6 ms·

Employers are also inundated by applications so they're applying higher bars to meet as a sort of back pressure. I hate it from the candidates' perspective, bu

by bbkane 7mo ago

Employers are also inundated by applications so they're applying higher bars to meet as a sort of back pressure. I hate it from the candidates' perspective, but it's not illogical from the employer perspective. No, I don't know how to fix it.

gedy 7mo ago
In the end companies don't need to hook up to the sewer pipe that floods applications. What worked in past was (heaven forbid) technical hiring manager looking at resumes, etc and reaching out to clearly qualified candidates. Not hr 20-somethings with humanities degrees. Sorry
nitwit005 7mo ago
Getting a lot of applications that don't meet your standard doesn't force you to raise you bar. You still just need someone who meets your standard. It's quite rare for companies to have evidence to support their hiring methods, which unfortunately means it's heavily driven by trends.
- tmoertel 7mo ago
  > Getting a lot of applications that don't meet your standard doesn't force you to raise you[r] bar. You still just need someone who meets your standard. I'm not sure that first sentence true. Let me play Devil's advocate: What's the primary cause of not being able to find someone who meets your standard when you already get lots of applications? It's that your hiring process is bogged down by the masses of unwanted candidates you must evaluate to find the few wanted candidates in the crowd of applicants. And what's the fix? It's better screening. Which is raising your bar, isn't it? Even if it's only to add cargo-cult screens to your bar, it's making the bar more selective, isn't it? Fewer people clear it, right?
  - nitwit005 7mo ago
    Arbitrary filtering of candidates is always an option, but then you may as well do it as cheaply as possible. Throw out half the resumes.
    - dwohnitmok 7mo ago
      Arbitrary filtering of candidates doesn't reduce the effort that it takes. Let's say 1 out of 1000 of the candidates you see is what you need. The total amount of effort to find the right candidate is still the same. But throwing out half the resumes just doubles the amount of time until you find the candidate you need (you just spread lower effort over a longer time). On the other hand if you "raise your bar" (let's say you do so by some method that makes it twice as expensive to judge a candidate; twice as likely to reject a candidate that would fit what you need, i.e. doubles your false negative rate; but cuts down on the number of applications by 10x, so that now 1 out of 100 candidates are what you need, which isn't that far off the mark for certain kinds of things), you cut down the effort (and time) you need to spend on finding a candidate by over double. EDIT: On reflection I think we're mainly talking past each other. You are thinking of a scenario where all stages take roughly the same amount of effort/time, whereas tmorel and I are thinking of a scenario where different stages take different amounts of effort/time. If you "raise the bar" on the stages that take less amount of effort/time (assuming that those stages still have some amount of selection usefulness) then you will reduce the overall amount of time/energy spent on hiring someone that meets your final bar.
      - nitwit005 7mo ago
        I wasn't suggesting arbitrarily removing candidates was a good idea, but simply responding to their specific devils advocate example of applying "cargo cult screens", which would presumably be arbitrary.
    - tmoertel 7mo ago
      I wasn't suggesting arbitrary filtering. That's a straw-man interpretation of what I wrote. Even if a firm cargo-cult copies the screening practices of the big-tech firms, they are going to be much better at selecting good hires than arbitrary filtering would.
RobotToaster 7mo ago
Require paper application. If someone has to pay for a stamp it will stop spam applications.
- deathanatos 7mo ago
  … needing to pay for postage hardly stops the spam I receive in my own mail. Even the most trivially absurd stuff, like "install rooftop solar" — I don't own a roof.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - RobotToaster 7mo ago
    Mass mailing usually gets a hefty bulk discount.
sds357 7mo ago
Maybe we should go back to show up in person to drop off your resume
- ccosky 7mo ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if eventually hiring becomes heavily dependent on personal referrals. That way you know you're at least dealing with a real person and not a bot, a North Korean trying to infiltrate your company, or someone who isn't even authorized to work in your country.
tayo42 7mo ago
Certification process like what Cisco has. All companies attempt to give the same interviews, just have one centralized organization give two programing questions and two system design questions and some kind of proof once you pass it. You filter every one that can't pass the interview in the first place, you get a better interview experience, and just focus on experience
- singleshot_ 7mo ago
  This sounds an awful lot like a college diploma.
  - tayo42 7mo ago
    Colleges aren't all equal. Professional certifications are different
    - hunterpayne 7mo ago
      Professional certifications have a terrible reputation for good reason. You are perhaps too young to know why this is a silly idea. But its been tried and it failed spectacularly.
      - acheron 7mo ago
        It works in essentially every other profession. Programming isn’t that special.
        jjmarr 7mo ago
        In essentially every other profession the credential is gated behind years of work experience and often a degree or course. We already have such a credential. It's called "lasting two years at a FAANG+ without getting fired". If you do that you can get interviews anywhere.
        operatingthetan 7mo ago
eikenberry 7mo ago
Smaller companies is one fix. These are almost all problems of fast growth and scale.
- ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago
  The problem is that spambots don’t care how big the company is. I know folks that advertised local Office Manager positions for tiny companies, and got hundreds of totally unqualified and unrelated rèsumès, and that was before AI was common. The “good” news, was, that it was pretty easy to bin the spam.
hunterpayne 7mo ago
And why would this be the case? Maybe the solution is to ban AI from the hiring process. This seems like companies being hoisted by their own petard. This is because they are the ones who drove the hiring market to be this way. They are the ones who started using AI in the hiring process. They are the ones who decided to make applying so much work driving applicants to use AI to survive. Also, if you are having trouble hiring right now, that is 1000% a skill issue. It is easier to hire good talent right now than ever before. So I have absolutely 0 sympathy for this POV. Go down to your HR department if you want to see who is at fault. PS You fix it by charging $1 to apply for jobs. Took me all of 30 seconds to figure that one out.
- encom 7mo ago
  You have invented micro-payments, which has never worked, ever.
  - mistrial9 7mo ago
    micro-payments were sabotaged by existing financial interests on multiple levels
- switchbak 7mo ago
  > charging $1 to apply for jobs Yeah, I don't see anyone lining up to game that system. Maybe you ought to think about that a little longer than 30 seconds.
- diacritical 7mo ago
  I wouldn't pay anything to a company I'm applying to, but I would gladly send a small amount of money to a charity and show them the relevant bank or cryptocurrency proof if they explain why they need the micropayment. They could present me with a list of 10 or 10000 charities, I'd pick 1 and put "micropayment for applying to company X" in the comment of the payment. That way I know I'm not giving money to some huge corporation and they know I think applying to their job should at least cost me Y amounts of currency. And if they waste more than an hour of my time with the hiring process, they could similarly pay a charity some money per hour. That was neither me nor the company will feel cheated and in the end, no matter how the hiring turns out, a charity will have benefited.

