort through the resumes and throw out all the chaff.
madmaze 16y ago
i had exactly the same thing happen to me when i was looking for an internship semester last year, i got calls from 3 cruise staffers, im a comp sci student.. and then i somehow got 4 calls for senior positions.. how does that happen, my resume said "graduating summer 2010" in the first line under my name..

Ygor 16y ago

How often are the job applications filtered throught some kind of an automatic process? Does it happen only in the big companies, or is it a common practice? Is it effective?

troymc 16y ago

I had a roommate who got an Electrical Engineering degree from Queens University (one of Canada's more prestigious universities). He then worked for Motorola somewhere in the USA (so he had the right visa) and had a few years experience. Then Motorola downsized, he got laid off and started looking for work. He wasn't getting many calls... He applied to grad school at Purdue University and was accepted. His resume now said he was at Purdue University, but he hadn't done anything yet besides show up. He sent off some more resumes and the next thing we knew, our (shared) phone was ringing constantly with people calling to offer my roommate a job. I guess the robot recruiters liked "Purdue"!

noonespecial 16y ago
I wonder if I could get the same results from 2 weeks at a chicken packing plant and a typo?
anamax 16y ago
> His resume now said he was at Purdue University, but he hadn't done anything yet besides show up. He had convinced Purdue to accept him. It's sort of like the bias towards hiring folks who are currently employed.

SandB0x 16y ago

How did this drop off the front page all of a sudden? One minute it was top, the next it's #35. I'm not really bothered, but this looks like a bug.