[HN Gopher] Most people don't finish online job applications ___________________________________________________________________ Most people don't finish online job applications Author : Oras Score : 329 points Date : 2022-10-26 08:49 UTC (14 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.shrm.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.shrm.org) | [deleted] | pjmlp wrote: | The best part I hate is being forced to upload my CV, which as | expected is never handled properly by the system, and then I have | to manually replicate the CV entering data into tiny form | entries. | | Also I don't want to give access to my LinkedIn and Xing accounts | for data import, which is anyway, again, messed up. | Grothendank wrote: | This is why I want to build an AI that goes around filling | thousands and thousands of job applications with my information, | and just gives me a firehose of the BEST remote interview | opportunities. But then I show up at the interview just to mock | the interviewer! | | I would add metrics, and a global leader board to see who can | jilt the largest number of the most valuable companies! | | It would be a fun hobby, that many many people could enjoy | together! Lets make hiring just /impossible/ for companies, so | long as they want to have difficult yet exploitable job | application processes! | shapefrog wrote: | I would estimate 90% of people who finish the application never | hear another word from the employer - with the bulk (~75%) being | automated responses [1]. The response rate from clicking apply to | begin the process is a wonderful 0.2%. | | I guess this is why websites reinventing recruitment and | recruiters exist, although I suspect 'back in the day' when you | would circle ads in the newspaper things were better, much better | ... | | [1] Annecdata collected 2018-2022* | hardware2win wrote: | I hate when I cannot just drop a CV, but I have to pick an open | position | smeej wrote: | What a lot of these comments seem to be missing is that this | article is focused on the kind of menial retail labor nearly | anybody could do. Those are the Home Depot-type jobs with the | gigantic staffing shortages. | | What the article seems to be missing is that if an applicant | doesn't want to be there enough to spend five minutes and 52 | clicks filling out their form, the company knows full well that | if that applicant becomes an employee, they're going to stop | showing up at the slightest inconvenience and inconvenience their | team, leaving them short-staffed again. | | This process at this job level is a glorified captcha. Instead of | proving you aren't a robot, prove you have at least a tiny | interest in getting this job. | im3w1l wrote: | Yeah there are important selection effects at work. You nailed | one but I think you missed another. Five minutes is the | completion time for those that _did_ complete it. The people | who abandoned the application might have done so because they | realized it would have taken hours or even days to dig up the | relevant information for the required fields. | | The people who can complete it in five minutes are those that | have all the information at their fingertips, because they | already applied to tens or hundreds of other jobs. The person | who has worked for your competitor for 15 years, and is | considering making one single application to you will have to | do more work. | happyopossum wrote: | > The person who has worked for your competitor for 15 years, | and is considering making one single application to you will | have to do more work. | | I think you're gonna have to support that assumption a bit | more - job apps (especially ones that can be done in 5 | minutes) don't ask for a bunch of data that isn't generally | at your fingertips, and your example would make the process | even easier - 1 job in 15 years is easy to remember and | faster to type than 8 jobs in the same timeframe. | im3w1l wrote: | "Start date.. Hmm I think it was 15 years ago.. Or was it | 14? Let's see, I finished university year N, and then I | worked at X for 5 years... I think? Maybe I can check my | bank statements... they go back 3 years online, and 10 | years if you ask them nicely.. maybe I have an old diary in | some box in the attic? Well it's late now, I'll remember to | check when I clean it up next month" | mixmastamyk wrote: | > anybody could do | | And anybody's could work for anybody. So if we want to get more | than 8% through the filter we'll have to reduce friction. | ExxKA wrote: | I am going to change this with Trovinto.com | | Trovinto doesn't ask for CVs or your life story, it just | validates candidates competencies with less than 10 job specific | questions, before they ever reach an application tracking system. | | It helps HR and hiring managers generate a relevant interview | guide and then it automatically evaluates and ranks the | submissions. | | I am looking for feedback so please try it at | https://use.trovinto.com | | Let me know if you are interested in partnering. | mixmastamyk wrote: | I know I've personally been enraged at being expected to write my | life story into a thirdparty system and