by bbkane 7mo ago

gedy 7mo ago

In the end companies don't need to hook up to the sewer pipe that floods applications. What worked in past was (heaven forbid) technical hiring manager looking at resumes, etc and reaching out to clearly qualified candidates. Not hr 20-somethings with humanities degrees. Sorry

nitwit005 7mo ago

Getting a lot of applications that don't meet your standard doesn't force you to raise you bar. You still just need someone who meets your standard. It's quite rare for companies to have evidence to support their hiring methods, which unfortunately means it's heavily driven by trends.

tmoertel 7mo ago
> Getting a lot of applications that don't meet your standard doesn't force you to raise you[r] bar. You still just need someone who meets your standard. I'm not sure that first sentence true. Let me play Devil's advocate: What's the primary cause of not being able to find someone who meets your standard when you already get lots of applications? It's that your hiring process is bogged down by the masses of unwanted candidates you must evaluate to find the few wanted candidates in the crowd of applicants. And what's the fix? It's better screening. Which is raising your bar, isn't it? Even if it's only to add cargo-cult screens to your bar, it's making the bar more selective, isn't it? Fewer people clear it, right?
- nitwit005 7mo ago
  Arbitrary filtering of candidates is always an option, but then you may as well do it as cheaply as possible. Throw out half the resumes.
  - dwohnitmok 7mo ago
    Arbitrary filtering of candidates doesn't reduce the effort that it takes. Let's say 1 out of 1000 of the candidates you see is what you need. The total amount of effort to find the right candidate is still the same. But throwing out half the resumes just doubles the amount of time until you find the candidate you need (you just spread lower effort over a longer time). On the other hand if you "raise your bar" (let's say you do so by some method that makes it twice as expensive to judge a candidate; twice as likely to reject a candidate that would fit what you need, i.e. doubles your false negative rate; but cuts down on the number of applications by 10x, so that now 1 out of 100 candidates are what you need, which isn't that far off the mark for certain kinds of things), you cut down the effort (and time) you need to spend on finding a candidate by over double. EDIT: On reflection I think we're mainly talking past each other. You are thinking of a scenario where all stages take roughly the same amount of effort/time, whereas tmorel and I are thinking of a scenario where different stages take different amounts of effort/time. If you "raise the bar" on the stages that take less amount of effort/time (assuming that those stages still have some amount of selection usefulness) then you will reduce the overall amount of time/energy spent on hiring someone that meets your final bar.
    - nitwit005 7mo ago
      I wasn't suggesting arbitrarily removing candidates was a good idea, but simply responding to their specific devils advocate example of applying "cargo cult screens", which would presumably be arbitrary.
  - tmoertel 7mo ago
    I wasn't suggesting arbitrary filtering. That's a straw-man interpretation of what I wrote. Even if a firm cargo-cult copies the screening practices of the big-tech firms, they are going to be much better at selecting good hires than arbitrary filtering would.

