4 ms·

I haven't applied for a job since the 1990s so I'd be out of the loop, but what are the faked resumes trying to achieve? Just get in a role and get paid before

by prawn 1y ago

I haven't applied for a job since the 1990s so I'd be out of the loop, but what are the faked resumes trying to achieve? Just get in a role and get paid before being found out? Are they trying to find brief or lazy interviewing processes? Do they only target remote positions?

marcosdumay 1y ago
When the requirements of every single job are impossible, people will lie. Several people have been recommending candidates to lie for IT-related jobs for a long time now, and honestly, I think the vast majority of positions have such a crazy set of requirements that they only get the lairs.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  Amusing Idea: Advertise three vaguely-similar positions, only one of them real. Specify impossible-for-honest-humans requirements for the fake two. Then discard all applicants for the real position who also claimed to be qualified for a fake one.
  - sfink 1y ago
    Strict honesty here has always been a losing proposition. The "requirements" section of a job posting has almost never been accurate. It's more of an image they're painting. An honest applicant is one who reads the whole description to understand as best they can what the company is looking for, and sort of holistically matches their own expertise against that picture. If the job posting lists requirements A-F and you have A, B, D, E, and F, then you'd do both yourself and the company a disservice by disqualifying yourself. Put it in your cover letter if you can't handle the discrepancy. I'm not going to address either the morality or advisability of being "dishonest" by this standard. I've just seen too many people sell themselves short, when in fact they are exactly what the company is looking for, it's just that the recruiter wasn't able to spell that out in the job description. And it's not necessarily because they were stupid either; if they only put the true minimum necessary criteria into a job post, then (1) they'll get flooded with underqualified candidates who don't even come close to what they need, and (2) they may very well miss out on good candidates because the job looks lame. Source: I've been on both ends. As a candidate, I mentioned during the interview that I actually had no experience in the required technology X but I had related experience. The interviewer just laughed; it was obvious to both of us that it didn't matter. As someone offering a job (not the hiring manager but sort of), I talked to a couple of people who were hired into other roles in the company and asked why they didn't apply for our position, they seemed perfect for it (to me). Several of them pointed to some specific line item under the requirements that disqualified them. Sometimes it was an item that we'd removed later because we weren't getting enough people in, even though strictly speaking it was part of the job. We would sometimes push the recruiter to add "experience with X, or willing to learn X", but they would push back and honestly I'm not sure I know better than them. They were the ones who had to be the front line filtering through the noise resumes, after all.
    - incompatible 1y ago
      Well, there are people who hate the idea of lying, and can't bring themselves to do it, even it's applying for a job where they don't meet one of the requirements. Most likely this isn't an attribute that most employers actually want, though.
      - hackable_sand 1y ago
        I have seen several companies lie about the requirements they posted.
      - nathan_douglas 1y ago
        My mother always put a really high emphasis on honesty. I wasn't the best kid, and certainly not the most honest (sorry, Mom), but I've always been absolutely forthright in résumés and cover letters. If I don't fully tick C, I mention it and share some quality or experience that I think might compensate. In my experience, it hasn't helped. I still do it, though, just because TBH I'm not 100% qualified for any of the jobs I apply for because I don't want to do the same shit I've already done for the rest of my career. I'm trying to grow, lol.
    - neilv 1y ago
      I've seen a number of job posts that have a note near the end, encouraging people to apply even if they don't meet all the requirements. There's also the job posts that distinguish between hard requirements and nice-to-haves, using various language (e.g., "bonus if you...").
    - crock_smacker 1y ago
      > If the job posting lists requirements A-F and you have A, B, D, E, and F, then you'd do both yourself and the company a disservice by disqualifying yourself. Put it in your cover letter if you can't handle the discrepancy. I’m my experience the problem is that the missing “C” is deep level domain expertise outside of the technical end and that’s just so much more important than the other ones, and importantly, something you can’t really just learn on your own.
  - Viliam1234 1y ago
    Similar idea: make a list of "required" and "optional but nice to have" skills for the position. Among the optional ones, include experience with a non-existent technology. Discard everyone who claims to have the experience.
jofer 1y ago
I have no idea, but yes, I suspect remote positions are heavily targeted and folks are looking for lazy hiring processes. But when the job description contains a lot of very general terms (e.g. "scientific computing") and every part of your job history is just parroting a specific term used in the job description with no details it doesn't pass the smell test. I absolutely respect keyword-heavy job/project descriptions. You kind of have to do it to make it through filtering by most recruiters. But real descriptions are coherent and don't just parrot back terms in ways that makes it clear you don't understand what the are. You find a way to make a coherent keyword soup that still actually describes what you did. That's great! But it's really obvious folks are misrepresenting things when a resume uses all the terms in the job description in ways that don't make sense. I kinda think we've reach this weird warfare stage of folks submitting uniquely LLM-generated resumes for each position to combat the aggressive LLM-based filtering that recruiting is starting to use. I assume people think they can do well in an interview if they can just get past the automated filtering. I'm sure some are trying to do 3 and 4 remote jobs at once with little real responsibilities, too, but I find it hard to believe that's the majority. I may be very wrong there, though...

