This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I'm applying to jobs, and the amount of AI assessments, rounds, AI interviewers, questionnaires, is nuts.
One of these emails for example,
It's rough.
I'm glad I'm near death, every day I hope the black hole at the center of the galaxy will swallow the whole solar system.
Man this bullshit seems to have gotten so much worse since I last looked for a job in 2023
Prior to my current job, I worked at one for 7 years. I'm an industrial electrician, so maybe the demand is higher. But in 2023, I applied for 12 jobs, got 3 interviews which resulted in 2 offers. All cold applications on indeed. I was picky about which jobs I even applied for. For one of the offers I did not want the job and it paid too little so I strung them along as much as I could before I finally turned it down as I had a feeling I was getting my current job, but it took forever for some management to come back from field service for my second interview.
I've been hiring for a year now and I can't get anywhere. Open the job listing for 5 minutes and have 10 million applications. Many are fake made up people. Many are repeated entries, like 100 for the same person but with slight differences, like they are trying to hedge their bets. Have to close the listing after those 5 minutes since there's already far too many to sift through, which means only automated, generated applications got in.
Sift through all of those, interview a few folks, find no worthy talent, start over. It impossible, there is just too much noise.
Would it make any sense to switch to some kind of physical application process? Not necessarily in person, but require the applications/résumés be mailed in? The advantage that these automated models have is that they are basically for the user to submit as many applications as possible. Requiring that the application be physically mailed would create at least some small barrier and cost that would mean the applicants wouldn't be able to apply a near infinite number of times.
Almost better off posting the address where you are hiring and see who comes in person to apply. That would be a bigger hurdle for serious applicants.
Or they can send a letter 😅
I got a job in 2017 when I did an application, heard of a widespread computer failure because of shit Windows security, and used that as an excuse to send my application again in paper, 'just in case'. I got the job. It was perhaps the best job I ever had.
I got my current job by doing contract work so I was already in the chair when they hired me full time.
They'd have to solve the riddle of envelopes and stamps.
Just use AI to fill out the assessments. We are interviewing and only half joked that if the applicant didn't use AI in some way they aren't qualified. Just don't try to hide it.
The job market was already ruined, AI is just an yet another excuse that corporations trot out. The heart of the problem is that corporations do not care about society, simply existing to line the pockets of a few people within their ranks. Nothing else matters to them. Country and humanity are equally worthless in the eyes of the elite.
"It will create more jobs." is the equivalent of trickle down economics.
Have been applying from a while and have deduced that any org that take OA without cam on or without monitoring or takes any AI interview is just isn't interested in hiring
What is "OA" ?
Just use "connections," you know, the fancy word for "rich friends." (At least that's all they mean when first getting into industry)
giving an applicant an engineering test (kind of like a crossword puzzle with code instead of words)
lol.
Remember the pre Covid times when we had mostly on site job interviews? Yeah turns out it's harder to cheat in person. Maybe companies should go back to that and pay a wage that is fair for the area they operate from.
Even for some individual contributor positions I budget to fly them in for a final interview. No access to AI, no ability to hide behind a bot. I’ve actually knocked some people out in the final round because they refused to meet in person.
A few hundred to a thousand spent on travel up front is worth the insurance of the six-digit salary we offer.
Six-digit salary you say?
Maude you say?
How's his wife holding up?
Impossible. The CEOs would have less time on their islands that way.
Corrected headline: AI gave companies a new excuse to make jobs worse
That’s a thing too, but this article is about interviewing and hiring.
AI teleprompters for remote interviews, AI generated resumes, AI candidates screening, etc.
Everything really shifted aggressively over the last 12 months.
Works both ways too. The number of AI generated resumes I've gone through, the incomprehensible business speak..
"We've decided to hire chatgpt since that is who wrote all of the applications."
I guess you were hiring. If that's the case, would you prefer a manually written resume that is not matched to the listed position and skills (because applicants now have to send so many resumes that they don't have any more time to match them)?
