16 ms·

Get A Job: The Craigslist Experiment

211 points by kawera 14y ago

jdoody 14y ago
Interesting article. Time to make your own job.
- sukuriant 14y ago
  I downvoted this; and on further inspection, I wish I hadn't. Instead, I want to know: what do you mean?
  - Kaedon 14y ago
    If the odds of submitting your resume and getting any sort of response are so low, perhaps the time would be better spent carving a niche for yourself - such as publishing articles like this blog entry.
    - RyanIyengar 14y ago
      Who will pay people to do that though?
      - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
        Intrinsic motivation is an excellent signal for would-be hires, so it works well enough. (not sure if sarcastic)
- GregBuchholz 14y ago
  Better yet. How can I make a job for these people? Think of all of the millions of man years that have gone to waste during this economic downturn. Surely there are a lot of unemployed people who could be adding value to something. I wish I was smart enough to figure out a way to harness the value of these people who are hungry for work.
  - revx 14y ago
    This inspired me.
  - gwern 14y ago
    Indeed. It's not hard to see how they could be producing value: if nothing else, they could be working on Wikipedia which always has an infinite number of tasks to do (such as copyediting, to tie into the OP, although a bachelor's or master's holder could be doing much more valuable in-depth research for an article), and that would produce a lot of value for all the hundreds of millions of Wikipedia users. The problem is capturing some of that value and returning it to them as a living wage.
    - dev1n 14y ago
      Actually this problem could be solved in the same way most programmers take up side projects. Even the projects that are not designed to supplement income are valuable to an employer. Editing a hundred pages in Wikipedia has got to be a pretty decent way of selling yourself, even if just on a resmue, to an employer. That's a sort of "buzzword" that isn't found often. Instead of sitting around filling out 20 applications, that person could have just edited 10 pages of Wikipedia, and felt better about themselves too, and just added something extremely unique to their profile.
      - rprasad 14y ago
        Only until the Wikipedia Mafia reverts all of those changes and then bans your account for "vandalism." One of the best ways to get contacts in a field is to volunteer for an organization that does exactly, or something in the neighborhood of, what you want to do.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - gwern 14y ago
        I doubt it. I've edited far far more than a hundred pages (http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume), and I never got a job offer nor did it ever make any discernible difference to my life - which is inline with what I heard (or rather, didn't hear) from all my Wikipedian confreres. When I switched my efforts to my own website, then things changed a little bit.
Foy 14y ago
I've heard that the employment prospects with a humanities degree were... not optimal. But to think that so many people with Bachelor's or Master's degrees are out there fighting tooth and nail over meager admin assisstant jobs that barely pay anything. I'm shocked. o.o Also, have you ever thought that maybe having a Master's degree makes you seem over-qualified for a secretary (sorry) position? When I think of a Master's in English I think of jobs like Editor, or Journalist.
- sp332 14y ago
  The overqualified part definitely applies, since they assume that you'll quit as soon as something better opens up. Which, to be fair, is usually true.
  - Foy 14y ago
    Oh I hadn't really thought of that part, but that's a very good point. I had imagined they'd assume you'd be gunning for a raise in short order or they might not enjoy having an admin assistant who is quite possibly more intelligent than themselves. On a more "ideal" note, they may also not want someone with a Master's because they feel that their expertise would be more useful elsewhere and that their talent would be wasted in a secretarial role.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Editing and journalism are still very necessary, but somehow the actual streams of monetary income for them have almost entirely dried up. The result is that we get very little independent (of state funding) journalism, and what we do get from any sources is very badly edited. But somehow there's no need being expressed on the market for journalists or editors? Sounds like a market failure to me.
  - patio11 14y ago
    It is a market failure if people want to sell editing and people want to buy editing and no transactions take place. If no one wants to buy editing, no sales of editing is a market success. For example, it informs people wondering if they should learn editing or nursing that nursing is the socially and personally optimal choice. One could argue gl that government subsidies for editing misinform participants about what society wants and, simultaneously, redirect societal resources from things people want to things they do not want, like editing.
patdennis 14y ago
We’re familiar with the art of the job search: day after day, scanning the classifieds, Monster, Indeed, Craigslist, etc. for open positions; forever touching up résumés to appeal to specific job requirements; writing endless cover letters that never seem to sound quite right; applying to dozens, maybe hundreds of jobs per week; staring vacuously at the familiar monitor glow at 3 a.m. This sounds horrible. I've never gotten a job that wasn't through personal or professional connections, so for most of them even handing over a resume was essentially a formality. I work in a specialized field, which I think accounts for why this is possible. But I do only have a humanities education, and most of my day to day skills have been developed since leaving school (without a degree, mind you). It's just a matter of finding a niche.
- johnobrien1232 14y ago
  For people who don't have personal or professional connections, sometimes applying to job postings is the only route. I'd also note that to get above the other 626 resumes, you need to use other avenues of attack (like phone calls, etc.). Probably relevant to mention job-buddy.com here, a site I manage to help people track this kind of activity, and keep on keeping on with this arduous cycle.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    If you happen to have a Resume/Cover Letter that when read, has a high chance of making inroads at a company, then snail mail works surprisingly well. (obvious downside is that it takes a very long time to research companies and tailor the documents to each one) Snail mail is the route I took back in the Fall of 2010. The response rate was roughly 20% for me.
    - Retric 14y ago
      That's rather high, I once had a 3 hours of interviews and then zero contact after that.
      - justincormack 14y ago
el_cuadrado 14y ago
For big companies, the degree is just a requirement. If they ask for a minimum of bachelor, then they likely do not care if you have a Ph.D. For smaller companies, experience is everything. And Masters in English is not an advantage, unless you apply for a blogger position or something.
- deelowe 14y ago
  You aren't kidding. This "every degree" is worth something mentally is what's killing the workfore. Some skills are highly marketable, some aren't. With the decline of professional journalism, I imagine english majors aren't in high demand at this point and no one wants to hire someone who's over qualified and will get bored in 3 months.
hkmurakami 14y ago
"However, for a more specialized position, such as Full-Time English Instructor or Editorial Assistant or Professional Lobsterman, I’m sure there are far fewer résumés submitted." I suspect that this is not even the case, as many/most people doing the resume machinegun routine blindly apply to everything in sight.
tseabrooks 14y ago
This is interesting and well written. Find yourself a grad student in Math and you've got your job. I want more articles of a "pop math" variety exploring the numbers of everyday life. Not only are they interesting and engaging, these types of stories provide the groundwork for helping "us" (entrepreneurs) know what industries we should be attacking.
- eru 14y ago
  > Find yourself a grad student in Math and you've got your job. Sorry, what do you mean by that?
  - JamesLeonis 14y ago
    It appears he means a statistics major, or somebody who could do some analysis, and continue to write articles that analyze everyday things we do.
- pjungwir 14y ago
  The world could indeed use more people who can write like Martin Gardner.
austenallred 14y ago
To be fair, that was in a big city for an extremely generic job. Anyone who is employable anywhere is eligible for that job. I used to hire writers from CraigsList; there were a lot of resumes, but few were well done, and even fewer had decent writing samples. If you're really looking for a job, you have to look for something specific.
stevejabs 14y ago
From personal experience, don't apply to any positions that don't reveal the company name in the post. You'll rarely get anywhere, and when you do it will likely not even pan out to being who you want to work for or the job that was described. What I normally do is this: Find a job that you find unique or intriguing. If it has a company name attached I immediately jump to LinkedIn to find who I may be working for and if it's the small company, I just look up the CEO. At this point, I start following the CEO on Twitter (if they have one) and I find out what they are interested in and post about. I will now usually start engaging that person every now and then to make them put a name to a face. This also allows you to get an idea of the personality of the person you may be working for. After a while, I'll put the question out there, "Hey I saw that you posted Foo job at your company. Has this position been filled? I'm extremely interested." If they don't have Twitter, I'll engage them straight through LinkedIn. At this point I'll be straight upfront and honest. Just tell them that you are interested in finding out more information about the company before you formally apply for the job. When the time comes, try and get your resume straight to their personal email via this conversation. Open up a line of dialog with someone who is posted the job. If it's an HR department, it may be tough, but not impossible. It's worth it in the long run to build up connections (even if their virtual) with people. Blindly applying to positions is just going to leave you in the dark. EDIT: Grammar
