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In my experience a lot of it comes down to “proof of effort” We had a position that received around 1000 applicants. Only around 200 had the most basic keywor

In my experience a lot of it comes down to “proof of effort” We had a position that received around 1000 applicants. Only around 200 had the most basic keywords the job required, like “python” and “SQL” Only around 50 of those had a cover letter. Only around 20 of the cover letters mentioned our company by name. Only 1 applicant called the office and asked to speak with us.

nitwit005 2y ago
People just have AI write a cover letter now. High effort may just indicate someone is desperate for work, which is perhaps not the best sign.
- halfcat 2y ago
  High effort is just a sorting algorithm to see which resumes to look at first. It’s basically an improvement over random selection. We still do interviews, etc
no_time 2y ago
>Only 1 applicant called the office and asked to speak with us. Is that desirable behavior?
- halfcat 2y ago
  It’s a signal to give their application a look. Nothing more. A lot of applicants won’t even have their CV looked at, simply because we will hire someone before we have time to get through them all.
anonify8 2y ago
Fuck so I need to put SQL in my CV? Do I also need to say "can eat with cutlery"? You probably filter out people who explain their impact in the CV rather than keyword soup. We need something like driving tests for this basic stuff. Do it every 10 yrs. Standard vocational qualifications that all companies accept. Likena forklift.
- halfcat 2y ago
  > Do I also need to say "can eat with cutlery"? Only if it’s a core part of the job (it wasn’t in our case, we were fine if the candidate eats with their hands). You're right, we will absolutely filter out a lot of good people. We aren’t trying to find the best, and it’s not obvious that if we did read through every application in detail that it would result in a better outcome, because it would take significantly longer and good applicants will have had other offers by then.
  - anonify8 2y ago
    Thanks. There has to be a better way. At risk of sounding cliche an LLM could probably do a better job. If yiu ask if the person probably knows SQL and they talk about setting up a postgres cluster... a natutal language model might score them as very likely and you keep em in. Maybe that wasnt available at the time. Otherwise screen with a 5 to 10 minute quiz. Which also would probably encur the wrath of a HN snark from someone else but I accept these sorts of thing as a necessary evil and fair modulo creating more work for busy people.
- brudgers 2y ago
  Selecting for people who try to make other people’s lives easier is a feature not a bug.
  - anonify8 2y ago
    It is a game where I need to psychicly guess what keywords to put in. Hopefully it is the ones on the job ad. I am not suggesting lying.... this is about 100-1000 technologies buzzword lists based on wide experience. I have used MySQL, InnoDB, MyIsam, Full Text Search, Foreign Keys, MySQL Flexible Instances on Azure, ...

nitwit005 2y ago

People just have AI write a cover letter now. High effort may just indicate someone is desperate for work, which is perhaps not the best sign.

halfcat 2y ago
High effort is just a sorting algorithm to see which resumes to look at first. It’s basically an improvement over random selection. We still do interviews, etc

no_time 2y ago

>Only 1 applicant called the office and asked to speak with us. Is that desirable behavior?

halfcat 2y ago
It’s a signal to give their application a look. Nothing more. A lot of applicants won’t even have their CV looked at, simply because we will hire someone before we have time to get through them all.

anonify8 2y ago

Fuck so I need to put SQL in my CV? Do I also need to say "can eat with cutlery"? You probably filter out people who explain their impact in the CV rather than keyword soup. We need something like driving tests for this basic stuff. Do it every 10 yrs. Standard vocational qualifications that all companies accept. Likena forklift.

halfcat 2y ago
> Do I also need to say "can eat with cutlery"? Only if it’s a core part of the job (it wasn’t in our case, we were fine if the candidate eats with their hands). You're right, we will absolutely filter out a lot of good people. We aren’t trying to find the best, and it’s not obvious that if we did read through every application in detail that it would result in a better outcome, because it would take significantly longer and good applicants will have had other offers by then.
- anonify8 2y ago
  Thanks. There has to be a better way. At risk of sounding cliche an LLM could probably do a better job. If yiu ask if the person probably knows SQL and they talk about setting up a postgres cluster... a natutal language model might score them as very likely and you keep em in. Maybe that wasnt available at the time. Otherwise screen with a 5 to 10 minute quiz. Which also would probably encur the wrath of a HN snark from someone else but I accept these sorts of thing as a necessary evil and fair modulo creating more work for busy people.
brudgers 2y ago
Selecting for people who try to make other people’s lives easier is a feature not a bug.
- anonify8 2y ago
  It is a game where I need to psychicly guess what keywords to put in. Hopefully it is the ones on the job ad. I am not suggesting lying.... this is about 100-1000 technologies buzzword lists based on wide experience. I have used MySQL, InnoDB, MyIsam, Full Text Search, Foreign Keys, MySQL Flexible Instances on Azure, ...