8 ms·

I was a recruiter for 8 years, and maybe 1 in 100 applications turned into a hire. I suspect a big factor is the barrier to entry for applying has been lowered

I was a recruiter for 8 years, and maybe 1 in 100 applications turned into a hire. I suspect a big factor is the barrier to entry for applying has been lowered. Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant. An increase in applications makes sifting through those applications increasingly burdensome, and tools have not really made mentally parsing a resume easier, so mental energy gets sucked up trying to filter more content. The more energy you burn, the more tired you are. The less energy you have, the less you can focus on the applicants, and you start responding to fewer applications. Fewer recruiter responses to an application means job seekers need to send more applications. Repeat.

cannonedhamster 9y ago
I was also a recruiter for a while and when hiring I am always amazed at the absolute dismal amount of effort given when people apply for good jobs. Hiring is hard, someone with the right skill set will have a terrible mentality, hiring for the mentality is extremely tricky and can lead you down the road of groupthink if you're not careful. I'm still amazed how entirely incompetent people rise to managerial levels on who they know but its very, very hard to break into even with a modicum of talent.
- 80386 9y ago
  If you have to apply to 250+ jobs just to get one, you can't invest much effort into each application. I've been a part-time developer for three years (and worked full-time on top of that), and I'm looking for a full-time position. I gave up on tech after applying to 500+ jobs and getting three interviews and zero offers. The closest I got was a consulting outfit in a small city in the Inland North, where one of the interviewers got hostile about my major (philosophy) and eventually rejected me over it. But even now that I'm only applying for positions that just need warm bodies with degrees, my ratio of applications to phone screens is upwards of twenty to one, and every phone screen I've gotten in the last month has rescheduled last-minute on me, sometimes more than once. And I have to put up with shit like getting rejected at the door because the interviewer doesn't like my [perfectly ordinary and unremarkable] shoes. How in the world am I supposed to find the time to put effort into applying for hundreds of jobs?
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    > ... where one of the interviewers got hostile about my major (philosophy) and eventually rejected me over it. Sadly, the hiring process for developers has turned into not much more than hazing.
bartread 9y ago
You're spot on with that ratio and, as you say, it can become utterly draining. Depending on the number of applicants I'm getting, I developed a way of dealing with the problem that works well for software engineers: FOR LOTS OF APPLICANTS Send every single applicant a nice, warm email with a link to a coding assessment[1]. Doesn't have to be anything particularly in-depth: just something that requires an hour or two's work from the candidate. Result: all the people who put slapdash applications together will self-select out at this stage (you won't even hear back from them) and you don't have to send rejections. This will probably eliminate 95% of candidates right out of the gate for you, and when you have 500 applicants in a single month this is going to make your job a lot easier. You'll be left with 25 people who are genuinely interested and, depending on what you're looking for, you might have 10 that are worth interviewing. IMPORTANT: for the relatively small number you reject at the assessment stage, you should send them some real, and reasonably detailed, feedback as to why. This will generally take around half an hour per applicant. People don't do this out of fear of getting into an argument with the candidate (and, of course, because they don't have time): in practice this seldom happens, and can be diffused quickly when it does. Most candidates appreciate the feedback and, key point, you won't start dehumanising applicants and turning yourself into a worse human being. FOR FEW APPLICANTS If you're not doing an up-front assessment, which we don't at the moment because we're a relatively unknown company so we want to make it as easy as possible for people to apply, send everyone a nice email inviting them to a 20-30 minute telescreen. Your email should lay out the format of the telescreen: we'll spend some time finding out more about your experience, and do a screenshare (or Google Doc share) on a short programming task. Result: all the lazy or uninterested applicants will again opt out, doing most of your work for you. KEY POINTS - In both cases you can focus your finite time and energy on the better candidates, rather than on sifting out the worst. - You can give every applicant a more positive experience overall (think how many times you've heard the complaint, "I applied for X job and the company never even got back to me"). You also avoid ever having to send out those crappy two-line pro forma rejection emails that just about everyone hates. - It'll keep you more positive and energetic because you're not spending loads of time having to be critical and negative about swathes of applications, and the people you do end up interacting with, you actually have the time to invest in ensuring that they have a positive experience, whether you offer them the job or not. This is hugely important because I think, of all the jobs I've done - and, granted, this does depend somewhat on your personality and temperament - recruitment is the one with the greatest capacity to turn you into the kind of person you wouldn't like very much (I realised it was happening for me when I did a long secondment in recruitment for a previous employer). - By giving everyone a positive experience you'll gain a better