- danmaz74 14y ago
  Out of curiosity, how many times did you do that? And how many jobs did you find?
  - stevejabs 14y ago
    This method has worked for me 3 times now. I turned down one of the opportunities. Not necessarily the best sample size, but the method shows very clearly that you intend to work for that company or at least that you are extremely interested in going the extra mile.
    - danmaz74 14y ago
      Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. I was curious because you have to change jobs very often to have enough exprience. By the way, it worked 3 times out of 3 attempts?
xarien 14y ago
Keep writing and make sure you have a link on your site that says: "Like my blog? Hire me as a copywriter!" Good copy is hard to come by and if you can get good at it, you'll definitely find yourself in demand...
hkmurakami 14y ago
Thought experiment: does applying a "price" to applying to a position make sense? Legitimate & qualified applicants get lost in the noise because unqualified candidates send hundreds of resumes on sites like Monster and Craigslist. While this would open up possible fraud with disingenuous job postings with no intent of being filled, would something like charging $1 to apply to a position improve the situation? After all, this is the approach that Universities take when accepting applicants.
- nswanberg 14y ago
  In 2009 a company called localbacon.com tried just that experiment: http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-job-seekers-pay-localbacon-to-apply-for-jobs-and-that-might-just-work/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-job-seekers-pay-localb... It seems that the experiment wasn't a great success, at least as a job board business model, because the company shifted course after a relaunch six months later: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/22/jibe-localbacon-relaunch/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/22/jibe-localbacon-relaunch/
- aero142 14y ago
  I've seen a number of posts on HN from developers saying, "I won't apply for a job if they require a {cover letter, resume, code sample}." Depending on your point of view, adding hurdles could either remove self entitled prima donnas or all of the code ninjas. The risk is that you create a selection bias the wrong direction.
  - l3amm 14y ago
    Adding hurdles will definitely reduce the number of applicants, but what you'll find is that if you ask for X, Y, Z in the ad most people will still send you whatever they were going to send you before (most likely a resume and coverletter). You then know they didn't read the ad and thus should probably be deleted. This is why lots of job ads on craigslist say: "write XYZ in the email title" buried in the text to filter for those people who aren't even reading the ad.
wcchandler 14y ago
I attempted something similar during my last year of college. I made a posting at my closest large city, detailing my ideal job. I also laid out what seemed to be good requirements that I would have satisfied for the position. I was astounded by the results. I quickly had to remove the ad, too. The messages were heart wrenching to read. One man was unemployed after being discharged from the military. Another man had been doing senior level work for 10 years. Another didn't have an ounce of experience in this field. And finally a couple were recent graduates -- these were the only ones I was interested in. I left mine up for a couple days. I realized the deceitfulness of this experiment. I genuinely felt remorse despite my animalistic nature to size up the competition. Then I reflected on myself and thought about the few times I'd read a job post and quickly turn to my wife "This one sounds perfect! I really hope I get it!" and be grinning from ear to ear for the next half an hour only to be hit with sadness for a day or two. Then I wondered, if it was this easy for me, who is to say others wouldn't be doing the same? I changed my rules for applying to job posts after that. They had to actually state their recruiting firm in the post. Bonus points for disclosing their client. They also had to post an email or website -- some way to validate the poster. Again, bonus points for phone numbers. I would also search various strings in the post to see if they're listed anywhere else. I became a lot more cautious in my search, which was a good thing as I wasn't slapping my name, email, address and phone number all over to who knows where. After my experiment I reached a conclusion-- I had broad competition and shouldn't try to gauge myself on others. This made me much calmer in the interviews. I felt reassured knowing it wasn't "what I knew", and instead "who I was." I decided to be more of myself and not give canned answers that I thought they wanted to hear. My skillset was expendable and I needed to realize that. I lost my sense of entitlement. I used to think my $100,000 piece of paper meant something. Then I realized it did.
- pyre 14y ago
  > My skillset was expendable and I needed to realize that. > I lost my sense of entitlement. I used to think my > $100,000 piece of paper meant something. > > Then I realized it did. I feel like this part is going over my head if the 'did' isn't a typo (meant "didn't).
  - 14y ago
abiekatz 14y ago
This is part of why temp agencies and "talent resource" companies can exist. Trying to filter the ton of resumes and hire the right candidate off of craigslist.com can be quite the pain. I do wonder though what jobs bright people without hard skills should pursue. This guide is interesting: http://www.slideshare.net/choehn/recessionproof-graduate-1722966 http://www.slideshare.net/choehn/recessionproof-graduate-172... I think people in that position should try to learn a valuable skill. Of course easier said than done but there are a number of skills that should lead to a middle class life that can be learned relatively quickly. Programming could be a good choice. See: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-success/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-suc... DevBootcamp seemed to produce quality developers in 3 months. Though also PR, online advertising, some focus in marketing, web design, sales...whatever.
systematical 14y ago
pssht. I've been doing this for years
justjimmy 14y ago
I recently started looking for an iOS artist to work with and I posted a job ad on Craiglist and Kijiji, for the first time. I was overwhelmed with the response - I mean I knew there was alot of people using Craigslist but I had no idea of the scope. And the spam. I even had people submitting me their resumes who had nothing to do with what I was looking for. Needless to say, I was quite surprised by amount of response I've gotten. It was definitely insightful to sit on the other 'end', even for a day, to try and make sense of all these resumes, to read through the greeting emails / copy+paste jobs. It was only a glimpse but it was an interesting experience. Now I'm not advocating people to start creating fake job ads to see what it's like… Edit: Anyone else notice the author using a coffee ring to make his pie chart from? Improvisation – mark of a true warrior!
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  But it's a pie chart! Pie charts are evil! :) http://www.quora.com/How-and-why-are-pie-charts-considered-evil-by-data-visualization-experts http://www.quora.com/How-and-why-are-pie-charts-considered-e...
- wtracy 14y ago
  Anyone else notice that on his second graph, the wedge labeled "34%" is significantly larger than the one labeled "39%"? I'm honestly wondering if he just got sloppy while drawing the lines, or if some numbers accidentally got swapped around.
- bilbobaggie 14y ago
  I actually need to start looking for a graphic artist for a small job soon - Do you have a recommendation for where to post other than Craigslist?
  - dennisgorelik 14y ago
    http://www.postjobfree.com/post-job http://www.postjobfree.com/post-job
ilaksh 14y ago
There are not enough jobs. The 'economic' model is broken, and the 'economy' is being strangled. But its worse than that. The very concept of a job doesn't even really qualify as civilized.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Pretty much agreed. The notion that there will or must exist demand for labor corresponding to every individual's basic needs has never actually been proven. The statement is then left as a should statement, but why should we force our society into the mold of a bizarre reverse-moralization?
  - suresk 14y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I have to ask - how do you ration goods and services in an economy except for some kind of currency? And how do you propose we award people said currency besides some direct or indirect correlation with their work output? It seems likely to me that technology will continue to create a gap between the supply of workers and the demand for those workers, but figuring out how to deal with the social and economic implications of that seems like a difficult task.
    - ilaksh 14y ago
      Who said to do away with currency? I didn't see him say that.
      - suresk 14y ago
        Removing currency isn't the problem - removing the traditional dominant method of acquiring it is.