then ignored or not given | an offer. To the point I will not entertain these things any | longer until an offer is in hand. | bilsbie wrote: | One can only retype so much of their resume. | LegitShady wrote: | "oh thanks for filling in the resume fields after uploading your | resume! Now get you game face on because we want to record you | answering 10 minutes of stupid questions on video." | | "No." | DeathArrow wrote: | Most of my interviews came from applying through LinkedIn. Some | companies are content with you only clicking apply through | LinkedIn and getting the data from there, while others have you | redirected to a terrible mess like Workday and waste your time | doing mindless data entry. | | Most of the companies who contacted me back for an interview are | the ones who got their data straight from LinkedIn. | dataminded wrote: | We need a standard schema for resume data. This problem shouldn't | be an ML problem. | mathattack wrote: | Any company that uses archaic software externally probably uses | crappy legacy software internally. It's a sign they don't value | your time. | rafabrodz wrote: | I have just filled a job application with 33 inputs which 17 of | these were textareas. aint nobody got time for that.. | samtho wrote: | I have found, being on both sides of the interview table, the | jobs that get applications have the following characteristics: | | 1. Salary range | | 2. A short list of "must have" with most items being in the "nice | to have" | | 3. No bullshit form questions, maybe a quick text-only "cover | letter" which is ultimately just a Captcha. | | And this makes sense, why would I waste my time filing out some | asinine personality test or resume re-entry when the pay makes | this a non-starter? Being too greedy with your requirements | prevents people who would otherwise be qualified for the role | from applying in the first place. | | A lot of these larger companies have had the luxury of having a | high false negative rate but it's one they are finding they | cannot afford any longer. | | Unfortunately the high entry bar coupled with the "sink or swim" | once your in a company just makes people inflate their resumes | and job hop once they get a better offer. We've seen it in tech | for years and now we're starting to see it in other industries as | well. | kennend3 wrote: | > why would I waste my time filing out some asinine personality | test or resume re-entry | | I'm currently looking for employment and find this frustrating. | | In return for me spending 10-15 mins filling out their | personality test, i get nothing? At least give me the results | or something for my time? | danielschonfeld wrote: | In the same token it would be amazing if doctors in America tried | calling their own office pretending to be someone else and see | what it's like to make an appointment to their office. | | Same with filling their forms for the first time (proceeds to | write your name 13 times, your date of birth 23 times, your full | address 8 times etc etc). | akuji1993 wrote: | My last fews doctors visits at my German GP doctor have taken | me 25 calls or more to get to a person. This is a practice of | two doctors, not a huge house. I think Covid has done a number | to those telephone systems, especially since you can only get | vaccinated and PCR-tested through gp's now for the most part. | | I'd love to know if they are aware how bad it really is. You're | sick and want to just stay in bed, but need to see them to | check up on you. And then you lie there and call them 25 times | on repeat until finally, maybe, someone picks up. | kennend3 wrote: | Not just Doctors, but dentists and that whole group have major | issues with their "customers". | | My dentist requires i cancel an appointment by calling in with | 2 working days notice. Failure to do so can result in a charge. | | She has also called to reschedule my appointments with under | one day notice??? | | Last time she did this, i told her there will be a short-notice | cancellation fee. She refused to pay, and refused to recognize | the irony in what she was doing. | | She also texts you to confirm your appointments, but the only | option you get is to "accept" - you cant respond to | cancel/reschedule.. this must be done via the phone only??? | bluGill wrote: | The reason for name and DOB is each sheet of paper needs to | have that just in case somehow they get separated. | | Though it should be not more than once per two-sided sheet of | paper | Root_Denied wrote: | Yeah, this is more likely compliance under HIPAA or other | medical records regulations and not something that doctor | offices are doing just to make things more difficult. | | When you have surgeons making sure to mark the leg they're | going to amputate with sharpie so they don't remove the wrong | one it's not that out there to try and make sure each | document has a complete set of basic information on it for | anyone looking at it. | jacksonkmarley wrote: | (Calling the NHS doctor in the UK.) | | Me: I want to make an appointment | | Receptionist: you can only make an appointment on the same day | as you call, and you have to call