35 ms·

I automated my job application process

• harimau777 2y ago
  What's the alternative to application spam if someone doesn't already have contacts and doesn't live in the city where they can attend meetups to network?
  • hb-robo 2y ago
    From what I can tell? Traveling to those meetups, which is a serious expense.
• k0ns0l 2y ago
  There is much to reflect upon from these interactions (I thoroughly enjoyed every moment—thank you, HN!). As a recent graduate from a developing country, I am truly grateful for the valuable insights gained.
• captainmuon 2y ago
  When I see posts like this, I think either I'm doing something wrong or they're doing something wrong. I never wrote hundreds of applications. When I'm looking for a job, I investigate a couple of companies where I'd like to work, write a handful of thought-out applications, and generally get at least a response, in most cases an invitation for an interview. Granted, I have a university degree but I guess many people here have one, too. I also live in a medium-sized German town, but if anything that should make it harder to find a job, not easier. Isn't there right now a shortage of skilled tech workers? I feel like right now the hiring criteria in many places is "whoever comes through the door". I know we'd probably hire anybody who knows how to code, is reliable, and can work in a team.
  • casenmgreen 2y ago
    I suspect Germany is different. I see here work is much more word-of-mouth, and so I think LLM spam hasn't taken off, because most jobs are not much advertised as they are in the UK/USA. People are like "I know someone who can do that" and then a friend let's you know there's some work you could do.
  • pjmlp 2y ago
    I also live in Germany, and my experience is that while there might be a shortage, unless the CV experience from the last year reflects what HR is asking about, it doesn't matter, even you happened to do that lets say five years ago. Oh, and better have those recommendation letters free of any negative stuff disguised as positive feedback.
  • shortrounddev2 2y ago
    There is an abundance of tech workers. There is a shortage of good tech workers. It is incredibly difficult, at the resume stage, to tell the difference. When you post a job online, you get hundreds of applications in a few days. Imagine you are a good tech worker. You applied to a company, along with 200 other people. Your resume gets swept into the trash because they had to automatically delete several applicants and your resume somehow didn't make the cut based on a simple heuristic, or maybe you got unlucky and they just delete the bottom half without looking at them What do you do now? Do you spend a lot of other time and repeat this process next week, or do you just lower your standards and apply to 200 other companies?
    • dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
      >There is a shortage of good tech workers. I wish someone quantified what 'good' is. Ask 2 tech workers to rate each other and they are most likely to rate each other mediocre by each's standards. Each would nitpick on what the other didn't know.
      • jdhdbdbdn 2y ago
        This does not match my experience. Most of the time it's quite clear who is a high performer/multiplier in a team
        • dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
          Missing the point by a large margin...
        • chamomeal 2y ago
          At the resume stage?
          • rockemsockem 2y ago
            At the interview stage
      • 2y ago
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• codiogo 2y ago
  This is the second post I read talking about the current state of hiring. I haven't applied for a job in 15 years. I have 20+ years of experience and chose the worst time to find a job. I had to hire several people over the years and always felt it was hard. But now from the perspective of someone applying, I see it's way harder. Maybe there is also an opportunity there.
• JoeDaDude 2y ago
  I made jokes about having a dead man's trigger that would automatically send out resumes as soon as a paycheck was not deposited on schedule. This is half of it right here.
• codelikeawolf 2y ago
  > The secret to good cover letters? Context. I know a lot has changed since I had to look for a job (a little over 4 years ago), but I disagree. The cover letter is the only opportunity to show some of your personality, not that you read the posting and tweaked your template to include details about the specific job you're applying for. I have found that a good cover letter can be a game-changer. I landed my first dev job because the hiring manager/senior devs loved my cover letter. It's a great filtering mechanism for whether you'd be a good fit. I always throw a little humor in there, because I am not a very serious person and don't want to work at a place that expects me to be. When I had to do some hiring earlier this year, I would spend a few extra minutes reading cover letters to see if I could spot one that included something unconventional, but no dice. Every single one just followed the boring template from a cursory Google search of "how to write a cover letter". Your resume isn't going to convey anything about whether you're the type of person that I want to work with. I had 200 resumes from people that were all capable of doing the job we were hiring for. If you're competing with 199 other equally skilled people based on resumes, a good cover letter could be a competitive advantage. That being said, I know it's a very different hiring landscape these days, so my perspective could be completely wrong. But I imagine there are probably still hiring managers out there that take the time to read cover letters. If I decide to start looking for a new job at some point, I'll be spending a few extra minutes on my cover letter.
  • hb_lifer 2y ago
    I saw the prompt snippet and thought the same as you. Honestly, giving it samples of your prior cover letters you’ve written yourself would be a vastly more personal touch emulating your writing style and personality. Anyhow, problems with the spray and pray aside, applicants should match the effort the hiring managers puts in. Which is automating the first few passes, and last mile is human read. As in, proofread your own generated cover letters.
  • rr808 2y ago
    It really depends on the company. I've interviewed 200+ people, I've never seen a cover letter.
• time-less-ness 2y ago
  Find someone over the age of 50 and ask them how to get a job. First point: you won't like what they say. You won't like it at all. You'll probably absolutely hate it, and even start to hate him a little in the process. Second point: you'll have a job in under 6 months.
  • rizs12 2y ago
    This should be a Ask HN. Do you want to post it? "Ask HN: How are those of you over 50 years of age getting jobs?"
  • tennisflyi 2y ago
    What does this even mean? Go to Google headquarters and try to talk to HR? lmao
• pduggishetti 2y ago
  [dead]
• tracerbulletx 2y ago
  I'd certainly feel free to use any tactic their sales team would use.
• b8 2y ago
  Yeah, there's commercial services such as ApplyAll that automatically applies to jobs for you for a fee. Workday is the worst to automate. Companies can add in unique required questions such as "tell us two extraordinary things you've done", so edge cases like those are common.
• slashdave 2y ago
  Dare I ask: what did people do before the internet existed?
  • Spivak 2y ago
    In person networking, it still works and the ratio of signal to noise has only gotten higher post-internet. SW/Hacker types have this on easy-mode compared to other industries because of how many professional / enthusiast groups we have floating around in every city. We do our jobs outside of work for fun. That's doesn't work for an accountant. Companies seem to vastly prefer recruiting from these events and they get you past the screens. I've never once not gotten the interview emailing or name dropping the event / company rep I talked to.
  • gerdesj 2y ago
    The internet but not the www existed when I started out. Cover letters were handwritten, the CV was typed and the lot was posted or delivered by hand.
  • rr808 2y ago
    My first job was from an ad in the local paper, I sent a copy of my resume via mail with a covering letter and my home phone number. Also agents were actually useful, they were a hub where employers went to look for people and the agent had a list of people looking for jobs.
• ttul 2y ago
  Someone should build an engineer-matchmaking service with a fresh revenue model that can challenge LinkedIn, whose platform is now so heavily optimized for profit-taking that it leaves both employer and job searcher unsatisfied. Using LLMs to write your applications is a sound idea. But why not have a platform do this for everyone in the equation? I would much rather - as a hiring manager - put my qualifications into a service and have it automatically and intelligently find great candidates, than dig through 1,000 ChatGPT-customized cover letters with yet another LLM cover letter bot… Seems stupid to not put something in the middle that the employers pay for that automates both sides of the market to everyone’s benefit.
  • isbvhodnvemrwvn 2y ago
    All platforms like that have failed because fundamentally companies don't trust others with hiring, unless you can very quickly get rid of someone (body leasing).