        eli_gottlieb 14y ago
        Precisely the issue. Money is not the problem. Basing an entire economy on wage-labor is the problem.
rizzom5000 14y ago
Why would the author believe 600+ applicants for a semi-skilled entry-level job posting in NYC is an unusual number? How does that number compare to a similar job posting in London, Tokyo or Shanghai? This experiment is silly, contrived and unscientific. The data is without context, and essentially meaningless. Also, while I wouldn't exactly call it unethical to do something like this - it is dishonest, and something about it feels slimy to me.
- Wilya 14y ago
  I don't think the point is to show that the job market is hard in NYC. The point is to try to understand the problem (finding a job) by putting oneself in the other side. Regarding the ethical part, one application is a rounding error for most seekers. Either you send hundreds of applications, either you send a dozen or two of highly researched ones (and you would have avoided this one anyway).
- galfarragem 14y ago
  Some time ago I made the same experience but making it more extreme: I posted a job for an architect offering very bad conditions (minimal money, long hours not paid, 10 hours day, etc). I can say that I got 250 answers. I'm speaking about Lisbon, Portugal reality, not in NYC.
- dbecker 14y ago
  I'm not sure what sort of context you were looking for. The author certainly explains the methodology well. As for whether it's scientific, it strikes me as having many similarities to a paper "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination." That paper was authored by two of the most respected academic economists, and it was published in the top economics journal.
  - rizzom5000 14y ago
    Yes, the methodology is well-explained. My reaction to this article can be summed up with, "“A lot of résumés” is an egregious understatement.". Why are 653 responses for an unskilled job with no experience requirements in a metro area of 20 million people 'a lot'? Where is the context? How does that number compare to other metro areas? To other times in history? To the history of NYC? Would that have been 'a lot' 20 years ago? How about during the Great Depression? I'll check out the study you cited.
l3amm 14y ago
The much sadder reality is what actually happens in a company that posts that ad: 1) Optimistically post the job ad. 2) Receive hundreds of responses within hours of posting it. 3) Begin going through those hundreds of responses, reading cover letters and resumes. At first you're pumped then you realize very few people here are qualified for the position/read the post. 4) After ~20 resumes, you close your email for the day. If you made the mistake of using your personal email address, I'm sorry. 5) Despair. Pick and choose random emails (maybe filter by email, are there any harvard.edu's in there?) and immediately call the first person who seems remotely OK. Iterate step 5 until you find 'the one.' I've worked with/observed dozens of employers in this process, a tiny fraction of resumes actually get read, and frankly it's impossible to stay focused through the experience. A "fun" experiment is to print out 40 resumes in a pile, write a job description for those resumes and then try to find the most qualified one in that bunch. Free-text association with often poorly-articulated job requisitions is a nearly impossible proposition. Add in the step where you have to download and track those applicants, and it's damn near impossible to use Craigslist to find the best candidate. This was the original inspiration for our company, Foundry Hiring (www.foundryhiring.com). We're trying to build tools to make this process as painless as possible. In this instance we will give you a free link to post in your CL ad which has an application form in front of it, so that emails don't hit your inbox, the applicant's are stored directly in our database. We then give you tracking tools on top of it to make the process better. We're still in beta, but I would love user feedback.
pjnewton 14y ago
Great timing on this for me. I just posted a job (a real one) to Craigslist and received a handful of responses. Making the assumption that I would get a bunch of resumes I decided to add one little hurdle. I asked the applicant to copy & paste their resume into the email body. I did this to see who was actually paying attention and who was just spamming every posting and hoping someone would bite. Sadly this hurdle come not be overcome by the majority of the people I heard from... The search continues.
- Cd00d 14y ago
  Personally, I hate the hurdle of the .txt only, or pasted in resume. I put a lot of effort into the layout and style of my resume, and wrote it in TeX. My knee-jerk response when people won't glance at my .pdf resume is that they are lazy, don't respect the effort that goes into design and layout, and only wish to keyword search. This may not be true of your case, just saying what my emotional response is in that situation. I agree that minor hurdles to weed out the insincere are valuable.
  - pjnewton 14y ago
    Yeah I can see how it would be annoying. I know I wouldn't be too happy if I had to copy and paste since I also spent a good deal of time on the format. However, I think that if I really wanted "THAT" job then the few extra steps, reformatting, etc. would be worth it. Turns out it did help screen a bunch of people that were seemingly just spamming every posting with their resume along with one who copy and pasted an entire (unedited) email mail chain she used to apply to another position... Overall I'm not very happy with the performance of the posting, maybe it's my fault...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
galfarragem 14y ago
I'll share my experience on how I get jobs. I never won any job answering job offers. All the jobs I got (6 or 7, doesn't matter) I got knocking doors. Literally. I never "lost" any interview that I got this way. Is this a rule to follow or was just luck? I don't know the answer. I know that it works for me. Ok, I'm in the architectural field, within other industries and corporations probably would be impossible to have this approach. Age is also an important factor. Knocking doors when you're during your 20's is not the same as during your 40's. Even during your 30's is already more difficult. It's my experience. I hope it can help somebody. edit: This way people who could make the interview already know you. You are already interviewing without any appointment! If they ask you a more formal interview you're in. Early mornings always choose early mornings. Afternoons are terrible for this approach. Everybody just wants to go home. Nobody will have any patience to listen to you. Smile in the face and confidence of course. This can make the difference. Of course lucks has a big role also: if the decision-makers are in the office or not, if tehy are free, if there is any (even a slight is enough) need of people, etc
alfredp 14y ago
I posted an ad in the newspaper with a similar kind of experiment in mind. A dead marketing dude was daring me to do something crazy. What's the worst that can happen? (About midway through this: http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Newsletters/aslz_winners_losers.htm http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Newsletters/aslz_winners...) You can read this first to see what he actually dared me to do. The short version of what happened: my cellphone was ringing off the hooks and I had to just turn it off for a few weeks. Totally insane response.
liamondrop 14y ago
I've gotten several gigs through Craigslist. Both fulltime and one-off / freelance. It rarely has taken me more than a couple days to get an interview/callback. My single most important tip for doing this successfully is to get your app in fast. Like within 30 minutes of the job going on the site max. I'm certain that almost no one looks at more than the first 50-100 submissions. It helps to put relevant categories/searches into some kind of rss reader that updates frequently and allows you to see multiple feeds simultaneously so you can see at a glance as soon as something you're interested in pops up. Second to speed is writing a good cover letter. The letter should be concise, active tense, probably with bullet points for easy scanning, and talk about what you have done and what you will do for them that will make their life easier. Having most of the letter drafted in advance will help you get it in fast, but you will likely want to at least touch on a few key points from their job posting.
gsibble 14y ago
I am sooooo happy that I'm an engineer right now.
dbecker 14y ago
I'm wonder what the ratio of job postings to job applicants is. If there are 600 applications per listing, and each applicant sends 50 applications, then there are 12 times as many applicants as listings. Do the 600 and 50 numbers seem about right?
- nandemo 14y ago
  For what is worth, the job_seekers/opening ratio is usually published by the same agencies that provide unemployment rates. For instance, a quick search reveals that ratio was 3.5 in the US in May 2012 (down from 4.5 one year before), while it was only about 1.25 in Japan. https://mninews.deutsche-boerse.com/content/japan-may-job-offers-seekers-ratio-081-vs-apr-079 https://mninews.deutsche-boerse.com/content/japan-may-job-of... http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/job-seekers-per-opening.shtm http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/job-seekers-per-opening.shtm However, if we assume a 3.5 seeker/opening ratio then 600 applications/opening implies 171 applications per seeker, which sounds too high. Looking at the methodology, it's clear what the problem is: the denominator in the official seeker/opening ratio is simply the number of currently unemployed people. Those 600 applications must include people who are working, perhaps part-time, so technically not unemployed. I think your estimate sounds about right.