between 0830 and 0900 | | Me: Really? Er... | | (Next day around 0845) Ring ring ring ring ring... | | (0900) Me: No-one answered between 0830 and 0900 | | Receptionist: you can only make an appointment on the same day | as you call, and you have to call between 0830 and 0900 | | Me: ??? | lowercased wrote: | Most companies don't contact or reply to people who do finish | online job applications. | 4ad wrote: | Well I'll tell you why I don't finish mine. It is because their | UI and UX sucks. They ask for a PDF, but they always fail to | parse it, and trying to correct the parsed data is an exercise in | frustration. Also, they don't let you _only_ manually type-in the | data, they require the PDF to do a crappy job of parsing from. | | And then they don't let me fill-in things the way I want to. For | example, as a one-man operation I have worked with multiple | clients at the same time and mediated and implemented projects | that were a collaboration between several clients. Their web UI | won't accept that sort of thing. | | Just let me upload a damn PDF, or even just let me type-in free- | form text. | colechristensen wrote: | A complicated -- usually poorly functioning -- application form | is a solid red flag, especially when I've given the information | in another form, usually a resume. | | Then again, I've gotten all of my positions through responding to | the constant recruiter spam beyond the age of... idk 22 or | something. A mostly out of date LinkedIn profile is almost | exclusively my career search tool of choice. | ny711 wrote: | The job application system is broken and is in dire need of a | fix. Half the time companies just post jobs to test the | candidates they can get when they really have an internal person | they are going to hire. | riffic wrote: | job apps are definitely not the way to score a job. they're for | suckers. | | the best way is to work your network for a connection. Steve | Dalton has the best literature on this concept. | k8sToGo wrote: | Recently I wanted to apply to a company. First they had you read | some weird document telling you how they can't pay high salaries, | so you should be modest with your expectations. | | Then further down the form they require you to record a video | introducing yourself and telling them why they should hire you. | | Ended up closing the form right there. | | Do these people not realize how annoying their process is and how | talented people don't have to put up with crap like this? | patcon wrote: | Funny, I think that's great. | | It's considerate of an applicants time by saving them the | hassle about price conversation up front. That's for your | benefit, not theirs (they lose the "grip" they might otherwise | have at price negotiation time due to your sunk cost, which is | totally to their benefit). Some applicants know to ask about | wage this early, but many don't, so it's equalizing to let | anyone opt out pre-pipeline, not just the confident men who've | done a billion interviews and know to ask asap. | | As for video, that feels like a company trying to supplement a | prior process that used to lean a lot on in-person networking | and associated soft skills assessment, which is lost in online | apply processes. Not everyone feels at ease in networking | settings, and so many ppl don't show up to those "meet first" | spaces. This is giving the introverts and non-urban ppl a way | to enter their pipeline while still requiring those applicants | to put some of their personality on the table early on in the | filter. | | I dunno, I don't get the criticisms in this sub-thread, but I | assume commenters have a neurotype that this specifically rubs | the wrong way? | wombat-man wrote: | Just post the salary range then?? I'll decide if it sounds | right. | itronitron wrote: | I think the lack of reciprocity is the issue for people, | especially when it comes to uploading a video of yourself | talking to an imaginary person. | | Regarding price conversation, salary is always negotiable | after an offer is made even when an employer says that it | isn't, the applicant just needs to be willing to say no. | Balgair wrote: | The video thing is dodgy. Being able to see the multitude | of 'legally troublesome factors' of the initial applicants | is making my inner lawyer scream. You can easily bias based | on race, sex, wedding ring, kids toys in the background, | location, religion, etc. | [deleted] | arethuza wrote: | A few years back I took a call from a recruiter who wanted me | to apply for a role at am investment bank - for less money, | less holidays and longer hours than the role I had at the time. | | He was genuinely confused as to why I wasn't excited by this | "opportunity". | [deleted] | mikro2nd wrote: | Funny (true) story: In one memorable case, I went the opposite | route and stated my salary expectations up front, knowing full | well that they were likely above the HR-approved salary scales | the company was likely to offer. The point was I was not | prepared to work for that particular company (life insurance) | unless the money was eye-wateringly good. | | Despite their (supposedly) knowing that, they put me