• crowcroft 2y ago
  Being able to do something 1,000 times faster is worthless if it means you are doing it to a level of quality that doesn’t meet a minimum threshold. Will be curious to see how many people succeed with this approach. Maybe if everyone does this the sheer volume of shit will at least help realise how broken the current process is on both sides.
• chaosharmonic 2y ago
  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
• aagha 2y ago
  Some questions this thread brings up: 1. Why are there so many fake resumes/applications? Who's "applying"? Is it a foreign actor trying to gum up the works? 2. What are people's salary expecations? Are people still asking for salaries of $250k+?
• mik09 2y ago
  saw similar project on an AI subreddit that got a lot of upvotes
• ghjfrdghibt 2y ago
  This seems like an excellent use of LLM.
• BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  One of the major reasons why applying for jobs sucks so much is that companies are flooded with more garbage applications than they can process. So hurray for the tragedy of the commons, I guess. It was nice knowing everyone. On a personal level, I consider the practice espoused by this article of flooding the world with automated messages without care for how it impacts anyone else to be narcissistic and morally reprehensible, not admirable, but whatever floats a person's boat.
  • Shocka1 2y ago
    Yep, the glee of the author reminds me of my younger days when I had a lot of edgy, but truly shitty development ideas. Luckily I never saw them through and can't be embarrassed by them today. This all makes me glad I am not actively looking for a new position. I always keep an eye on the job market though - I've noticed anecdotally the amount of applicants on any LinkedIn position have really amplified the last couple years. I knew the LLM driven application process was coming, but it doesn't make it suck any less.
  • qoez 2y ago
    Time to go back to handing out resumes in person
  • artursapek 2y ago
    Exactly. It’s funny someone would be so self-unaware as to brag about doing this in a blog post It doesn’t matter though. The way to get actual good jobs is to be poached. And to get poached, you need to build real projects of your own that get peoples’ attention. Resume spamming is for the plebs.
• kamikazeturtles 2y ago
  All the jobs I got over my career, I got by filling out a non-conventional long job application form. I always assumed it's because that's where most job seekers would drop off. It's how I got a job as an HVAC tech without any trade school exp and how I got a software dev job without any college, bootcamp, or professional exp. Just some advice for any job seekers out there. The more annoying the job application process, the more likely you are to get hired.
  • lokimedes 2y ago
    While agents and HR may be looking to match the bare requirements, the hiring manager is likely also looking for “alpha” the stuff that escapes formal requirements. My hires are usually those that passes the base reqs and provide that unique something that the cover letter seems to reveal.
• vegetablepotpie 2y ago
  > The irony? I got a job offer before I even finished building it. More on that later Nothing succeeds like success. If you are on n attempt, and you are geared up for what you will do for n+2, usually the problem surrenders its self on n.
• gamerDude 2y ago
  It will be interesting to see a SaaS that applies to jobs come up. I wonder if the application process will switch up in the near future to people posting their profiles for then company recruiters/AI to reach out and contact since if they post a job they just get 10k automated applications.
  • JonChesterfield 2y ago
    A fun variant: - scrape linkedin and apply to jobs based on the result - take the responses with "positive sentiment" and then contact the linkedin person Service is now connecting people with companies that already thought their generated CV was close enough to what they want. Call this a "recruitment agency".
    • DoingIsLearning 2y ago
      > - scrape linkedin and apply to jobs based on the result That was my first thought when looking for jobs, but maybe I am naive, wouldn't this break their ToS?
      • JonChesterfield 2y ago
        I mean scrape it for candidates as well as jobs, generate CVs for the candidates, apply to the jobs with the generated CVs, contact the candidate after a positive hit. And yes, I expect that's completely against their terms of service.
      • maeil 2y ago
        Whoopsie, guess OpenAI et al broke a few million ToSes while training their models!
      • modmodmod 2y ago
        do you really care though?
  • Oras 2y ago
    There are many, search for jobs copilot or job application copilot.
• xianshou 2y ago
  One of those cases where the act of building the system serves as sufficient qualification in itself, even when the results of the system are mediocre.
  • DavidDodda 2y ago
    that's how I got my new job offer!, I talked about this system I was building during a technical interview.
    • euvin 2y ago
      I've thought about the optics of talking about my own automatic job application system or including it on my resume, but I thought it'd be risky given the topic (like how listing your own startup is frowned upon, if I'm not mistaken?). Is it normally considered a bit risky or taboo?
      • DavidDodda 2y ago
        well, it was during the technical interview, and it was just a couple of engineers doing the interview. I was just geeking out on all the problems I was solving (and creating). and to be honest, I was too nerves to think about if it was risky or taboo.
• the_arun 2y ago
  Is cover letter important? Do hiring managers/recruiters read those?
  • grumple 2y ago
    At the bigcorp where I work, I don't see cover letters. Applications comes through some crappy platform, I just see resume files and autog-extracted versions of them. Might be worth putting a little summary / objective in the resume file itself because of that.
  • codegeek 2y ago
    Depends. As a Hiring Manager, I love cover letters but only if it is not a generic copy paste. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind a Cover letter that may have some generic stuff about you but you must add something specific about the role/company that you are applying for and why you will be a good fit. This will get you miles ahead of others in the queue.
    • DavidDodda 2y ago
      how would you rate this?, this email was written by the system from the article. Dear Hiring Manager, I hope this message finds you well. My name is David Dodda, and I am writing to express my interest in the Software Engineer position at WIA Software Systems Inc. I am a Senior Software Developer with extensive experience in full-stack development, and I believe my skills align well with the requirements outlined in your job posting. With a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication and over 5 years of professional experience, I have honed my capabilities in various programming languages and technologies, particularly in React, Node.js, AWS, and SQL. At Black Beard Development Group, I led the development of a privacy-focused AI platform and played a pivotal role in establishing CI/CD pipelines that improved efficiencies across our team. Your job description emphasizes the importance of developing software solutions by studying systems flow, data usage, and work processes. In my previous roles, I have consistently evaluated user feedback to improve system designs and have successfully executed the full lifecycle of software development. Additionally, my involvement in agile methodologies and my proficiency in AWS aligns perfectly with your requirement for cloud and DevOps experience. Furthermore, I have experience collaborating with teams to coordinate the development and integration of computer-based systems, ensuring optimal functionality and performance. My recent project involving a fantasy sports DApp required me to coordinate with various stakeholders, manage expectations, and lead technical efforts, making me well-equipped for the responsibilities at WIA Software Systems Inc. I am particularly excited about the hybrid work arrangement offered for this role, as I believe it allows for both collaborative in-person engagement and the flexibility of remote work, which enhances productivity. Thank you for considering my application. I have attached my resume for your review and would welcome the opportunity to discuss how my background, skills, and enthusiasms align with the goals of WIA Software Systems Inc. Best regards, David Dodda https://daviddodda.com https://daviddodda.com
• thih9 2y ago
  This is some next level bs spam. I know job search in IT is difficult these days but this kind of automation will not make it better; if anything, the opposite. The most recent place where I applied and my earlier workplace both asked for a video recording early during the recruitment process. I guess employers will ask for in person interviews next.
  • ncr100 2y ago
    Yup, in person and worst, only in network. So you end up using technology to de-evolve society back to tribes. Still, at least we are other people who are creating this AI technology and all of its application ... so we see the pain up close and we can start to steer it in a better direction that's more healthy for society. But you know we have to find our integrity first.