by prawn 1y ago

marcosdumay 1y ago

When the requirements of every single job are impossible, people will lie. Several people have been recommending candidates to lie for IT-related jobs for a long time now, and honestly, I think the vast majority of positions have such a crazy set of requirements that they only get the lairs.

bell-cot 1y ago
Amusing Idea: Advertise three vaguely-similar positions, only one of them real. Specify impossible-for-honest-humans requirements for the fake two. Then discard all applicants for the real position who also claimed to be qualified for a fake one.
- sfink 1y ago
  Strict honesty here has always been a losing proposition. The "requirements" section of a job posting has almost never been accurate. It's more of an image they're painting. An honest applicant is one who reads the whole description to understand as best they can what the company is looking for, and sort of holistically matches their own expertise against that picture. If the job posting lists requirements A-F and you have A, B, D, E, and F, then you'd do both yourself and the company a disservice by disqualifying yourself. Put it in your cover letter if you can't handle the discrepancy. I'm not going to address either the morality or advisability of being "dishonest" by this standard. I've just seen too many people sell themselves short, when in fact they are exactly what the company is looking for, it's just that the recruiter wasn't able to spell that out in the job description. And it's not necessarily because they were stupid either; if they only put the true minimum necessary criteria into a job post, then (1) they'll get flooded with underqualified candidates who don't even come close to what they need, and (2) they may very well miss out on good candidates because the job looks lame. Source: I've been on both ends. As a candidate, I mentioned during the interview that I actually had no experience in the required technology X but I had related experience. The interviewer just laughed; it was obvious to both of us that it didn't matter. As someone offering a job (not the hiring manager but sort of), I talked to a couple of people who were hired into other roles in the company and asked why they didn't apply for our position, they seemed perfect for it (to me). Several of them pointed to some specific line item under the requirements that disqualified them. Sometimes it was an item that we'd removed later because we weren't getting enough people in, even though strictly speaking it was part of the job. We would sometimes push the recruiter to add "experience with X, or willing to learn X", but they would push back and honestly I'm not sure I know better than them. They were the ones who had to be the front line filtering through the noise resumes, after all.
  - incompatible 1y ago
    Well, there are people who hate the idea of lying, and can't bring themselves to do it, even it's applying for a job where they don't meet one of the requirements. Most likely this isn't an attribute that most employers actually want, though.
    - hackable_sand 1y ago
      I have seen several companies lie about the requirements they posted.
    - nathan_douglas 1y ago
      My mother always put a really high emphasis on honesty. I wasn't the best kid, and certainly not the most honest (sorry, Mom), but I've always been absolutely forthright in résumés and cover letters. If I don't fully tick C, I mention it and share some quality or experience that I think might compensate. In my experience, it hasn't helped. I still do it, though, just because TBH I'm not 100% qualified for any of the jobs I apply for because I don't want to do the same shit I've already done for the rest of my career. I'm trying to grow, lol.
  - neilv 1y ago
    I've seen a number of job posts that have a note near the end, encouraging people to apply even if they don't meet all the requirements. There's also the job posts that distinguish between hard requirements and nice-to-haves, using various language (e.g., "bonus if you...").
  - crock_smacker 1y ago
    > If the job posting lists requirements A-F and you have A, B, D, E, and F, then you'd do both yourself and the company a disservice by disqualifying yourself. Put it in your cover letter if you can't handle the discrepancy. I’m my experience the problem is that the missing “C” is deep level domain expertise outside of the technical end and that’s just so much more important than the other ones, and importantly, something you can’t really just learn on your own.
- Viliam1234 1y ago
  Similar idea: make a list of "required" and "optional but nice to have" skills for the position. Among the optional ones, include experience with a non-existent technology. Discard everyone who claims to have the experience.

jofer 1y ago

I have no idea, but yes, I suspect remote positions are heavily targeted and folks are looking for lazy hiring processes. But when the job description contains a lot of very general terms (e.g. "scientific computing") and every part of your job history is just parroting a specific term used in the job description with no details it doesn't pass the smell test. I absolutely respect keyword-heavy job/project descriptions. You kind of have to do it to make it through filtering by most recruiters. But real descriptions are coherent and don't just parrot back terms in ways that makes it clear you don't understand what the are. You find a way to make a coherent keyword soup that still actually describes what you did. That's great! But it's really obvious folks are misrepresenting things when a resume uses all the terms in the job description in ways that don't make sense. I kinda think we've reach this weird warfare stage of folks submitting uniquely LLM-generated resumes for each position to combat the aggressive LLM-based filtering that recruiting is starting to use. I assume people think they can do well in an interview if they can just get past the automated filtering. I'm sure some are trying to do 3 and 4 remote jobs at once with little real responsibilities, too, but I find it hard to believe that's the majority. I may be very wrong there, though...