through | all their HR hoops _anyway_ , all the way to a final interview, | when the manager I'd have worked for looked across the table at | me and said, "So what sort of salary would you have in mind?" | | I looked him in the eye, didn't blink, didn't blush. Repeated | the figure I'd given up front. The interview was over. | | Why the _fuck_ did they bother with all the palaver when they | _knew_ they were never going to pay that much. Did they think I | 'd blink? | | Last laugh: I ended up doing a short consulting stint there | several years later and took more off them in a couple of weeks | than the annual salary they'd failed to meet. | nsxwolf wrote: | > Last laugh: I ended up doing a short consulting stint there | several years later and took more off them in a couple of | weeks than the annual salary they'd failed to meet. | | This is still a dream of mine. I'd like to pull this off | somehow. The answer is apparently not "Fiverr" or "Upwork". | lowercased wrote: | The answer is | | 1. having a network of trusted people you've worked with in | the past | | 2. building some sort of public reputation where people | seek you out. | | They're not mutually exclusive, but #1 is probably easiest | for people already in a job. Go to networking events (covid | has muted a lot of this, I know, but it's coming back). | Tell people you're looking for consulting work or open to | new jobs. Be nice. | | Yes, the answer for most people is not fiverr or upwork. | I've known a few folks who've done good there, but they're | outliers in my network. And even then, the few businesses | I've known that have used platforms like that use it as a | test ground, and then go direct with someone they click | with. | | That said, I've never taken a full year salary in 2 weeks. | I have taken my own full year salary matching my early | earning days from 30 years ago in 2-3 months now. | alanbernstein wrote: | You might be overestimating their ability to communicate that | information internally throughout the process. Even if their | process was set up to request that information, it's likely | that many of the interviewers/hiring managers didn't see it | or remember it. | mikro2nd wrote: | Yep. I was never totally sure who was bullshitting me, the | manager/interviewer or the recruiter person who'd started | the ball rolling, hence my "supposedly" above. | dcminter wrote: | Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;) | | I believe the thinking is: "This is a _great_ filter to ensure | we only get great and passionate people! " when the reality is: | "This is a _great_ filter to ensure that only desperate or | unimaginative people will apply! " | q-big wrote: | > I believe the thinking is: "This is a _great_ filter to | ensure we only get great and passionate people! " | | Assume this were true. Even if this were the case, this might | backfire: "passionate" easily works against a company. | | This means that if you filter for passionate people, but | reject such passionate candidates, these candidates might | passionately work against your company (e.g. tell every | friend what a shithole of a company this is etc.). | | So, filtering for passionate people in the hiring process | (even if it worked) is in my opinion dangerous idea. | dcminter wrote: | I sincerely doubt that kind of second order thinking is | much in evidence in HR departments. | MrPatan wrote: | Yes, but sufficiently advanced incompetence is | indistiguishable from malice | PainfullyNormal wrote: | > Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;) | | Please stop saying this, especially if you have no actual | evidence of incompetence. It's the equivalent of clicking | your heels together three times because you really, really | don't want to live in a world full of casual malice. Wishing | doesn't make it so. | ianai wrote: | When we're talking about widely observed practices across | broad swaths of activity (this case hiring practices) then | we can, ought, and need to move from assuming incompetence | to assuming malice. That saying was always meant to be tied | with another saying "fool me once, shame on you, fool me | twice, shame on me." And the other quote about doing the | same thing twice and expecting a different result is a good | definition of insanity. | ruined wrote: | folly is the cloak of knavery | eschneider wrote: | At the interview stage, one doesn't need to decide if they're | evil or stupid. Just say 'no' and move on. | jbirer wrote: | I doubt they are looking for talents / very competitive | people. It's more in the lines of "competent just enough but | very obedient / willing to put up with a lot". | Tangurena2 wrote: | The first time you end up working for a malignant narcissist, | you will never ever state that quote ever again. As long as | you live. If you ever work for a sociopath, it might take a | couple of jobs getting abused by sociopaths to wipe that | quote out of your memory. | heisenbit wrote: | The problem is the potential for malice in a place where | incompetence reigns. Management incompetence is malice | waiting to happen - not necessarily by the incompetent ones | which makes it really