• codegeek 2y ago
  Nice. But as a hiring manager, this is the last thing we want. Flooded with auto submitted Resumes. I posted a job recently and got 100+ resumes in 2 days and 99% were not even remotely close to being a good fit. I struggled to sort through so many Resumes to find someone worth interviewing. The problem is that with so much noise, good candidates may get ignored or rejected by mistake. And the cycle continues. I get that the market is bad right now and there are lot of people looking for jobs but auto submissions and flooding job sites wont work. Not for the ones that matter anyway.
  • zachthewf 2y ago
    Were you able to find good candidates from your post eventually?
    • codegeek 2y ago
      Not yet. It has been a week and I have 500+ resumes sitting in the inbox. Not fun.
      • dazed_confused 2y ago
        Good luck! Sounds terrible
      • ArlenBales 2y ago
        Just curious, do you use LLMs in your reviewing process? e.g. Summarization, prioritization, etc.
        • codegeek 2y ago
          Thinking about it. Might build my own tool.
  • cbsmith 2y ago
    That's okay. You can just use a bunch of LLMs to filter through to the few resumes you would have gotten before people used LLMs to find jobs... ;-)
• hnthrow213 2y ago
  2025 - ai agent mass spamming incoming
• PerilousD 2y ago
  I'm so glad I retired and can afford to say "No" with an occasional "Yes" if it's interesting :-)
  • thepuppet33r 2y ago
    Congrats on your privileged position! I'm glad you are able to retire, but not sure this is the best time to crow about it. I'm trying to eke out enough money to put in my 401K and hope that when it's time for me to retire in a few decades, I'll have enough to scrape by on and the economy hasn't exploded by then and render my investments worthless.
• ripped_britches 2y ago
  As someone who automates everything and normally loves this type of thing, my approach for job hunting has been way different. Instead of spray and pray, I spend a week or so deeply researching where I want to work and figure out how to get there role-wise. Everything 100% manual and focused, no more than 8 total companies. Maybe spray and pray works if you’re more junior, but later in your career you’ll want to be very picky about where you spend your time interviewing because the roles are long term and have a huge impact on your life.
  • tennisflyi 2y ago
    That investment isn't worth it to just be ghosted
    • Oras 2y ago
      Agree. You need to see it from the other side. Most likely, they are receiving 100+ applications, so the chance that your application will be seen is too low.
      • pknomad 2y ago
        This. I also limit myself on how many applications I see in a day (no more than 20 on a busy day, 50 on a not so busy day) so that I give every resume a fair read. A team can only do so much in a day. It's disheartening when you see a blatant AI use (and it goes into the trash bin right away).
        • uoaei 2y ago
          Do you have a technical background? 50 seems quite low for someone to get the gist of the resumes and have a sense of the applicants. If recruiting departments really suffer at parsing about 50 apps per day per recruiter, I can see why this got so bad so quickly.
          • abathur 2y ago
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Oras 2y ago
  I'm curious which companies still use emails to receive resumes and job applications! This sounds like hell to manage.
• ramoz 2y ago
  Something has to give. As a hiring manager I can’t filter through 100s of resumes or profiles. Using all the top sites as well that are supposed to make the hiring process easier.
  • petesergeant 2y ago
    That something is hiring a recruitment consultant.
  • theoreticalmal 2y ago
    Is there a solution that doesn’t expose you to the entirety of the internet at one time? Proactive networking maybe? Asking existing employees if they have friends looking for jobs?
• teeray 2y ago
  It’s astounding that we, as an industry, are so averse to licensing developers. It solves the resume spam problem and the repetitive LeetCode round(s) that every company now wants. We also don’t have to settle for the licensing process other industries have—ours can be more inclusive of alternative development backgrounds, while still providing a meaningful quality filter.
  • shortrounddev2 2y ago
    Licenses should only ever be used to protect consumers. Abusing licenses to protect a labor class is a 10th century solution and is absolutely immoral
  • __oh_es 2y ago
    Surely CS degrees should suffice, yet we still have leet code testing? Interested to hear if you have a different thought here
  • clippy99 2y ago
    What about honoring our multi-year college degrees. Isn't that licensing enough?
    • isbvhodnvemrwvn 2y ago
      Have you been recruiting people, like at all? It's clearly not a strong signal.
    • sokoloff 2y ago
      What percentage of what you do as a software engineer has direct linkage to computer science? My guess for most of us is "not very much at all", several of the best people I've worked with as programmers did not have a CS degree, and I've interviewed people with CS degrees who could not write a function to sum an array of integers in any language of their choosing, meaning "honoring their degree" would have been an unwise choice.
      • clippy99 2y ago
• localghost3000 2y ago
  In my nearly 20 year career, I have never gotten a job by applying directly. The few times I’ve tried it was shockingly bad. I feel for anyone where that’s the only option they have. My advice is to invest heavily in your professional network and when you have one, treat it like the special garden that it is. This takes years to cultivate. I also see people try to come at it from a very transactional unauthentic angle which will always fail. The right way to approach it is honestly quite simple: make friends. Be nice. Help people. Mentor. Etc. Don’t expect anything from it. People remember that stuff. Opportunities find you.
• drillsteps5 2y ago
  In the middle of fruitless multi-month job search, I manually view LinkedIn/indeed job sites daily and look for new positions, going through requirements, making sure I have the skills and experience (also helps with understanding if I need to upskill in certain areas), then look up the company, the industry it's in, etc. By the time I'm ready to apply to the position I know I'm interested in and a good fit for, there's a few hundred applications already (LinkedIn shows the count to the applicants). I'm like, how is this possible, it's only been 3 days?.. Well, that's how.
  • casenmgreen 2y ago
    I've been told the LinkedIn count is absolutely not what you think it is. I can't remember the details, but I stopped taking it seriously.
    • formerlurker 2y ago
      Someone who works at LinkedIn told me that Linkedin measures success by how many times a user opens the app. It would not surprise me if the numbers are exaggerated to make someone look good for a promotion. My take is that it must drive engagement somehow. In a similar way, recruiters post ghost jobs to gather data and make companies look like they are growing.
  • devnullbrain 2y ago
    >making sure I have the skills and experience A great way to test this is to wait for the email inviting you to an interview. The emotional rollercoaster of selling yourself on a company only for it not to work out hurts too much. It's also a cost borne only by the applicant. It's easy to want to kick that can down the road until you're sure that you have a shot where some part, at least, is within your own control. It will never be entirely down to your own performance and actions. Lots of job descriptions out there are for roles without a budget, or at companies with hiring moratoria, or where there's already a successful applicant waiting for a formal job offer. The effort you put into researching an application, IMO, should be a function of the effort required by the applicant to proceed and the respect given to applicants by employers. The effort for a phone interview is very low. The respect is near zero.
• 65 2y ago
  The biggest issue for me was filtering through software engineer job listings, since I wouldn't be interested or qualified for listings using various tech stacks. I made a Chrome extension for LinkedIn that would filter out listings to exclude certain keywords, e.g. "Rust" or "Java" and find only listings that applied to me. From there I could manually apply and track my job application status. This saved much more time. I had a few macros to paste information which sped up the process.
• toasteros 2y ago
  Scrolling down to the bottom of this post brought up the "please subscribe!" nag screen and also immediately sent me back to the top of the page. The modal has poor contrast on the close button, so it was just confusing. If you must nag for subscriptions, you might want to try and find a way that does it without interfering with page interactivity.