reputation for your company, which should translate into attracting better candidates. Certainly, the other way, word travels, and if you offer a ghastly candidate experience people will be put off applying. If you're Google you can get away with it because so many great people want to work for you regardless of how drawn-out and overwrought the process is, so it doesn't matter that some great people will be put off because of the process (still I don't recommend it, and I question the value of all the hoop-jumping). If nobody's heard of you, making the process straightforward and pleasant is the way to go. [1] This might sound cynical but you can totally automate this process, and if you're getting that many applicants it's probably worthwhile: just make sure the emails go out within business hours, and that there's at least a few hours lag between an application being submitted and the email response going out, so it feels like it's from a human being. Also, and this goes without saying: use the applicant's name. Lots of ATS's don't (or didn't) have APIs, but since you'll only need to target (say) Firefox, browser automation with something like Selenium can work really well here.
alexashka 9y ago
There seems to be a pretty simple solution to this - you blacklist the obviously unacceptable. Not the ones you 'don't like' - the ones that don't even make sense. That process of filtering out folks using the blacklist should be automated and the blacklist should be public. I wonder if that'd make recruiting jobs almost pointless in a large number of cases however. It sure would make one think twice about spam-applying, knowing you might get blacklisted for spam.
- pjc50 9y ago
  This is not only a PR disaster waiting to happen but probably illegal in most jurisdictions.
  - alexashka 9y ago
    Neither of which are arguments against doing it. With your logic, ending slavery in a time when it was legal, would be a PR disaster, and illegal in most jurisdictions. Oh wait... It may even lead to a civil war. Oh wait... That has happened... Oh wait... It was actually a good thing! That's how progress gets made - by changing existing norms and laws because they suck. Recruiting AND job searching at this moment clearly sucks. Which's not to say blacklisting is THE solution. It's A solution, which's a lot better than nothing, at least it gets the conversation going.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      Ending slavery didn't cause the Civil War, the Civil War made it politically possible to end slavery.
usernam 9y ago
The barrier is lower for applying, but as many other posters saying, there is simply just interest in quick ROI and zero willingness to think long term. I recruited for several years for my companies too. First thing I noticed, there is huge variability in CV for each country. When I receive a CV from an indian person (from India), I don't know if I should expect 100% lies or what, even from qualified seniors. On the other end, I could put my hand on coal if the same CV was written by most germans. Which is bad, because the CV or cover letter become essentially useless as a metric. To reduce the number of applications we introduced simple tests to submit along with the CV. It does wonders, but I personally hate it. As a senior dev, I keep asking: would I apply to my current application? I have to answer that no, I wouldn't. I have plenty of public projects to investigate my abilities if needed, and I do expect some minimal amount in investment from both parties when hiring. We also raised the requirements from applicants ridiculously, essentially expecting them to work on core features from tomorrow. Again, completely unrealistic. And again, by our own wording, I would be afraid to apply. We are definitely selecting over-confident candidates (or desperate). And it's sadly also true that the industry has no apprentice jobs anymore, although there is plenty of need. There are some career paths where I would jump ships despite my lack of expertise to follow my interests. Starting from zero doesn't stop me, but there are simply no opportunities: junior jobs are not really junior anymore. They are simply paid less.
- golergka 9y ago
  Can you share your opinion about other countries as well? It's an interesting statistic which I, suspect, not many would be willing to discuss publicly and non-anonymously.
  - usernam 9y ago
    I would say that indian CV are simply on another level, I have no clear idea why. We're posting positions online, and the openings are often automatically indexed by several job search engines. Maybe this is because indians are just more exposed to online hiring, working abroad and generally simply try to get an interview. Let me reinstate that also this is not universal. We had very good candidates which didn't inflate the resume, thus my point that I really cannot look at the CV by itself. This is very detrimental for both. I took "germans" as a stereotypical example here. Thinking back, most qualified applicants anywhere in EU are in a similar ballpark. I would say a small amount of inflation is common, but senior applicants generally match much more closely the qualifications they presented. I didn't have many applications from other eastern countries to say anything else. I'm also not an HR guy. I just participate in the hiring process when the need arises.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
> Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant. They all look the same. There is now way to tell if a position is any more than remotely relevant, because job postings are all the same. If you want a group (prospective employees) to sift itself (only apply to jobs they want or are qualified for), you should make a concerted effort to give them the information needed to do that. Unfortunately, no one really does. Recruiting sucks, so let's focus on making it better, rather than just complaining about the userbase.