hard to fight when it does. | ManlyBread wrote: | >Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;) | | I no longer subscribe to this line of thought after seeing | several borderline sociopaths use this very same mental model | in order to try and manipulate people into doing their | bidding. | jstarfish wrote: | There's probably a term for it, but I'm noticing being | "deliberately unsuccessful" is becoming more of a thing | with the sketchier members of my family. Seems to be a | tactic in the NEET playbook. | | As I see it, "intentional failure" is just a euphemism for | sabotage. | bluGill wrote: | You will not find many passionate people anywhere. There are | a lot of great people who will do a good job for 8 hours and | then go home. You can find a few passionate people who dream | of working for you, but not enough who are also great that | you can staff a company on them. | | I work for John Deere, one of those companies that (where I | live) has a lot of loyal customers who teach their children | we are the best. Even still the majority of great people I | work with just want to work their job and go home. (to avoid | burn out we don't allow the passionate to work more than 8 | hours very often, so the difference between great; and great | and passionate isn't significant) | kuramitropolis wrote: | >Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;) | | This keeps getting repeated. But honestly these days I can't | tell the god damn difference. What is malice, other than | incompetent people struggling to survive like anyone else, | and paradoxically sticking up for each other through the same | repetitive cycle of abuse that prevents them from aspiring to | competence? | ozim wrote: | This and that road to hell is paved with good intentions. | SuoDuanDao wrote: | I don't think it's really different in a metaphysical | sense, but one views the object of irritation more as a | potential pupil than as an established enemy. | svnt wrote: | Malice is the conscious identification of that same pathway | and the active exploitation of it for the harm of others. | It's a fairly high bar in terms of the behavior of others. | | Functionally, though, your experiences may be very similar | on the receiving end of incompetence vs malice. | | edit: I want to append this to say: The purpose of the | original phrase in my opinion was to encourage cooperation | and communication as the solution. In a sufficiently | structured corporate environment this solution may be | impossible for reasons other than malicious behavior, in | which case the statement is without practical value. | laserlight wrote: | > The purpose of the original phrase in my opinion was to | encourage cooperation and communication as the solution. | | I agree that this might have been the original intention, | yet the phrase has become a way of virtue signaling and | looking down on those who assume malice. IMHO, difference | is minuscule, because in many cases consequences are the | same. | kuramitropolis wrote: | Exactly. | | Malice is a legal, quasi-religious concept. A tiger can | also quite actively exploit weaknesses and imbalances for | the harm of its prey, yet we don't judge the animal as | malicious - because we don't attribute concsiousness to | it in the same way we attribute it to humans. | | To have "malice", you need "intent", for which you need | need "consciousness", in the classical folk understanding | of the term: taking "selfhood", "free will", and | "adequate theory of mind" as axioms. Whatever the | scientific consensus on those, they seem to have little | explanatory power in the domain of business. They're also | a pretty high bar, so to speak - certainly higher than we | give 'em credit for. | | If those words really meant what they purported to mean, | we'd be functioning in a much more humane economy; but | for whatever reason these concepts just don't "stick" to | what's really going on in the day-to-day. They're just | the wishful thinking of Western humanist authors who were | trying to set an example, i.e. mold the world in their | own image a little bit. | | > Functionally, though, your experiences may be very | similar on the receiving end of incompetence vs malice. | | Precisely. And since we're just people who just have | objectives to accomplish, and our understanding of the | consciousness of others takes at best a pragmatic role in | pursuing those, our response to others failing us ends up | being essentially the same: looking for ways to enforce | compliance so that the counterparty delivers. | | At the end of the day, "attributing malice" vs. | "attributing incompetence" is about saving face - for the | counterparty as well as for ourselves. Either way, | dedicating effort to saving face detracts from the effort | of understanding the problem at hand, which like you said | is fundamentally structural. | tpxl wrote: | I'm going to disagree with you. | | > A tiger can also quite actively exploit weaknesses and | imbalances for the harm of its prey, yet we don't judge | the animal as malicious | | A tiger is not malicious when it harms prey, because the | intent is survival, and it