• karaterobot 2y ago
  Every job I've applied to has involved me researching the company, deciding whether I understood it, was right for the role, and wanted to work for them, and then tailoring my resume and cover letter to what that role needed. In my life, I've maybe sent 25 applications, gotten 6-7 interviews, and been hired 4 times. Pretty good batting average, and I'm not by any means especially qualified or accomplished. For me, automated spam has not been the answer, laser targeting has been.
  • Uvix 2y ago
    How long ago did this last succeed?
    • jdbdnej 2y ago
      The only applicants I hire are like that. If you cannot show you chose this company why would I assume you would like to work here? Of cause this assumes you are a good fit in the first place regarding your skills. But the latter is usually much easier to filter out
      • vacuity 2y ago
        I too would like to know more about @karaterobot's specific circumstances here, because while I understand your sentiment, it's a numbers game for SWE applicants like me. Of course there are some companies I would prefer to work at, but I don't think @karaterobot's experience is realistic right now.
  • tripper_27 2y ago
    Seconding Uvix's question. I was looking for work in 2021-2022, and an approach like yours got me a job after interviewing with circa 10 companies. Unfortunately ended up on the wrong side of office politics and had to leave in early 2024. At the start of my 2024 job search I again tried targeted search, targeting was good enough that I had a circa 1:10 application to interview ratio. It took over 50 companies before I found my current role. The market is much tougher now than it was a few years ago. I hear there was a time when companies were eager/desperate to hire. Those were good years for job seekers.
• theoreticalmal 2y ago
  It’s my understanding that most hiring managers have a similar AI-assisted filtering tools. So there are humans in either side, it’s just a bunch of garbage in between
• kqr 2y ago
  > Format the response as a JSON object with these keys:{ "status": "success" or "error", ... Would it not be better to ask the LLM to generate the status key last, since it cannot know ahead of generation whether the generation will actually be successful?
  • isoprophlex 2y ago
    Yes, you are right. Not to be too snide about it but this is not optimal. You get provably better performance if you let the thing analyze the situation / think through the problem / whatever before letting it commit to choosing a status like that.
  • DavidDodda 2y ago
    thanks for the feedback!, that's something I haven't though of!
• divbzero 2y ago
  This is pretty cool, though it seems more beneficial as a neat demo project than for its actual functionality. First, automated job application submission probably doesn’t endear you to hiring managers. And, moreover, you probably don’t want to optimize your life for job hunting in the same way that you probably don’t want to optimize your life for being very good at first dates. Life is more fulfilling if you can find what you want and keep it for the long run.
  • pknomad 2y ago
    Agree. It also feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing (getting past the screening for as many job as possible, regardless of fit). I personally felt like the most successful experience I had with job search (and retention) is if I knew someone at the company and just bypassed the initial resume screening altogether and hand-crafted a nuanced resume and cover letter with a strong backing from people that knew me. I realize not everyone has that luxury but I made diligent effort to network in and out of work and it has mostly helped me filter out bad jobs/fit and save time for both parties.
• quicksilver03 2y ago
  I'd prefer an application to automatically fill in my data in those junk ATS systems, such as WorkDay, that pretend to parse my LinkedIn profile or a PDF resume and inevitably makes me do all the copy-paste twice. A couple of years ago it was so bad that I stopped applying as soon as I saw that WorkDay crap pop up, regardless of the company.
  • itgoon 2y ago
    For Workday, use a very simple resume. No columns, no bullet points (use asterisks), no tables. There's usually an option to upload another file near the end of the form. After it has filled in the fields using your plain resume, delete it and upload the nicer one.
  • ugurs 2y ago
    Workday is a hostile environment for applicants. Perhaps that is intended.
    • hackernewds 2y ago
      If the domain of easy applications is automated entries and copy paste, then Workday is indeed the desired tooling. LinkedIn Easy Apply serves the applicant, but I can't imagine any recruiter loves it.
• salomon812 2y ago
  I'm a software manager that has been doing some form of interviewing/hiring for 13 years. I did two rounds of hiring software engineers last year, one in spring that seemed normal, and one in the fall that was was brutal. The fall hiring had a flood of applicants, and in retrospect, most seemed like AI was used in some way. For the fall round, I suddenly had a higher percentage of applicants that qualified after resume screening and initial phone screen, but they all collapsed when I did a technical round. And failure rate on the technical was much much worse than usual. We have a full-time recruiter working with us, and I'm not 100% sure what tools he used, but I switched to manually reviewing each resume, and given that it was 100s, it took a long time, but I still had my problem of great initial screen, terrible technical interview. Then, I decided to throw out anyone who heavily mentioned AI, LLM, or data science. After all, with almost a thousand applicants, I needed to sort some how. (To be fair, our use case is more esoteric, we're not writing Javascript or parsers, so it's not as much of a time-saver.) Large chunks of applicants dropped and the process felt more normal. I also switched to only on-site interviews. My initial technical screenings are still done remotely. Before COVID we were 100% on-site interviews, but did hybrid after COVID. Now, I'm back to enforcing on-site for my group.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • pknomad 2y ago
    I am a Platform Engineer and it feels like your experience mirrors mine. Like you, our challenge is filtering out large volume but also filtering out LLM abusers. We're not opposed to people using LLMs, when appropriate. I find that candidates inappropriately use it to circumvent the process and that is a big deal for me (and our team). We try to do the right thing(TM) by the candidates by creating minimal interview workloads, asking highly relevant questions that aren't "gotchas", and updating their candidacy as soon as possible. It doesn't feel like many candidates are interested in returning the same courtesy. This kind of behavior means we have to lean harder into tapping our existing networks for sourcing "trust-worthy" candidates. That puts us at risk for creating additional blinders and also unfairly filters out "un-networked" candidates. For whatever it's worth, we are remote-first org so all of our interviews are done remotely. One of the things I'm thinking about doing in the future is sharing the screen with diagrams and adding irrelevant annotations to it (while clearly indicating to the candidates that those are irrelevant) as a primitive adversarial AI technique. Perhaps on-site interviews is part of the solution.
• fasteddie31003 2y ago
  I worked on a side project that generated the AI resume and cover letter. I did a controlled experiment applying for jobs with the generic vs AI customized resume. The AI customized resume out performed the generic resume by 4x. https://customizedresumes.com/custom-vs-generic-resumes https://customizedresumes.com/custom-vs-generic-resumes
  • casenmgreen 2y ago
    The AI resume - was it a real human resume which was optimized in some way for the role specification, or was it generated from scratch for the role specification?
  • jdbdnej 2y ago
    That's like comparing your "AI customized resume" to shitting on the hiring manager's desk You'll be shocked to find out which performed better!
    • HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
      What's so bad about a "generic" resume? I assume this means one that just honestly describes your experience rather than tailoring it to the job applied for to make it seem you're a better fit than you really are. It's up to the person (hopefully) reading your resume to decide whether you're enough of a potential fit to take to the next step (technical screening call?).
      • jdhdbdbdn 2y ago
        A cover layer is there to show how you fit the role. This cannot be done with a genetic cover layer Telling facts about yourself is done in the CV, not cover layer
        • HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
          Sure, but the parent was talking about customized resumes, not cover letters. The cover letter of course needs to be customized, else it serves no purpose.