cannonedhamster 9y ago

I was also a recruiter for a while and when hiring I am always amazed at the absolute dismal amount of effort given when people apply for good jobs. Hiring is hard, someone with the right skill set will have a terrible mentality, hiring for the mentality is extremely tricky and can lead you down the road of groupthink if you're not careful. I'm still amazed how entirely incompetent people rise to managerial levels on who they know but its very, very hard to break into even with a modicum of talent.

80386 9y ago
If you have to apply to 250+ jobs just to get one, you can't invest much effort into each application. I've been a part-time developer for three years (and worked full-time on top of that), and I'm looking for a full-time position. I gave up on tech after applying to 500+ jobs and getting three interviews and zero offers. The closest I got was a consulting outfit in a small city in the Inland North, where one of the interviewers got hostile about my major (philosophy) and eventually rejected me over it. But even now that I'm only applying for positions that just need warm bodies with degrees, my ratio of applications to phone screens is upwards of twenty to one, and every phone screen I've gotten in the last month has rescheduled last-minute on me, sometimes more than once. And I have to put up with shit like getting rejected at the door because the interviewer doesn't like my [perfectly ordinary and unremarkable] shoes. How in the world am I supposed to find the time to put effort into applying for hundreds of jobs?
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  > ... where one of the interviewers got hostile about my major (philosophy) and eventually rejected me over it. Sadly, the hiring process for developers has turned into not much more than hazing.

bartread 9y ago

You're spot on with that ratio and, as you say, it can become utterly draining. Depending on the number of applicants I'm getting, I developed a way of dealing with the problem that works well for software engineers: FOR LOTS OF APPLICANTS Send every single applicant a nice, warm email with a link to a coding assessment[1]. Doesn't have to be anything particularly in-depth: just something that requires an hour or two's work from the candidate. Result: all the people who put slapdash applications together will self-select out at this stage (you won't even hear back from them) and you don't have to send rejections. This will probably eliminate 95% of candidates right out of the gate for you, and when you have 500 applicants in a single month this is going to make your job a lot easier. You'll be left with 25 people who are genuinely interested and, depending on what you're looking for, you might have 10 that are worth interviewing. IMPORTANT: for the relatively small number you reject at the assessment stage, you should send them some real, and reasonably detailed, feedback as to why. This will generally take around half an hour per applicant. People don't do this out of fear of getting into an argument with the candidate (and, of course, because they don't have time): in practice this seldom happens, and can be diffused quickly when it does. Most candidates appreciate the feedback and, key point, you won't start dehumanising applicants and turning yourself into a worse human being. FOR FEW APPLICANTS If you're not doing an up-front assessment, which we don't at the moment because we're a relatively unknown company so we want to make it as easy as possible for people to apply, send everyone a nice email inviting them to a 20-30 minute telescreen. Your email should lay out the format of the telescreen: we'll spend some time finding out more about your experience, and do a screenshare (or Google Doc share) on a short programming task. Result: all the lazy or uninterested applicants will again opt out, doing most of your work for you. KEY POINTS - In both cases you can focus your finite time and energy on the better candidates, rather than on sifting out the worst. - You can give every applicant a more positive experience overall (think how many times you've heard the complaint, "I applied for X job and the company never even got back to me"). You also avoid ever having to send out those crappy two-line pro forma rejection emails that just about everyone hates. - It'll keep you more positive and energetic because you're not spending loads of time having to be critical and negative about swathes of applications, and the people you do end up interacting with, you actually have the time to invest in ensuring that they have a positive experience, whether you offer them the job or not. This is hugely important because I think, of all the jobs I've done - and, granted, this does depend somewhat on your personality and temperament - recruitment is the one with the greatest capacity to turn you into the kind of person you wouldn't like very much (I realised it was happening for me when I did a long secondment in recruitment for a previous employer). - By giving everyone a positive experience you'll gain a better reputation for your company, which should translate into attracting better candidates. Certainly, the other way, word travels, and if you offer a ghastly candidate experience people will be put off applying. If you're Google you can get away with it because so many great people want to work for you regardless of how drawn-out and overwrought the process is, so it doesn't matter that some great people will be put off because of the process (still I don't recommend it, and I question the value of all the hoop-jumping). If nobody's heard of you, making the process straightforward and pleasant is the way to go. [1] This might sound cynical but you can totally automate this process, and if you're getting that many applicants it's probably worthwhile: just make sure the emails go out within business hours, and that there's at least a few hours lag between an application being submitted and the email response going out, so it feels like it's from a human being. Also, and this goes without saying: use the applicant's name. Lots of ATS's don't (or didn't) have APIs, but since you'll only need to target (say) Firefox, browser automation with something like Selenium can work really well here.