tokenadult 14y ago
An interesting experiment (for a company that actually has a job and is not leading people on) would be to distinguish a job posting that says "Hiring for this position will be based in large part on a work-sample test during a half day at our office" versus "Previous experience . . . preferred, but will train the right candidate." We can tell that the United States economy is in recession (as is the case in many other countries with Hacker News participants) because we keep seeing new stories submitted every day or so about the hiring procedures of companies, with multiple comments. In a long FAQ post I've posted recently http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 here on Hacker News, based on many helpful comments from other participants, I summarize a LOT of research on company hiring procedures. If you want to hire someone good in the United States, make a work-sample test part of your hiring procedure. Work-sample tests are much better than biographical reviews of resumes for finding good workers. If you want to get a good job in a well managed company, develop the skills to get past a realistic work-sample test for the position you seek. Many more details appear in the FAQ, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 which is quite long but well worth a read if you are looking for a job or if you are a business manager trying to hire someone who will do a good job. P.S. I still hear of young people who are gaining full-time, full-benefits jobs in today's economy. In the usual case, they are getting those jobs by showing what they can actually do as part of the hiring process, degree or no degree. After edit: I recently read the VERY interesting book The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life http://www.amazon.com/Folly-Fools-Logic-Deceit-Self-Deception/dp/0465027555/ http://www.amazon.com/Folly-Fools-Logic-Deceit-Self-Deceptio... (I wonder if this book has been discussed here on HN yet?) and that reminded me of one of the main reasons that hiring by screening resumes is demonstrably less effective than hiring by giving work sample tests: many people lie on their resumes. The author of the interesting submitted blog post was of course posting a fake job ad, and several comments here on HN point out that many job ads may just be fronts for recruiters rather than postings by actual employers. Participants here gave examples (NUMEROUS examples) of job ads getting responses that don't appear at all to fit the job, but an employer also has to worry about "false positives," applicants who look like they fit the job but who are inflating their educational credentials or multiplying their years of actual work experience. The only way to know what an applicant can do is to test. Perhaps announcing up front that the hiring process includes actual testing of job-related skills MAY screen out some of the poseurs from even sending in their fake resumes (although the many shotgun applicants who don't even read the job ad closely will still be sending resumes all over the place only to waste the time of anyone who receives the resumes). One way the author of the blog post could have demonstrated statistical acumen is by labeling his data presentations "Self-Reported Experience" rather than "True Experience" and "Self-Reported Credentials" rather than "Education." He has NO idea what the actual educational credentials or work experience (or other aspects of biography) of any of his applicants really are. He would have been aware of this point if he had taken a good statistics course in college, but alas good statistics classes are very rare in the United States. http://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDF http://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDF http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz
donnfelker 14y ago
his post, in itself, just may get you a job. Nice work.
iba 14y ago
This experiment demonstrates the futility of job hunting cold-calling style. In my experience the best way to get noticed is through networking, especially through friends in the field. If I were hiring, I would give more consideration for someone who was recommended even by a friend of a friend. Our job hunting time is much better spent networking than spanning every craigslist job posting with our resumes. I wish someone does a counter experiment with networking vs craigslist spamming.
pawelwentpawel 14y ago
After reading the post and admiring the creative pie-chart I started thinking about more time consuming experiment of a similar type. As I believe, most of the people that applied for this job weren't "snipers" but more of a bit desperate types machine gunning each single input appearing in their over-caffeinated visual cortices. If called back they probably wouldn't even remember the names of companies they applied for. I wonder what would happen if the fake job ad contained a fake website with a fake test (of some related domain or even a basic grammar/maths) for each applicant to solve before even uploading a resume. I guess that it would give us a more full picture not only on "quality" of competition but also on the number of machine guns in the field (ad views -> website views -> tests solved). And a bit of an unrelated question - how illegal is posting fake job ads for such purposes?
keithnoizu 14y ago
its kind of depressing to think of someone with a masters degree hoping to land a job that pays less than a fifth of what I make with an associates degree . . .
dennisgorelik 14y ago
1) "Administrative Assistant" postings attract lots of job seekers. For some reason unemployed candidates like to apply for these jobs. 2) Scammers like to post "Administrative Assistant" postings too. I'd say that at least half of "Administrative Assistant" postings are scam (scammers are trying to recruit people for money laundering or pyramid scheme). 3) Job postings looking for software developers are totally different story. There are plenty of openings chasing limited pool of available developers. 4) See how jobs/resumes ratio varies for different skills: http://www.postjobfree.com/skills http://www.postjobfree.com/skills
- djeikyb 14y ago
  I was mostly unemployed for a year or so. Admin assistant posts were attractive because it sounds like a simple office job. Also, 10-13/hr in an office is incredibly better than minimum wage labour. But as you say, over half are scams. For my region, craigslist was worthless. Fwiw, my solution was to move to an area with lower unemployment (18% to 6%). I have no pro experience and no related education, but I got a dev job with a probation period to ensure I'm actually learning quick enough to be useful.
patio11 14y ago
Cheat sheet for humanities master's degree holders: microecon 101 suggests that anyone offering to pay a substantial premium to the market clearing price for X will be offered lots of X.
- chubs 14y ago
  You saying that he simply put too high a payrate on his fake ad and that's why the glut of responses?
  - robryan 14y ago
    Interesting that this high rate of payment is much lower than the Australia minimum wage in USD. I guess the purchasing power in America might be a little higher but still sounds like a pretty sad state of affairs.
    - greenranger 14y ago
      I was thinking the same thing. I'm in Canada and I haven't made twelve bucks an hour since I was a pimple faced high schooler. If you advertised a wage like that here, you would be literally scraping the bottom of the labour barrel.
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      Australia is 65% more expensive than the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#OECD_comparative_price_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#OECD_c...
      - robryan 14y ago
        Probably due in part to some of the crazy markups Australians were/ are accustomed to paying at retail. Although this is changing as people become more comfortable with online buying.
  - patio11 14y ago
    He is getting many responses because he is offering approximately $4,000 (delivered half in taxable cash and half in untaxable benefits) in return for a thing whose market price is closer to $1,500 (delivered all in taxable cash). He should be offered the product he wishes to buy at any quantity which he wishes to purchase. (The product is "The full-time labor of any literate person legally capable of work in Midtown, NYC.")
natmaster 14y ago
I'm genuinely curious why the author - who is obviously very intelligent otherwise - does not simply use their intelligence to learn an actual marketable skill. Especially if they are looking at applying for such boring jobs - surely some sort of scientific analysis like they did in this article would be more interesting to do as a job.
simonbarker87 14y ago
I know that unemployment is high but how does a shift from say 6% (arbitrary number as I'm not american so don't know the numbers) to 9% have such dramatic effects, if you spin it round and say that employment has dropped from 94% to 91% the stats sound pretty good - wrong direction change granted. Jumping from 6% to 9% means half as many more are now looking for work. I must be missing something somewhere so if someone can explain this I would very much appreciate it.
Paul_S 14y ago
I see how the author gets useful information for himself but is this ethical? He essentially wasted time of those people who applied in good faith. A bit cruel. He solicited personal information from those people - I'm sure there are rules about storing and processing personal information.
leeny 14y ago
I wonder how many of the applicants had well-written cover letters and resumes (good sentence structure, interesting content, devoid of massive typos and grammatical errors). I would bet that it's no more than 20%, and all of a sudden, things aren't so dismal anymore.