• trod1234 2y ago
  I have a very nuanced view on this. While I'm partially glad someone put this together and did this, having seen firsthand what an utter shit show that job hunting has been for the past two years with no offers, dismal conversion ratios (x100 -> x10000), and this with a decade of directly applied professional experience in highly regulated sectors, as well as having all my colleagues amazed at the competency of the work and solutions I put out (which has just been going to waste these past two years). I'm still only partial on this; however, because I don't think this does anything but make the problem anything but much worse in the long run for everyone. Individuals using this are simply just treading water with assistance while drowning others like them (without), and businesses will adapt to the flood of applications (by not even manually reviewing them) and bad actors will simply increase the noise. The people left out (those not using AI), will not find any work. No work, no prospects, despite education, investment, and direct experience; this is unacceptable and leads to unrest, and eventually something akin to 1776. Similar jobless conditions were present leading up through the 1760s prior to the American Revolution. I think it should come as no surprise that this is a hellscape when you depend on work to get food and other life necessities, and businesses that adapt sign themselves up for deflationary spirals of doom (not being able to find qualified applicants). People won't put up with it. You see people turning to crime in California over retail thefts, and then laws being passed making it more draconian, then violence becomes commonplace. Its a vicious cycle and its preventable if one is rational enough to see it. The process people have been using is not good at qualifying people, and really most of what people are looking in specific jobs is magical thinking that doesn't correspond to their actual requirements. Time is limited; on both sides. Now what is the underlying problem? It is that the same mechanism used by RNA interference in a cellular network, is being created by AI in a communications network from both sides of the participants creating interference so labor relations is sabotaged and fails from interference. I would not be surprised if many of those ghost jobs out there are actually digitally fabricated by China. They have the most to benefit from destroying the underpinnings of western society and driving people crazy in a pre-war footing setting. If people are unable to regulate themselves, and this first goes to the producers in an economy, then laws need to be made so that those unintelligent people don't destroy society for everyone else.
• a3w 2y ago
  "part 1", I hope he will do a "part 20" or ex post look at ideas like - start at 500.000 USD/year salary - go down until you get positive responses and runs this script for ten years, even while employed.
• submeta 2y ago
  I did this as well and landed a job in 3 months. The most tedious part before I automated the process was copying and pasting relevant infos into my cover letter, updating stuff, creating the word document for the cover letter and a copy of my resume in a folder for that company/offer. Also, I auto added job details to a Notion table (a Kanban board) where I tracked open applications. The whole process took me previously half an hour to 45 minutes. Afterwards it took me less then 2 minutes. I didn’t apply for more, but could write an application in a fraction of time. And then focus on researching the company and the job. Chatgpt made the whole process super smooth. We live in wonderful times.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• raminf 2y ago
  I remember talking to techie friends about this a couple years ago. With the advent of AI screeners, it would only be a matter of time before candidates figured out how to craft and rewrite not just their cover letter, but their whole resume to semantically best-fit a job listing. It could even A/B test for the best response. Everyone laughed and said it was too much work. I predicted it would be a YC company before long. Only a matter of time before AIs will be talking to AIs to have a technical interview and negotiate salary.
• austin-cheney 2y ago
  For hiring managers, if you getting a flood of resumes here is a possible solution for a filter: unpopular things and manual instructions. 1. Manual instructions. On the application submission page mention something like: All resumes or cover letters must copy and apply the following statement or will be dropped from consideration. This tests that candidates actually read and follow the instructions and rejections can be automated with a simple string search. 2. For that 1% of candidates that do follow instructions that during the technical filter phase of interviewing they will be required to do something unpopular as a demonstration of prior coding experience. In my case as a JavaScript developer it was walking the DOM from one node location to another. I was able to filter 22 candidates down to two and that doesn’t include the larger number that dropped out.
  • darkwater 2y ago
    The first one would be solved just as easily by an LLM though.
  • internetter 2y ago
    > they will be required to do something unpopular as a demonstration of prior coding experience. In my case as a JavaScript developer it was walking the DOM from one node location to another. Is this open book? I can walk a DOM in many ways. With my eyes closed, I could hack something using `childNodes` and `nextSibling`, but the best way would be the the TreeWalker class, which I have previously used, though I couldn't write a working implementation on a whiteboard without briefly consulting MDN for a refresher. If you're just filtering candidates based on if they've memorized the ever-growing web standard, you're going to lose a lot of good candidates.
    • austin-cheney 2y ago
      Yes, that is the entire point of why something like that is a good filter. It is stupendously simple and trivial to demonstrate live in code. The REPL of the browser console even helps with suggestions. Yet, 95% of people writing JavaScript would rather commit seppuku than try it live during an interview.
• binary132 2y ago
  Congratulations, you are part of the problem.
• neilv 2y ago
  It's lucky for some people that I'm not hiring right now, because I'd probably perma-denylist anyone I caught sending me LLM-generated text, especially for something that's supposed to be one-to-one, like a cover letter/email. That is such a obvious imminent plague upon society, in so many ways, and the only thing I can do is nip the few buds that are within my reach.
  • tokioyoyo 2y ago
    I feel the same way, but it’s actually not easy to detect LLMs. Anyone who experimented with writing styles and been using them for a while, can easily create texts that are indistinguishable from a real person. Fine tune a small LLM to your past emails, cover letters, resumes and etc. then go ham.
    • hb-robo 2y ago
      Right, and the last thing you want is false negatives here.
• hbbvgn 2y ago
  If you automate your application process, you risk getting a job you do not want O_o Talking to a company is mainly to determine if you want to work there so I really don't get why you would want to automate it
• ramon156 2y ago
  Hate how this has become the job market. I finished my degree in July but was only able to find a job in November. Might not sound like a lot but it took almost 50 manual job applications, all with varying experiences. I couldn't imagine being a manager having to sift through so much garbage just to find a candidate that's worth their salt.
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    I graduated from a second tier uni in 2001. It was hell finding my first real job (more than two years). I had to move across the country to find it. After that, no one ever cared about my shit uni again!
  • TSUTiger 2y ago
    Roughly 15 years ago when I entered the job market, I spammed my resume to 36 roles within a single company so 50 doesn’t sound too bad. It was a Fortune 10 company so plenty of roles and I eventually got in.
• some_random 2y ago
  This is one of the big reasons why it's so hard to get an interview these days, it's pretty lame.
• VagabundoP 2y ago
  This is basically the email spam problem all over again.
• jdbdnej 2y ago
  [dead]
• KennyBlanken 2y ago
  This is blogspam - the author opened the blog barely a few days ago and filled it with content that at the very least is AI "assisted" content.
• jpcom 2y ago
  >Automated job application process And, just to confirm, you got a job?
• clippy99 2y ago
  I love the system he built, but the kicker would be to enable auto-filling and submitting on the various career portals. I question the efficacy of submitting job applications via email in 2024 (but perhaps I'm in the wrong industry.)
• MrMember 2y ago
  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 haven't used LLMs at all in my resume, cover letters, etc. I only apply to jobs that I believe I meet the requirements for and that I would likely accept if given an offer. How do I signal that 1) I am a real person 2) I really do have the job experience and skills listed on my resume, and 3) I really am interested in the specific job I'm applying for. Because doing this my hit rate has been abysmal. I've had maybe 10-12 initial phone screens (never an issue, I easily make it past these). Past that I've had maybe 3-4 interviews that get into the later rounds. From that I've had zero offers. So why should I keep doing what I'm doing when it's getting me nowhere? Why shouldn't I switch to an automated "shotgun" approach that applies me to as many jobs as possible to which I vaguely fit the requirements? The only other way I've seen suggested to signal that I'm a real person with real experience is to know someone in the company who can vouch for me (which I almost never do).