alexashka 9y ago

There seems to be a pretty simple solution to this - you blacklist the obviously unacceptable. Not the ones you 'don't like' - the ones that don't even make sense. That process of filtering out folks using the blacklist should be automated and the blacklist should be public. I wonder if that'd make recruiting jobs almost pointless in a large number of cases however. It sure would make one think twice about spam-applying, knowing you might get blacklisted for spam.

pjc50 9y ago
This is not only a PR disaster waiting to happen but probably illegal in most jurisdictions.
- alexashka 9y ago
  Neither of which are arguments against doing it. With your logic, ending slavery in a time when it was legal, would be a PR disaster, and illegal in most jurisdictions. Oh wait... It may even lead to a civil war. Oh wait... That has happened... Oh wait... It was actually a good thing! That's how progress gets made - by changing existing norms and laws because they suck. Recruiting AND job searching at this moment clearly sucks. Which's not to say blacklisting is THE solution. It's A solution, which's a lot better than nothing, at least it gets the conversation going.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Ending slavery didn't cause the Civil War, the Civil War made it politically possible to end slavery.

usernam 9y ago

The barrier is lower for applying, but as many other posters saying, there is simply just interest in quick ROI and zero willingness to think long term. I recruited for several years for my companies too. First thing I noticed, there is huge variability in CV for each country. When I receive a CV from an indian person (from India), I don't know if I should expect 100% lies or what, even from qualified seniors. On the other end, I could put my hand on coal if the same CV was written by most germans. Which is bad, because the CV or cover letter become essentially useless as a metric. To reduce the number of applications we introduced simple tests to submit along with the CV. It does wonders, but I personally hate it. As a senior dev, I keep asking: would I apply to my current application? I have to answer that no, I wouldn't. I have plenty of public projects to investigate my abilities if needed, and I do expect some minimal amount in investment from both parties when hiring. We also raised the requirements from applicants ridiculously, essentially expecting them to work on core features from tomorrow. Again, completely unrealistic. And again, by our own wording, I would be afraid to apply. We are definitely selecting over-confident candidates (or desperate). And it's sadly also true that the industry has no apprentice jobs anymore, although there is plenty of need. There are some career paths where I would jump ships despite my lack of expertise to follow my interests. Starting from zero doesn't stop me, but there are simply no opportunities: junior jobs are not really junior anymore. They are simply paid less.

golergka 9y ago
Can you share your opinion about other countries as well? It's an interesting statistic which I, suspect, not many would be willing to discuss publicly and non-anonymously.
- usernam 9y ago
  I would say that indian CV are simply on another level, I have no clear idea why. We're posting positions online, and the openings are often automatically indexed by several job search engines. Maybe this is because indians are just more exposed to online hiring, working abroad and generally simply try to get an interview. Let me reinstate that also this is not universal. We had very good candidates which didn't inflate the resume, thus my point that I really cannot look at the CV by itself. This is very detrimental for both. I took "germans" as a stereotypical example here. Thinking back, most qualified applicants anywhere in EU are in a similar ballpark. I would say a small amount of inflation is common, but senior applicants generally match much more closely the qualifications they presented. I didn't have many applications from other eastern countries to say anything else. I'm also not an HR guy. I just participate in the hiring process when the need arises.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

> Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant. They all look the same. There is now way to tell if a position is any more than remotely relevant, because job postings are all the same. If you want a group (prospective employees) to sift itself (only apply to jobs they want or are qualified for), you should make a concerted effort to give them the information needed to do that. Unfortunately, no one really does. Recruiting sucks, so let's focus on making it better, rather than just complaining about the userbase.