211 points by kawera 14y ago

jdoody 14y ago

Interesting article. Time to make your own job.

sukuriant 14y ago
I downvoted this; and on further inspection, I wish I hadn't. Instead, I want to know: what do you mean?
- Kaedon 14y ago
  If the odds of submitting your resume and getting any sort of response are so low, perhaps the time would be better spent carving a niche for yourself - such as publishing articles like this blog entry.
  - RyanIyengar 14y ago
    Who will pay people to do that though?
    - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
      Intrinsic motivation is an excellent signal for would-be hires, so it works well enough. (not sure if sarcastic)
GregBuchholz 14y ago
Better yet. How can I make a job for these people? Think of all of the millions of man years that have gone to waste during this economic downturn. Surely there are a lot of unemployed people who could be adding value to something. I wish I was smart enough to figure out a way to harness the value of these people who are hungry for work.
- revx 14y ago
  This inspired me.
- gwern 14y ago
  Indeed. It's not hard to see how they could be producing value: if nothing else, they could be working on Wikipedia which always has an infinite number of tasks to do (such as copyediting, to tie into the OP, although a bachelor's or master's holder could be doing much more valuable in-depth research for an article), and that would produce a lot of value for all the hundreds of millions of Wikipedia users. The problem is capturing some of that value and returning it to them as a living wage.
  - dev1n 14y ago
    Actually this problem could be solved in the same way most programmers take up side projects. Even the projects that are not designed to supplement income are valuable to an employer. Editing a hundred pages in Wikipedia has got to be a pretty decent way of selling yourself, even if just on a resmue, to an employer. That's a sort of "buzzword" that isn't found often. Instead of sitting around filling out 20 applications, that person could have just edited 10 pages of Wikipedia, and felt better about themselves too, and just added something extremely unique to their profile.
    - rprasad 14y ago
      Only until the Wikipedia Mafia reverts all of those changes and then bans your account for "vandalism." One of the best ways to get contacts in a field is to volunteer for an organization that does exactly, or something in the neighborhood of, what you want to do.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
    - gwern 14y ago
      I doubt it. I've edited far far more than a hundred pages (http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume), and I never got a job offer nor did it ever make any discernible difference to my life - which is inline with what I heard (or rather, didn't hear) from all my Wikipedian confreres. When I switched my efforts to my own website, then things changed a little bit.

Foy 14y ago

I've heard that the employment prospects with a humanities degree were... not optimal. But to think that so many people with Bachelor's or Master's degrees are out there fighting tooth and nail over meager admin assisstant jobs that barely pay anything. I'm shocked. o.o Also, have you ever thought that maybe having a Master's degree makes you seem over-qualified for a secretary (sorry) position? When I think of a Master's in English I think of jobs like Editor, or Journalist.

sp332 14y ago
The overqualified part definitely applies, since they assume that you'll quit as soon as something better opens up. Which, to be fair, is usually true.
- Foy 14y ago
  Oh I hadn't really thought of that part, but that's a very good point. I had imagined they'd assume you'd be gunning for a raise in short order or they might not enjoy having an admin assistant who is quite possibly more intelligent than themselves. On a more "ideal" note, they may also not want someone with a Master's because they feel that their expertise would be more useful elsewhere and that their talent would be wasted in a secretarial role.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Editing and journalism are still very necessary, but somehow the actual streams of monetary income for them have almost entirely dried up. The result is that we get very little independent (of state funding) journalism, and what we do get from any sources is very badly edited. But somehow there's no need being expressed on the market for journalists or editors? Sounds like a market failure to me.
- patio11 14y ago
  It is a market failure if people want to sell editing and people want to buy editing and no transactions take place. If no one wants to buy editing, no sales of editing is a market success. For example, it informs people wondering if they should learn editing or nursing that nursing is the socially and personally optimal choice. One could argue gl that government subsidies for editing misinform participants about what society wants and, simultaneously, redirect societal resources from things people want to things they do not want, like editing.

patdennis 14y ago

We’re familiar with the art of the job search: day after day, scanning the classifieds, Monster, Indeed, Craigslist, etc. for open positions; forever touching up résumés to appeal to specific job requirements; writing endless cover letters that never seem to sound quite right; applying to dozens, maybe hundreds of jobs per week; staring vacuously at the familiar monitor glow at 3 a.m. This sounds horrible. I've never gotten a job that wasn't through personal or professional connections, so for most of them even handing over a resume was essentially a formality. I work in a specialized field, which I think accounts for why this is possible. But I do only have a humanities education, and most of my day to day skills have been developed since leaving school (without a degree, mind you). It's just a matter of finding a niche.

johnobrien1232 14y ago
For people who don't have personal or professional connections, sometimes applying to job postings is the only route. I'd also note that to get above the other 626 resumes, you need to use other avenues of attack (like phone calls, etc.). Probably relevant to mention job-buddy.com here, a site I manage to help people track this kind of activity, and keep on keeping on with this arduous cycle.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  If you happen to have a Resume/Cover Letter that when read, has a high chance of making inroads at a company, then snail mail works surprisingly well. (obvious downside is that it takes a very long time to research companies and tailor the documents to each one) Snail mail is the route I took back in the Fall of 2010. The response rate was roughly 20% for me.
  - Retric 14y ago
    That's rather high, I once had a 3 hours of interviews and then zero contact after that.
    - justincormack 14y ago

el_cuadrado 14y ago

For big companies, the degree is just a requirement. If they ask for a minimum of bachelor, then they likely do not care if you have a Ph.D. For smaller companies, experience is everything. And Masters in English is not an advantage, unless you apply for a blogger position or something.

deelowe 14y ago
You aren't kidding. This "every degree" is worth something mentally is what's killing the workfore. Some skills are highly marketable, some aren't. With the decline of professional journalism, I imagine english majors aren't in high demand at this point and no one wants to hire someone who's over qualified and will get bored in 3 months.

hkmurakami 14y ago

"However, for a more specialized position, such as Full-Time English Instructor or Editorial Assistant or Professional Lobsterman, I’m sure there are far fewer résumés submitted." I suspect that this is not even the case, as many/most people doing the resume machinegun routine blindly apply to everything in sight.

tseabrooks 14y ago

This is interesting and well written. Find yourself a grad student in Math and you've got your job. I want more articles of a "pop math" variety exploring the numbers of everyday life. Not only are they interesting and engaging, these types of stories provide the groundwork for helping "us" (entrepreneurs) know what industries we should be attacking.

eru 14y ago
> Find yourself a grad student in Math and you've got your job. Sorry, what do you mean by that?
- JamesLeonis 14y ago
  It appears he means a statistics major, or somebody who could do some analysis, and continue to write articles that analyze everyday things we do.
pjungwir 14y ago
The world could indeed use more people who can write like Martin Gardner.

austenallred 14y ago

To be fair, that was in a big city for an extremely generic job. Anyone who is employable anywhere is eligible for that job. I used to hire writers from CraigsList; there were a lot of resumes, but few were well done, and even fewer had decent writing samples. If you're really looking for a job, you have to look for something specific.