  • SanjayMehta 2y ago
    > The only other way I've seen suggested to signal that I'm a real person with real experience is to know someone in the company who can vouch for me (which I almost never do). The last company where I worked, employee referrals were the preferred mode of hiring. The referring employee would also benefit, on successful completion of the new hire’s first year. You might want to revisit this aspect.
  • wodenokoto 2y ago
    My advice is to contact recruitment agencies. HN hates recruiters, especially the cold calling kind on LinkedIn, but it has worked great for me. Every other job of mine has been through a recruitment agency and they have been responsible for the highest pay increases and they have been better to talk to about available budget for the role than the employer
    • 2y ago
• OutOfHere 2y ago
  As a candidate, I strongly believe in not applying, in letting the company find you. Applying is a waste of time. Also, one can get falsely accused of using ChatGPT in online interviews, so just don't start if the role doesn't have at least one on-site round. If you get ghosted or falsely accused anyway, report it on Glassdoor at once. Always also report the questions you were asked.
  • jarsin 2y ago
    > If you get ghosted or falsely accused anyway, report it on Glassdoor at once And why is glassdoor trustworthy? I worked for a company that laid off 75% of their long term staff with zero severance right as glassdoor was getting popular. They off course got a bunch of deserving negative reviews. Within one year the company had buried all the bad reviews in a sea of obvious fake reviews. Can't imagine what llm's are going to do for the entire fake review industry.
  • internetter 2y ago
    > As a candidate, I strongly believe in not applying, in letting the company find you. Applying is a waste of time. Easier said than done, innit? I'm privileged enough to have a relatively highly trafficked blog, as well as some social media following, so this could possibly for me, but plenty of candidates who are arguably more qualified than me don't have either.
    • OutOfHere 2y ago
      There are simpler ways besides the standard social media, namely: LinkedIn, StackOverflow, GitHub. Among these, LinkedIn ought to be sufficient for 99% of candidates. It has landed me all of my new jobs over the last decade.
• bckr 2y ago
  If any students or aspiring career-switchers are paying attention, now is a great time to start 10Xing your networking game. Stand out by being known.
  • HenriTEL 2y ago
    What do you mean by being known?
    • bckr 2y ago
      I mean "be known by people, specifically people who know you as trustworthy, likable, and intelligent, and who might be able to help you get a job".
• aantix 2y ago
  The current hiring situation is so broken. Because of AI and automation. One developer job on LinkedIn - 1100 applicants, 1000+ don’t even live in the right region, so clearly it’s automated and they’re not reading even basic requirements. Next time - video interviews all the way through. Any hint of AI in the interview process, they’re done. If a different person shows up for the first day of the job, they’re done.
  • ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    LinkedIn? Anyone who has a LinkedIn profile is automatically rejected. Signals low quality.
• frizlab 2y ago
  Why do people ask “please” to an LLM is beyond me. It’s a machine, it does not care about politeness! Treat it as a machine ffs.
  • fsckboy 2y ago
    >Why do people ask “please” to an LLM did you ever notice how your google-fu got worse over time, as google adapted their technology for the mass market? I predict your LLM-fu will also deteriorate. I'm not saying "good for Google, what they did there", I'm talking about how you will experience the world.
  • krapp 2y ago
    Because for some weird reason it tends to work.
    • frizlab 2y ago
      Has this been properly analyzed?
      • slig 2y ago
        Have a look at this analysis by @minimaxir about offering tips to LLMs: https://minimaxir.com/2024/02/chatgpt-tips-analysis/ https://minimaxir.com/2024/02/chatgpt-tips-analysis/
      • krapp 2y ago
        Probably. By whom and to what end I have absolutely no clue.
  • madmask 2y ago
    So I don’t lose the habit when talking/writing to people
  • MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
    "Please" is for your sake, not the bot's.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• xcke 2y ago
  I dont fully get something here. Being a good Engineer is a trait I would seek in a candidate, not really the actual hard skill knowledge. That is changing every day, and if you are a life long learner, you will master it. I get that domain specific experience matters. For example I passed the CCIE 10 years ago but today using Aider and LLMs to boost up Network DevOps related developments. I think using LLMs for code generation is a powerfull use case , is not really cheating, but a new way of working. Why would an employer not value this, and hiring managers, why are you not testing candidates in open book format on real world issues, giving candidates access to the latest State of the art LLMs, instead of using good old puzzles? Today in development and Infra engineering space it might make more sense to ask candidates to build something real instead asking for a motivation letter and if they used Sonnet 3.5 v2 that is just a proof for trying to be effective.
• fijiaarone 2y ago
  So did a million other people. Think your bit is better than everyone else’s? Think it will matter even if it is?
• fijiaarone 2y ago
  So did a million other people. Think your bot is better than everyone else’s? Think it will matter even if it is?
• bossyTeacher 2y ago
  Not very smart of him to post that while looking for a job. I know it is nerd smart but it is not real world smart. Any prospective employers looking for any excuse to reduce the number of candidates will find the blog post and reject you. And yes, I understand that this automation is but a reaction to the way companies handle applications
• hsuduebc2 2y ago
  Kinda funny that LLM creates an personalized cover letter which in the end will be deciphred to list summary by another LLM because this will be automated in no time.
  • lizzas 2y ago
    https://marketoonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/230327.n.aiwritten.jpg https://marketoonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/230327.n...
    • remram 2y ago
      Article link: https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/ai-written-ai-read.html https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/ai-written-ai-read.html
• eredengrin 2y ago
  With so many comments on the state of the job market, I'm surprised to not see even one mention of career fairs. It's quite common for universities to host these and while they have their own set of disadvantages, it seems they could also provide a lot of value in the current market. The physical presence would ensure that it's a real person and it makes cheating significantly harder. Deciding a time and place would allow lots of companies and applicants to meet within a few day period so it would be pretty efficient. A larger sized fair might last for a week or two and most companies would stay the entire time while applicants would just buy a one or two day pass. They could potentially even do in person interviews within the same period which would further save on hiring costs. Have a few of these in each region per year, it seems like it would be doable, it's just a matter of getting everyone on board (of course, easier said than done). You could maybe even use the fair as a screening to give applicants a boost in future online applications - if they seem like a good applicant after talking in person but perhaps not the exact fit needed for current open positions, just flag their career account internally as a verified high quality applicant. Short of career fairs, verifying identity and employment history might be valuable and it seems like LinkedIn or some competitor should be able to do this. If a company can verify itself through a reliable process and then publicly mark accounts of employees who have been employed there for whatever duration, that seems like a low hanging fruit. In fact it sounds so obvious that maybe there's a reason they haven't done this yet? Any reason someone could think of for why this isn't already happening?
  • tennisflyi 2y ago
    Sounds pay to win
• xyst 2y ago
  > Submit resume + cover letter Does anybody here actually read _cover letters_? I almost never submit them, unless required. I feel it's a remnant of pre-digital age where you would apply _in-person_ and the cover letter makes it _feel_ personal.
  • captainmuon 2y ago
    Yes, I absolutely read cover letters. But I work in Germany which has different customs around applications, so maybe that's the reason. We get a lot of low effort applications so I look for something why the candidate wants to work at our place. Did they research the position at least a bit before applying? Do they have an idea about the work, and does it mention how they can contribute? If it looks like copy-paste or completely AI generated, there is a big chance that it goes to the round storage bin.