RobotToaster 7mo ago

Require paper application. If someone has to pay for a stamp it will stop spam applications.

deathanatos 7mo ago
… needing to pay for postage hardly stops the spam I receive in my own mail. Even the most trivially absurd stuff, like "install rooftop solar" — I don't own a roof.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- RobotToaster 7mo ago
  Mass mailing usually gets a hefty bulk discount.

sds357 7mo ago

Maybe we should go back to show up in person to drop off your resume

ccosky 7mo ago
I wouldn't be surprised if eventually hiring becomes heavily dependent on personal referrals. That way you know you're at least dealing with a real person and not a bot, a North Korean trying to infiltrate your company, or someone who isn't even authorized to work in your country.

tayo42 7mo ago

Certification process like what Cisco has. All companies attempt to give the same interviews, just have one centralized organization give two programing questions and two system design questions and some kind of proof once you pass it. You filter every one that can't pass the interview in the first place, you get a better interview experience, and just focus on experience

singleshot_ 7mo ago
This sounds an awful lot like a college diploma.
- tayo42 7mo ago
  Colleges aren't all equal. Professional certifications are different
  - hunterpayne 7mo ago
    Professional certifications have a terrible reputation for good reason. You are perhaps too young to know why this is a silly idea. But its been tried and it failed spectacularly.
    - acheron 7mo ago
      It works in essentially every other profession. Programming isn’t that special.
      - jjmarr 7mo ago
        In essentially every other profession the credential is gated behind years of work experience and often a degree or course. We already have such a credential. It's called "lasting two years at a FAANG+ without getting fired". If you do that you can get interviews anywhere.
      - operatingthetan 7mo ago

eikenberry 7mo ago

Smaller companies is one fix. These are almost all problems of fast growth and scale.

ChrisMarshallNY 7mo ago
The problem is that spambots don’t care how big the company is. I know folks that advertised local Office Manager positions for tiny companies, and got hundreds of totally unqualified and unrelated rèsumès, and that was before AI was common. The “good” news, was, that it was pretty easy to bin the spam.

hunterpayne 7mo ago

And why would this be the case? Maybe the solution is to ban AI from the hiring process. This seems like companies being hoisted by their own petard. This is because they are the ones who drove the hiring market to be this way. They are the ones who started using AI in the hiring process. They are the ones who decided to make applying so much work driving applicants to use AI to survive. Also, if you are having trouble hiring right now, that is 1000% a skill issue. It is easier to hire good talent right now than ever before. So I have absolutely 0 sympathy for this POV. Go down to your HR department if you want to see who is at fault. PS You fix it by charging $1 to apply for jobs. Took me all of 30 seconds to figure that one out.

encom 7mo ago
You have invented micro-payments, which has never worked, ever.
- mistrial9 7mo ago
  micro-payments were sabotaged by existing financial interests on multiple levels
switchbak 7mo ago
> charging $1 to apply for jobs Yeah, I don't see anyone lining up to game that system. Maybe you ought to think about that a little longer than 30 seconds.
diacritical 7mo ago
I wouldn't pay anything to a company I'm applying to, but I would gladly send a small amount of money to a charity and show them the relevant bank or cryptocurrency proof if they explain why they need the micropayment. They could present me with a list of 10 or 10000 charities, I'd pick 1 and put "micropayment for applying to company X" in the comment of the payment. That way I know I'm not giving money to some huge corporation and they know I think applying to their job should at least cost me Y amounts of currency. And if they waste more than an hour of my time with the hiring process, they could similarly pay a charity some money per hour. That was neither me nor the company will feel cheated and in the end, no matter how the hiring turns out, a charity will have benefited.