stevejabs 14y ago

From personal experience, don't apply to any positions that don't reveal the company name in the post. You'll rarely get anywhere, and when you do it will likely not even pan out to being who you want to work for or the job that was described. What I normally do is this: Find a job that you find unique or intriguing. If it has a company name attached I immediately jump to LinkedIn to find who I may be working for and if it's the small company, I just look up the CEO. At this point, I start following the CEO on Twitter (if they have one) and I find out what they are interested in and post about. I will now usually start engaging that person every now and then to make them put a name to a face. This also allows you to get an idea of the personality of the person you may be working for. After a while, I'll put the question out there, "Hey I saw that you posted Foo job at your company. Has this position been filled? I'm extremely interested." If they don't have Twitter, I'll engage them straight through LinkedIn. At this point I'll be straight upfront and honest. Just tell them that you are interested in finding out more information about the company before you formally apply for the job. When the time comes, try and get your resume straight to their personal email via this conversation. Open up a line of dialog with someone who is posted the job. If it's an HR department, it may be tough, but not impossible. It's worth it in the long run to build up connections (even if their virtual) with people. Blindly applying to positions is just going to leave you in the dark. EDIT: Grammar

danmaz74 14y ago
Out of curiosity, how many times did you do that? And how many jobs did you find?
- stevejabs 14y ago
  This method has worked for me 3 times now. I turned down one of the opportunities. Not necessarily the best sample size, but the method shows very clearly that you intend to work for that company or at least that you are extremely interested in going the extra mile.
  - danmaz74 14y ago
    Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. I was curious because you have to change jobs very often to have enough exprience. By the way, it worked 3 times out of 3 attempts?

xarien 14y ago

Keep writing and make sure you have a link on your site that says: "Like my blog? Hire me as a copywriter!" Good copy is hard to come by and if you can get good at it, you'll definitely find yourself in demand...

hkmurakami 14y ago

Thought experiment: does applying a "price" to applying to a position make sense? Legitimate & qualified applicants get lost in the noise because unqualified candidates send hundreds of resumes on sites like Monster and Craigslist. While this would open up possible fraud with disingenuous job postings with no intent of being filled, would something like charging $1 to apply to a position improve the situation? After all, this is the approach that Universities take when accepting applicants.

nswanberg 14y ago
In 2009 a company called localbacon.com tried just that experiment: http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-job-seekers-pay-localbacon-to-apply-for-jobs-and-that-might-just-work/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/tc50-job-seekers-pay-localb... It seems that the experiment wasn't a great success, at least as a job board business model, because the company shifted course after a relaunch six months later: http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/22/jibe-localbacon-relaunch/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/22/jibe-localbacon-relaunch/
aero142 14y ago
I've seen a number of posts on HN from developers saying, "I won't apply for a job if they require a {cover letter, resume, code sample}." Depending on your point of view, adding hurdles could either remove self entitled prima donnas or all of the code ninjas. The risk is that you create a selection bias the wrong direction.
- l3amm 14y ago
  Adding hurdles will definitely reduce the number of applicants, but what you'll find is that if you ask for X, Y, Z in the ad most people will still send you whatever they were going to send you before (most likely a resume and coverletter). You then know they didn't read the ad and thus should probably be deleted. This is why lots of job ads on craigslist say: "write XYZ in the email title" buried in the text to filter for those people who aren't even reading the ad.

wcchandler 14y ago

I attempted something similar during my last year of college. I made a posting at my closest large city, detailing my ideal job. I also laid out what seemed to be good requirements that I would have satisfied for the position. I was astounded by the results. I quickly had to remove the ad, too. The messages were heart wrenching to read. One man was unemployed after being discharged from the military. Another man had been doing senior level work for 10 years. Another didn't have an ounce of experience in this field. And finally a couple were recent graduates -- these were the only ones I was interested in. I left mine up for a couple days. I realized the deceitfulness of this experiment. I genuinely felt remorse despite my animalistic nature to size up the competition. Then I reflected on myself and thought about the few times I'd read a job post and quickly turn to my wife "This one sounds perfect! I really hope I get it!" and be grinning from ear to ear for the next half an hour only to be hit with sadness for a day or two. Then I wondered, if it was this easy for me, who is to say others wouldn't be doing the same? I changed my rules for applying to job posts after that. They had to actually state their recruiting firm in the post. Bonus points for disclosing their client. They also had to post an email or website -- some way to validate the poster. Again, bonus points for phone numbers. I would also search various strings in the post to see if they're listed anywhere else. I became a lot more cautious in my search, which was a good thing as I wasn't slapping my name, email, address and phone number all over to who knows where. After my experiment I reached a conclusion-- I had broad competition and shouldn't try to gauge myself on others. This made me much calmer in the interviews. I felt reassured knowing it wasn't "what I knew", and instead "who I was." I decided to be more of myself and not give canned answers that I thought they wanted to hear. My skillset was expendable and I needed to realize that. I lost my sense of entitlement. I used to think my $100,000 piece of paper meant something. Then I realized it did.

pyre 14y ago
> My skillset was expendable and I needed to realize that. > I lost my sense of entitlement. I used to think my > $100,000 piece of paper meant something. > > Then I realized it did. I feel like this part is going over my head if the 'did' isn't a typo (meant "didn't).
- 14y ago

abiekatz 14y ago

This is part of why temp agencies and "talent resource" companies can exist. Trying to filter the ton of resumes and hire the right candidate off of craigslist.com can be quite the pain. I do wonder though what jobs bright people without hard skills should pursue. This guide is interesting: http://www.slideshare.net/choehn/recessionproof-graduate-1722966 http://www.slideshare.net/choehn/recessionproof-graduate-172... I think people in that position should try to learn a valuable skill. Of course easier said than done but there are a number of skills that should lead to a middle class life that can be learned relatively quickly. Programming could be a good choice. See: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-success/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-suc... DevBootcamp seemed to produce quality developers in 3 months. Though also PR, online advertising, some focus in marketing, web design, sales...whatever.

systematical 14y ago

pssht. I've been doing this for years

justjimmy 14y ago

I recently started looking for an iOS artist to work with and I posted a job ad on Craiglist and Kijiji, for the first time. I was overwhelmed with the response - I mean I knew there was alot of people using Craigslist but I had no idea of the scope. And the spam. I even had people submitting me their resumes who had nothing to do with what I was looking for. Needless to say, I was quite surprised by amount of response I've gotten. It was definitely insightful to sit on the other 'end', even for a day, to try and make sense of all these resumes, to read through the greeting emails / copy+paste jobs. It was only a glimpse but it was an interesting experience. Now I'm not advocating people to start creating fake job ads to see what it's like… Edit: Anyone else notice the author using a coffee ring to make his pie chart from? Improvisation – mark of a true warrior!

hkmurakami 14y ago
But it's a pie chart! Pie charts are evil! :) http://www.quora.com/How-and-why-are-pie-charts-considered-evil-by-data-visualization-experts http://www.quora.com/How-and-why-are-pie-charts-considered-e...
wtracy 14y ago
Anyone else notice that on his second graph, the wedge labeled "34%" is significantly larger than the one labeled "39%"? I'm honestly wondering if he just got sloppy while drawing the lines, or if some numbers accidentally got swapped around.
bilbobaggie 14y ago
I actually need to start looking for a graphic artist for a small job soon - Do you have a recommendation for where to post other than Craigslist?
- dennisgorelik 14y ago
  http://www.postjobfree.com/post-job http://www.postjobfree.com/post-job

ilaksh 14y ago

There are not enough jobs. The 'economic' model is broken, and the 'economy' is being strangled. But its worse than that. The very concept of a job doesn't even really qualify as civilized.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Pretty much agreed. The notion that there will or must exist demand for labor corresponding to every individual's basic needs has never actually been proven. The statement is then left as a should statement, but why should we force our society into the mold of a bizarre reverse-moralization?
- suresk 14y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I have to ask - how do you ration goods and services in an economy except for some kind of currency? And how do you propose we award people said currency besides some direct or indirect correlation with their work output? It seems likely to me that technology will continue to create a gap between the supply of workers and the demand for those workers, but figuring out how to deal with the social and economic implications of that seems like a difficult task.
  - ilaksh 14y ago
    Who said to do away with currency? I didn't see him say that.
    - suresk 14y ago
      Removing currency isn't the problem - removing the traditional dominant method of acquiring it is.
      - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
        Precisely the issue. Money is not the problem. Basing an entire economy on wage-labor is the problem.

rizzom5000 14y ago

Why would the author believe 600+ applicants for a semi-skilled entry-level job posting in NYC is an unusual number? How does that number compare to a similar job posting in London, Tokyo or Shanghai? This experiment is silly, contrived and unscientific. The data is without context, and essentially meaningless. Also, while I wouldn't exactly call it unethical to do something like this - it is dishonest, and something about it feels slimy to me.