    • haspok 2y ago
      > ...why the candidate wants to work at our place. Sorry to be blunt, but - to earn some money to feed their family? Just like applicants are not unicorns, neither are companies - unless you are FAANG nobody really cares about your shitty company really. (Maybe not even if you are FAANG.) If the CV matches the JD, why do you have doubts if they have an idea about the work? They obviously haven't the faintest idea, but how could they (unless your code is open source). From the applicant's perspective, they are applying to multiple places at once. Investing emotionally at step 0 (when they don't know if their CV will even be considered) is taxing, and unfair. Once there is a connection, you can expect them to invest more, but not until then. Because they will apply to 10 places, get ghosted by 5, get an automated NO response from 4 (usually a month later), and maybe, MAYBE they get an invite to the last one. Get a conversation started first and THEN expect investment.
      • captainmuon 2y ago
        It's totally fine if somebody just wants the money. We are all in it for the money to some degree or another. No need to fake enthusiasm. Actually, many applicants I see want to work part time (e.g. 2/3) and just want something to pay the bills and be able to pursue their hobbies. But I'd like to know, why did you send your application to our company and not one in another industry? I work for a university data center. Many of my colleagues have a scientific background. If not in academia, they could do coding, R&D, devops, science communication, product management, finance or many other things. They are 'lateral entrants' in any profession. If people can't answer "why did you apply here specifically", it means one of two things: They don't have a clue what their job would be, and they and we are likely to be dissappointed when they show up. Or: they sent their application to everybody indiscriminately. That signals that they likely aren't a good match for the skills needed, and also that they have a high rejection rate.
• Kerbonut 2y ago
  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. Pass the different levels of interview and you get a portion of the pot. Make it to the job acceptance and win the pot and if you accept the offer you get what the employer staked. Maybe something like that could help solve this issue. Either way we definitely need more structure and better defined processes for both sides of the job hiring process (looking for a job as a prospective employee, and hiring to fill a position). It would be great if we could automate this in a way that is mutually beneficial to everyone involved and had more transparency in the process. Right now there is zero accountability on either side, and as TFA demonstrates, the balance of power has shifted towards the applicants recently.
  • confidantlake 2y ago
    I would get rich posting ghost jobs and winning the whole pot for myself every time.
    • Kerbonut 2y ago
      I was thinking the job poster would have to put up the bulk of the pot, let's say a 20% "signing bonus" that is distributed amongst the finalists (job offered). Applicants would each stake a small amount each, which would be shared amongst the applications who are dropped out at each gate prior to job offered gate, say 20% of it is shared amongst the first round as an example. It would have to be structured to mitigate gaming the system on both sides, e.g. professional applicants who drop out after job is offered (never accepting a job).
  • nextn 2y ago
    I want to see a site or ATS that makes it non-free to send an application and non-free to ghost an applicant. Employers can earn revenue from automated applications that aren't qualified. Applicants can earn income from fake jobs until the fake jobs can't afford to post anymore.
• dangus 2y ago
  OP wants to automate the email send but should not do that. Sending bulk automated emails is a big no-no. There's a big reason why OP was fighting with providers to set up something to what amounts to marketing email without an unsubscribe link...because it's not something you're supposed to do. I don't think you should automate talking to a recruiter, anyway. At most this system should just generate email body and allow OP to review and send it out manually.
  • isbvhodnvemrwvn 2y ago
    That being said flagging e-mails coming from known IP ranges of those e-mail providers seems like a pretty good idea for ATSes to detect non-human spam.
• blurbleblurble 2y ago
  Okay so people keep calling these "fake applicants" but the new reality is that for a good number of our roles realistically any old person person with good communication skills and some basic critical thinking skills will be able to functionally replace us given a some good AI tools. It will continue to look like these are "fake applicants" until you accept the new reality, which is that quite soon this whole thing will be smoothed over into a normalized surplus of "programmers". This is just the beginning and it shouldn't really be a shock to anyone who's been watching this unfold over the last five years. That said, we really don't need to rip each other up over this. This latest golden era of good old fashioned programming is winding down. Look ahead to what's coming next! What are the challenges we will face now? Get creative and stay open minded about what you're capable of and willing to do. Be proactive and use your imagination with all this new stuff. Don't take real relationships for granted, cultivate them. Don't isolate yourself!
• ok123456 2y ago
  With all the automated scamming on both sides, maybe showing up to the place dressed well to drop off a resume isn't an antiquated idea after all.
  • hb-robo 2y ago
    I tried this during peak Silicon Valley days. I remember two things: 1. I got laughed at for wearing a suit by t-shirt devs 2. Around 40% of the places did not allow people to walk in the door at all. I would be pleased with this kind of "analog" solution to this noise though, even as someone who missed the previous in-person paradigm entirely.
    • ok123456 2y ago
      Hiring is so broken now that it might be worth trying.
• ein0p 2y ago
  I know this form of procrastination and action avoidance. :-) Never in my life have I applied to more than 3 companies, and never in my life did I need (or receive, as a hiring manager) a cover letter. My CV was always quite sufficient. The most idiotic part of the whole process (besides the interview loop, that is) is that I can't just submit my LinkedIn profile and be done with it, every single company insists that I enter my info (which is quite extensive, 25 years in) into their system manually. For resume I just export my LinkedIn as PDF these days.
  • vvladymyrov 2y ago
    I really miss StackOverflow Careers because they had exactly this feature - I enter my career details once and SO Careers allow me to generate nice CV in PDF format. Personally I’ve found couple great jobs though SO Careers, it is sad that SO decided to shutdown Careers business.
• Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  In general, people have numerous reasons for posting fake ads for applicants. I would say the signal-to-noise ratio is so low now, that entry level positions at any firm are impossible for domestic applicants. * Contract rules in institutions that show your faculty interviewed at minimum 3 external applicants before tabling your preferences * Corporate youth-employment tax credits that incentivize purging anyone over 32 to save money * Immigration scams that need to show at least 5 domestic workers don't qualify for the company needs (usually list proprietary internal software and languages the public never hears about...) * Staffing agencies posting nonexistent positions to run a lead-generation scheme, and legally exclude applicants from their product pool via a contract catch-22 * 10% of your towns population arrived in the past 3 years, and understandably will say/do anything to get their Visa secured * Cons illegally farming data for their AI/LLM project, and various other scams We need more investment bankers and CEOs that work for regular wages. Fun Times =3
• n_ary 2y ago
  Without reading any comments below, I want to praise the author for fighting fire-with-fire. From what I hear from my new colleagues and ones laid off, the landscape got pretty dystopian. HMs want to minimize their effort to 1% by happily renting LLM services which work 10% of the times and put up weird garbage(please record a 10min video to tell us why we should hire you, please also upload a cover letter that we clearly never read, please state your salary expectations, please choose a time slot when we can reach you but all time slots will be effective working hours only, please paste all your social media links) in addition uploading the résume+cover letter and then again pasting your top 10 skills and experiences. Then you get an auto reject 30min later or after a prolonged screening call only to see that opening taken down in 2 days and reposted after a week and repeat the same for months. What I hear from my friends and colleagues and insane all in all and I have zero sympathy for any HM and would be happy to start a new startup with LLMs to automate them away entirely. Am I too cynical? Yes, because I do not like people who play games with desperate people. (Now please all HR/HM downvote me because I told your truth).
  • dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    Good summary. Wish I could upvote you many times over.