No no. I want the applicant to be human. Don't bullshit. No buzzwords. Just say I can do this, I want to do that, I like turtles. Be yourself and don't fill the resume with fake ass shit, it's so obvious and depressing
So many interviews devolve into:
"Why do you want to work for this company?"
Which is code for
"Just how desperate for this job are you?"
The bullshit isnt for you, its for the AI filter that handles intake before you read a single application. (And if your not using AI to filter, your getting spammed by AI applications because everyone else is playing that game) Applicants are trying to beat the machine, and when the requirements get stricter the applicants just use more AI to send out more applications. Its a vicious cycle that will only end when hiring managers filter with something that a machine can not do.
Dont even get started on the personal data collection of the job sites. Its the most soul crushing thing to be looking for a job right now, anything to make you stand out of a crowd is ignored, volume of applications and adherance to posted requirments are the only way to get a fleeting interaction with a human.
I feel like the solution either needs to go back to in person and paper ads or a personal website acts as your resume, anything other than what we have right now.
My experience with this is receiving emails with "we will not proceed with your application" and absolutely no indication what or why, for positions that I'm uniquely qualified for.
I'm still looking, don't use Assumed Intelligence, and want to work, but it's not going well.
I suspect that your needs for human written applications is being thwarted by bots filtering your applicants before you even see them.
The problem is 99% of hiring is looking for specific keywords and phrases like "increased revenue". Since they always do that applicants fall into the same patterns, like an evolutionary arms race.
Problem with that is most jobs are using an AI ingestion and rating system. So if I were a job applicant who doesn’t like AI and prefers to hand write resumes but I need a job to feed my family, I’m going to just blast out the AI resumes anyway because it just has the highest chance of working.
Hiring manager here… yes. Give me a hand created resume, that shows what you did. I can extrapolate skills without it needing to match every bullet point word for word. Bonus is that you don’t need to butcher your resume, just put your best foot forward.
It has certainly not done any good to job search.
For example, search for job ads for "embedded Linux software engineer" in your area. Notice the phrasing and keywords which are used. Now, ask on chatgpt.com to write a job ad for an "Embedded Linux software developer", without any further info. You'll see that half of the job ads use, at least in large parts, exactly the same phrasing and the same silly list of technically unrelated protocols - and demand senior experience in real-time systems, which is actually needed in perhaps 1% of use cases. And looking for Linux kernel developers which "are experts in C++"....
I don't like it but you gotta game whatever the current meta is. If they are using AI, you gotta figure out which AI they are using and game that. Maximize your chances to get through the automated bullshit. Once you get through the bullshit you can find out what the job really requires and showcase skills. Its dumb to jump through these hoops, but this is the current game. Play that shit.
I have used Copilot to generate specialist job titles and their detailed job description for staffing, extracted directly from documentation and half a dozen knowledge transfer session, under severe time pressure. It did a much better job than I could possibly do.
I’m sorry it sucks.
It seems like there’s a dividing line between newer techs and senior techs that determines the difficulty in getting new gigs. I don’t know where it is but I crossed it at some point in the last 10 years.
Each time I’m done with a job I’m sure there will be some kind of horrible gauntlet to get the next engagement, but it stopped happening. Maybe I just made a lucky connection but it keeps happening. I think they just want candidates who have seen some shit.
I guess the point is that eventually you’ll have done something that gives you the right gray in the ponytail. Keep at it.
I have been in software for 20 years and I never had trouble finding work until this past year. All of a sudden it's a lot harder. I'm just one data point but this time feels different for me. The job market feels a lot more disjointed and full of spoofs and fake listings.
I am a second data point.
Yeah I have over 25 years and I also have had the assesment stuff although not to often and not every time. Basically I went into tech because it was a field where they wanted people and if you were sharp you could get a job. They don't seem to have the demand they used to but I don't see another place to pivot and honestly I don't think I can change careers the way I did over 25 years ago.
job markets ruined work
AI has Tinderized hiring. Workers are applying to hundreds of positions and never hearing back; companies are receiving thousands of resumes and struggling to respond. More than that, AI has Amazoned hiring.[...]