Wilya 14y ago
I don't think the point is to show that the job market is hard in NYC. The point is to try to understand the problem (finding a job) by putting oneself in the other side. Regarding the ethical part, one application is a rounding error for most seekers. Either you send hundreds of applications, either you send a dozen or two of highly researched ones (and you would have avoided this one anyway).
galfarragem 14y ago
Some time ago I made the same experience but making it more extreme: I posted a job for an architect offering very bad conditions (minimal money, long hours not paid, 10 hours day, etc). I can say that I got 250 answers. I'm speaking about Lisbon, Portugal reality, not in NYC.
dbecker 14y ago
I'm not sure what sort of context you were looking for. The author certainly explains the methodology well. As for whether it's scientific, it strikes me as having many similarities to a paper "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination." That paper was authored by two of the most respected academic economists, and it was published in the top economics journal.
- rizzom5000 14y ago
  Yes, the methodology is well-explained. My reaction to this article can be summed up with, "“A lot of résumés” is an egregious understatement.". Why are 653 responses for an unskilled job with no experience requirements in a metro area of 20 million people 'a lot'? Where is the context? How does that number compare to other metro areas? To other times in history? To the history of NYC? Would that have been 'a lot' 20 years ago? How about during the Great Depression? I'll check out the study you cited.

l3amm 14y ago

The much sadder reality is what actually happens in a company that posts that ad: 1) Optimistically post the job ad. 2) Receive hundreds of responses within hours of posting it. 3) Begin going through those hundreds of responses, reading cover letters and resumes. At first you're pumped then you realize very few people here are qualified for the position/read the post. 4) After ~20 resumes, you close your email for the day. If you made the mistake of using your personal email address, I'm sorry. 5) Despair. Pick and choose random emails (maybe filter by email, are there any harvard.edu's in there?) and immediately call the first person who seems remotely OK. Iterate step 5 until you find 'the one.' I've worked with/observed dozens of employers in this process, a tiny fraction of resumes actually get read, and frankly it's impossible to stay focused through the experience. A "fun" experiment is to print out 40 resumes in a pile, write a job description for those resumes and then try to find the most qualified one in that bunch. Free-text association with often poorly-articulated job requisitions is a nearly impossible proposition. Add in the step where you have to download and track those applicants, and it's damn near impossible to use Craigslist to find the best candidate. This was the original inspiration for our company, Foundry Hiring (www.foundryhiring.com). We're trying to build tools to make this process as painless as possible. In this instance we will give you a free link to post in your CL ad which has an application form in front of it, so that emails don't hit your inbox, the applicant's are stored directly in our database. We then give you tracking tools on top of it to make the process better. We're still in beta, but I would love user feedback.

pjnewton 14y ago

Great timing on this for me. I just posted a job (a real one) to Craigslist and received a handful of responses. Making the assumption that I would get a bunch of resumes I decided to add one little hurdle. I asked the applicant to copy & paste their resume into the email body. I did this to see who was actually paying attention and who was just spamming every posting and hoping someone would bite. Sadly this hurdle come not be overcome by the majority of the people I heard from... The search continues.

Cd00d 14y ago
Personally, I hate the hurdle of the .txt only, or pasted in resume. I put a lot of effort into the layout and style of my resume, and wrote it in TeX. My knee-jerk response when people won't glance at my .pdf resume is that they are lazy, don't respect the effort that goes into design and layout, and only wish to keyword search. This may not be true of your case, just saying what my emotional response is in that situation. I agree that minor hurdles to weed out the insincere are valuable.
- pjnewton 14y ago
  Yeah I can see how it would be annoying. I know I wouldn't be too happy if I had to copy and paste since I also spent a good deal of time on the format. However, I think that if I really wanted "THAT" job then the few extra steps, reformatting, etc. would be worth it. Turns out it did help screen a bunch of people that were seemingly just spamming every posting with their resume along with one who copy and pasted an entire (unedited) email mail chain she used to apply to another position... Overall I'm not very happy with the performance of the posting, maybe it's my fault...
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galfarragem 14y ago

I'll share my experience on how I get jobs. I never won any job answering job offers. All the jobs I got (6 or 7, doesn't matter) I got knocking doors. Literally. I never "lost" any interview that I got this way. Is this a rule to follow or was just luck? I don't know the answer. I know that it works for me. Ok, I'm in the architectural field, within other industries and corporations probably would be impossible to have this approach. Age is also an important factor. Knocking doors when you're during your 20's is not the same as during your 40's. Even during your 30's is already more difficult. It's my experience. I hope it can help somebody. edit: This way people who could make the interview already know you. You are already interviewing without any appointment! If they ask you a more formal interview you're in. Early mornings always choose early mornings. Afternoons are terrible for this approach. Everybody just wants to go home. Nobody will have any patience to listen to you. Smile in the face and confidence of course. This can make the difference. Of course lucks has a big role also: if the decision-makers are in the office or not, if tehy are free, if there is any (even a slight is enough) need of people, etc

alfredp 14y ago

I posted an ad in the newspaper with a similar kind of experiment in mind. A dead marketing dude was daring me to do something crazy. What's the worst that can happen? (About midway through this: http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Newsletters/aslz_winners_losers.htm http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Newsletters/aslz_winners...) You can read this first to see what he actually dared me to do. The short version of what happened: my cellphone was ringing off the hooks and I had to just turn it off for a few weeks. Totally insane response.

liamondrop 14y ago

I've gotten several gigs through Craigslist. Both fulltime and one-off / freelance. It rarely has taken me more than a couple days to get an interview/callback. My single most important tip for doing this successfully is to get your app in fast. Like within 30 minutes of the job going on the site max. I'm certain that almost no one looks at more than the first 50-100 submissions. It helps to put relevant categories/searches into some kind of rss reader that updates frequently and allows you to see multiple feeds simultaneously so you can see at a glance as soon as something you're interested in pops up. Second to speed is writing a good cover letter. The letter should be concise, active tense, probably with bullet points for easy scanning, and talk about what you have done and what you will do for them that will make their life easier. Having most of the letter drafted in advance will help you get it in fast, but you will likely want to at least touch on a few key points from their job posting.

gsibble 14y ago

I am sooooo happy that I'm an engineer right now.

dbecker 14y ago

I'm wonder what the ratio of job postings to job applicants is. If there are 600 applications per listing, and each applicant sends 50 applications, then there are 12 times as many applicants as listings. Do the 600 and 50 numbers seem about right?

nandemo 14y ago
For what is worth, the job_seekers/opening ratio is usually published by the same agencies that provide unemployment rates. For instance, a quick search reveals that ratio was 3.5 in the US in May 2012 (down from 4.5 one year before), while it was only about 1.25 in Japan. https://mninews.deutsche-boerse.com/content/japan-may-job-offers-seekers-ratio-081-vs-apr-079 https://mninews.deutsche-boerse.com/content/japan-may-job-of... http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/job-seekers-per-opening.shtm http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/job-seekers-per-opening.shtm However, if we assume a 3.5 seeker/opening ratio then 600 applications/opening implies 171 applications per seeker, which sounds too high. Looking at the methodology, it's clear what the problem is: the denominator in the official seeker/opening ratio is simply the number of currently unemployed people. Those 600 applications must include people who are working, perhaps part-time, so technically not unemployed. I think your estimate sounds about right.