  • Aurornis 2y ago
    > I want to praise the author for fighting fire-with-fire. On the contrary, I think these automated application games are most likely to land interviews with the companies doing LLM-based hiring and interviewing. From what I’ve seen, the automated job application results are generally pretty bad. The few companies that get interviews are just bad at screening and interviewing, so even if you get in you’re going to be working with a lot of other people who self-selected into a company with a bad hiring process. > HMs want to minimize their effort to 1% by happily renting LLM services which work 10% of the times and put up weird garbage(please record a 10min video to tell us why we should hire you, I’m in a big Slack where people ask advice on hiring and interviewing. I can think of only one time someone asked about applying to a company asking for videos, and the advice was universally to skip that company. I think these things happen very rarely, but angry internet culture never forgets and before long people act like these weird practices are happening everywhere when they’re definitely not. I can’t even imagine what hiring manager would want to have to sit through 10 minute videos of each candidate. The whole thing doesn’t make sense and it’s definitely not common.
• sagarpatil 2y ago
  You can use firecrawl.dev to get markdown content for any page you want. It’s open source and you can host it locally.
• dimaor 2y ago
  the only thing worth using LLMs here for is the cover letter. maybe I'm wrong but turning HTML into structured data example by using an LLM is bug prone and lazy. the real challenge parts are pretty basic as well.. don't get me wrong I am not judging automation, but using LLMs for these trivial tasks is IMO a waste of time as a software engineer.
• grantcarthew 2y ago
  I recently automated this process, however, in a very different way. - CLI run for every job you want to apply for (this is important) - JavaScript (Deno) with Puppeteer to run the JS for the page - Create a directory for all the artefacts <yyyy-mm-dd-ms-pagetitle> - Save the webpage link (artefact) - Take a screenshot of the page (artefact) - Extract the HTML (artefact) - Convert HTML to Markdown with a CLI (artefact) - Send Markdown to the Grok API to extract just the Job Description as Markdown (artefact) - Send Job Description and Autobiography to Grok API to generate a Resume (artefact) - Send Job Description and Autobiography to Grok API to generate a Cover Letter (artefact) - Use pandoc to convert the Markdown Resume and Cover Letter into Open Document Format (LibreOffice) (artefacts) The important differences here are: - You need to find the job you are interested in. Why automate this? - Run the CLI `job-hunter https://job.site/jobid https://job.site/jobid` (50sec runtime) - Open the ODF documents, review, edit, save (human involved is important) - Use a bash script running LibreOffice CLI to convert ODF documents to PDF - Review the PDFs - Manually click the apply button on the site and upload the documents I also keep a spreadsheet with the details for each job I apply for so I can track interactions, think CRM for job applications and recruiters. This could be automated, however, I got a job so have lost interest. Points of interest: - Markdown is a fantastic format in general, but for LLMs as prompts and documents, it's awesome. - If you just curl the page html, you don't get the recruiters email addresses in most cases, hence the use of Puppeteer. - Having all the artefacts saved on disk is important for review before and after the application, including adding notes. - By using an Autobiography that is extreme in detail, the LLM can add anything and everything about you to the documents. - Use Grok and support Elon. OpenAI can stick their "Open" where it fits. - I don't end up having to format the documents that are generated as ODF files, they look great. I can apply for around 10 to 20 jobs in a day if I try hard. Most of the time it is around 5 because I am doing other things. They are only jobs I'm interested in though, and I can customise the documents. Also, If I am applying for a job that includes AI, I add a note at the bottom stating it has been generated by an LLM and customised. There's probably more interesting points, but you get the idea. My TODO list includes a CLI switch to only open the page in a Firefox profile so I can authenticate to the page. This removes the stupid "automate auth on ever job site" issue. Simply authenticate and keep the cookie in the hunter profile. The repo is private for the time being, but I could make it public. Edit: formatting.
• madduci 2y ago
  > So I went old school - manual HTML copying. Yes, it's primitive. Yes, it works. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. So it isn't automated at all
• thomasfromcdnjs 2y ago
  Cross posting a comment I left --- Just wanted to share that I've been working on a schema for job descriptions. https://jsonresume.org/job-description-schema https://jsonresume.org/job-description-schema I released about 6 months ago, hopefully some of the models use it in their training data. So you can just say "make an example JD, return it in the jsonresume job schema" --- Just realized I should call it jsonjob or something
  • DavidDodda 2y ago
    man, thank you for this comment! I have been using reactive resume for sometime now, but never know it was built on this standard. you actually saved a lot of research time from my next project!
• lisp2240 2y ago
  We should use this to flood companies with applications for people who don’t exist and make it impossible to find real candidates. Then maybe they’ll reform this dumb process that doesn’t work well for anybody.
  • BadCookie 2y ago
    Companies would just lean even harder into hiring only friends of current employees, but I appreciate the sentiment.
  • blakeburch 2y ago
    What would you suggest changing? I think the hard part is everyone knows that it's bad but no one has any ideas to combat the problem.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• surume 2y ago
  This is genius
• StefanBatory 2y ago
  Unfortunately the power balance is in the side of companies; people do need them (eating and sleeping somewhere is generally considered a good thing), companies do not. Don't blame us for wanting to pay our bills.
• ruuda 2y ago
  I'm an engineer at a company of about 70 people (about half of that engineers), and I personally review most applications to our engineering roles. About 60-70% of applications we receive are low-effort or automated spam of the kind generated by the author. We have screening questions that ask to describe a personal experience in your own words, specifically without LLM, and yet almost half of the applications we get have LLM answers, or a cover letter that is just an LLM-generated reflection of the job ad. Regularly the same candidate applies to all engineering roles, and then a few weeks later again, and again. We use Recruitee, and ironically it doesn't have good automatic ways of filtering out the kind of spam generated by the author. On busy weeks, I spend about an hour per day screening and responding to applications. About half that is wasted on low-effort applications and automated spam generated by people like the author, and a significant part of that are repeat offenders. Nowadays I send one warning, and then I ask Recruitee support to ban the person, which due to implementation reasons on Recruitee's end prevents the person from applying at any company using Recruitee. It's harsh and I often feel bad about it, but after having to deal with this nonsense for multiple years now, I'm so sick of it, and I just ran out of patience.
  • tennisflyi 2y ago
    I’ll genuinely handjam every field and be met with the same result of the spammers because I didn’t include the correct keywords for the ATS…
• pluc 2y ago
  This is part of the fucking problem. It started with recruiters using AI to filter candidates, candidates caught on and now use AI to massively apply to jobs, overflowing the response rate, so recruiters have no choice but to use AI. Meanwhile I've manually applied to over a thousand jobs that I am explicitly qualified for, I have 25 years of experience, I have tried writing resumes and cover letters specifically for the job I am applying to and I maybe got 5 calls back. This timeline fucking blows.
• atoav 2y ago
  I am not a hiring manager, but I will occasionally get asked to help with technical candidates in our org. Any slight hint of AI prose could mean a direct No from me, let me explain why. Our process is fair IMO: 1. one CV (if you apply to jobs you should have that one already) 2. a cover letter that shows that you know how to map your CV to our org and the free position. That cover letter could be text in the email you sent the CV in 3. (if invited) an 30 to 45 minute interview with a roughly 1:10 chance of getting in. If you think you need to game that fair of a process you are the wrong hire anyways. That means the approx ten people who get invited are invited based on their (vetted!) CV and on their cover letter. That means your cover letter is read by a human who will judge your text. I am not a fan of artificially driving up the effort canidates need to make when applying. I just want to know they informed themselves about my org and gave a few thoughts about the position they applied for (what job it is, why they like it, why they would do a good job etc.) - thst should not be a high bar to clear, but over 80% of candidates struggle even with answering that.