tokenadult 14y ago

An interesting experiment (for a company that actually has a job and is not leading people on) would be to distinguish a job posting that says "Hiring for this position will be based in large part on a work-sample test during a half day at our office" versus "Previous experience . . . preferred, but will train the right candidate." We can tell that the United States economy is in recession (as is the case in many other countries with Hacker News participants) because we keep seeing new stories submitted every day or so about the hiring procedures of companies, with multiple comments. In a long FAQ post I've posted recently http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 here on Hacker News, based on many helpful comments from other participants, I summarize a LOT of research on company hiring procedures. If you want to hire someone good in the United States, make a work-sample test part of your hiring procedure. Work-sample tests are much better than biographical reviews of resumes for finding good workers. If you want to get a good job in a well managed company, develop the skills to get past a realistic work-sample test for the position you seek. Many more details appear in the FAQ, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768 which is quite long but well worth a read if you are looking for a job or if you are a business manager trying to hire someone who will do a good job. P.S. I still hear of young people who are gaining full-time, full-benefits jobs in today's economy. In the usual case, they are getting those jobs by showing what they can actually do as part of the hiring process, degree or no degree. After edit: I recently read the VERY interesting book The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life http://www.amazon.com/Folly-Fools-Logic-Deceit-Self-Deception/dp/0465027555/ http://www.amazon.com/Folly-Fools-Logic-Deceit-Self-Deceptio... (I wonder if this book has been discussed here on HN yet?) and that reminded me of one of the main reasons that hiring by screening resumes is demonstrably less effective than hiring by giving work sample tests: many people lie on their resumes. The author of the interesting submitted blog post was of course posting a fake job ad, and several comments here on HN point out that many job ads may just be fronts for recruiters rather than postings by actual employers. Participants here gave examples (NUMEROUS examples) of job ads getting responses that don't appear at all to fit the job, but an employer also has to worry about "false positives," applicants who look like they fit the job but who are inflating their educational credentials or multiplying their years of actual work experience. The only way to know what an applicant can do is to test. Perhaps announcing up front that the hiring process includes actual testing of job-related skills MAY screen out some of the poseurs from even sending in their fake resumes (although the many shotgun applicants who don't even read the job ad closely will still be sending resumes all over the place only to waste the time of anyone who receives the resumes). One way the author of the blog post could have demonstrated statistical acumen is by labeling his data presentations "Self-Reported Experience" rather than "True Experience" and "Self-Reported Credentials" rather than "Education." He has NO idea what the actual educational credentials or work experience (or other aspects of biography) of any of his applicants really are. He would have been aware of this point if he had taken a good statistics course in college, but alas good statistics classes are very rare in the United States. http://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDF http://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDF http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz

donnfelker 14y ago

his post, in itself, just may get you a job. Nice work.

iba 14y ago

This experiment demonstrates the futility of job hunting cold-calling style. In my experience the best way to get noticed is through networking, especially through friends in the field. If I were hiring, I would give more consideration for someone who was recommended even by a friend of a friend. Our job hunting time is much better spent networking than spanning every craigslist job posting with our resumes. I wish someone does a counter experiment with networking vs craigslist spamming.

pawelwentpawel 14y ago

After reading the post and admiring the creative pie-chart I started thinking about more time consuming experiment of a similar type. As I believe, most of the people that applied for this job weren't "snipers" but more of a bit desperate types machine gunning each single input appearing in their over-caffeinated visual cortices. If called back they probably wouldn't even remember the names of companies they applied for. I wonder what would happen if the fake job ad contained a fake website with a fake test (of some related domain or even a basic grammar/maths) for each applicant to solve before even uploading a resume. I guess that it would give us a more full picture not only on "quality" of competition but also on the number of machine guns in the field (ad views -> website views -> tests solved). And a bit of an unrelated question - how illegal is posting fake job ads for such purposes?

keithnoizu 14y ago

its kind of depressing to think of someone with a masters degree hoping to land a job that pays less than a fifth of what I make with an associates degree . . .

dennisgorelik 14y ago

1) "Administrative Assistant" postings attract lots of job seekers. For some reason unemployed candidates like to apply for these jobs. 2) Scammers like to post "Administrative Assistant" postings too. I'd say that at least half of "Administrative Assistant" postings are scam (scammers are trying to recruit people for money laundering or pyramid scheme). 3) Job postings looking for software developers are totally different story. There are plenty of openings chasing limited pool of available developers. 4) See how jobs/resumes ratio varies for different skills: http://www.postjobfree.com/skills http://www.postjobfree.com/skills

djeikyb 14y ago
I was mostly unemployed for a year or so. Admin assistant posts were attractive because it sounds like a simple office job. Also, 10-13/hr in an office is incredibly better than minimum wage labour. But as you say, over half are scams. For my region, craigslist was worthless. Fwiw, my solution was to move to an area with lower unemployment (18% to 6%). I have no pro experience and no related education, but I got a dev job with a probation period to ensure I'm actually learning quick enough to be useful.

patio11 14y ago

Cheat sheet for humanities master's degree holders: microecon 101 suggests that anyone offering to pay a substantial premium to the market clearing price for X will be offered lots of X.

chubs 14y ago
You saying that he simply put too high a payrate on his fake ad and that's why the glut of responses?
- robryan 14y ago
  Interesting that this high rate of payment is much lower than the Australia minimum wage in USD. I guess the purchasing power in America might be a little higher but still sounds like a pretty sad state of affairs.
  - greenranger 14y ago
    I was thinking the same thing. I'm in Canada and I haven't made twelve bucks an hour since I was a pimple faced high schooler. If you advertised a wage like that here, you would be literally scraping the bottom of the labour barrel.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    Australia is 65% more expensive than the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#OECD_comparative_price_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity#OECD_c...
    - robryan 14y ago
      Probably due in part to some of the crazy markups Australians were/ are accustomed to paying at retail. Although this is changing as people become more comfortable with online buying.
- patio11 14y ago
  He is getting many responses because he is offering approximately $4,000 (delivered half in taxable cash and half in untaxable benefits) in return for a thing whose market price is closer to $1,500 (delivered all in taxable cash). He should be offered the product he wishes to buy at any quantity which he wishes to purchase. (The product is "The full-time labor of any literate person legally capable of work in Midtown, NYC.")

natmaster 14y ago

I'm genuinely curious why the author - who is obviously very intelligent otherwise - does not simply use their intelligence to learn an actual marketable skill. Especially if they are looking at applying for such boring jobs - surely some sort of scientific analysis like they did in this article would be more interesting to do as a job.

simonbarker87 14y ago

I know that unemployment is high but how does a shift from say 6% (arbitrary number as I'm not american so don't know the numbers) to 9% have such dramatic effects, if you spin it round and say that employment has dropped from 94% to 91% the stats sound pretty good - wrong direction change granted. Jumping from 6% to 9% means half as many more are now looking for work. I must be missing something somewhere so if someone can explain this I would very much appreciate it.

Paul_S 14y ago

I see how the author gets useful information for himself but is this ethical? He essentially wasted time of those people who applied in good faith. A bit cruel. He solicited personal information from those people - I'm sure there are rules about storing and processing personal information.

leeny 14y ago

I wonder how many of the applicants had well-written cover letters and resumes (good sentence structure, interesting content, devoid of massive typos and grammatical errors). I would bet that it's no more than 20%, and all of a sudden, things aren't so dismal anymore.