cannot have that without harm. | The survival of abusive CEOs and managers does not | require harm to be done to anyone, yet they do it | (sometimes for no tangible benefit). | | > To have "malice", you need "intent" | | You need not intend for your actions to be malicious, for | them to be. If you are willfully ignorant of malicious | consequences of your actions, your actions are still | malicious. This is why "I didn't know what I was doing | was harming people" defense doesn't fly, not in the legal | sense and not in the moral. At some point it is your duty | to determine the consequences of your actions, and | something being your job is definitely over that | threshold. | svnt wrote: | > You need not intend for your actions to be malicious, | for them to be. If you are willfully ignorant of | malicious consequences of your actions, your actions are | still malicious. | | I think this is almost the same point as parent, albeit | slightly askew from that one. | | The hint is in your use of the word "willfully" -- that | is, you know what you are doing will result in harm, and | you choose to do it anyway. | | A difference is that "intending to harm" may be a | differently intractable behavior because it is | effectively sadism. That is a tighter reward loop than | "pretending it doesn't harm" which can just be avoidance. | | Of course whether or not you can ever learn which of | those (if it isn't both) you're dealing with is an | entirely different matter. | | We agree on the tiger, though I do wonder what she would | say if she could explain her actions. | FpUser wrote: | >"Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;)" | | One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. | shapefrog wrote: | > Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;) | | Actually this thought process has been problematic for me. | Seeing that everyone is actually incompetent is more | dangerous than there being a reason (good, bad or otherwise) | for their actions. | ben_w wrote: | > Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;) | | While this is true -- I would be very surprised if anyone was | actively malicious towards their hiring pool -- it's not an | important distinction when trying to decide which employer to | apply for. | HelloNurse wrote: | If someone is malicious they have a potential victims pool, | not a hiring pool. | dcminter wrote: | > it's not an important distinction when trying to decide | which employer to apply for | | Oh I completely agree. | | The funny thing is I actively enjoy writing - but I look at | the long questionnaire for some otherwise quite attractive | companies and sigh, and assume that everything internally | is just as clueless and so just pass them by for a company | who won't waste my time. | adamj9431 wrote: | Was this in tech? That's wild. | k8sToGo wrote: | Yes, a tech startup. | forgotmypw17 wrote: | I think it's kind of like scam emails with poor grammar... | TuringNYC wrote: | >> Recently I wanted to apply to a company. First they had you | read some weird document telling you how they can't pay high | salaries, so you should be modest with your expectations. | | My favorite one was an employer who low-balled me for a job in | NYC. Then he says "I know people who live in Pennsylvania and | commute in [read: the wage doesnt have to be sustenance wage in | NYC/suburbs, you can just commute to somewhere far away]." | suggesting that one can make budgets work if one tries hard | enough. | bluGill wrote: | Then they can hire such people. If they can find enough of | them. Or better yet they should move to Pennsylvania as that | is where they want to hire people from: they can then hire | people who would be willing to work for those wages but are | not willing for the commute. | spaetzleesser wrote: | "Do these people not realize how annoying their process is and | how talented people don't have to put up with crap like this?" | | Easy. They select for compliance, not skill. | protomolecule wrote: | "We don't need smart ones. We need loyal." -- from a classic | Soviet sci-fi book [0] which wasn't really about a different | planet. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_to_Be_a_God | PainfullyNormal wrote: | Then they have no business complaining about how hard it is | to find qualified candidates. | donedealomg wrote: | boppo1 wrote: | >talented people don't have to put up with crap like this? | | Is this true outside of tech? The only application I ever did | in finance/accounting that wasn't one of these annoying forms | was an IB interview I got through nepotistic networking, | nothing to do with my talent. | bluGill wrote: | Yes, there are lots of jobs, and talented people can switch. | | Jobs that pay well can treat their people worse - though | worse treatment is weird. There are places that treat their | people well, but because the job is considered unethical by | many they have to pay more. | marcosdumay wrote: | > Jobs that pay well can treat their people worse | | Technically they _can_. | | But on practice, jobs that treat people badly also tend to | pay badly. | xxs wrote: | >so you should be modest with your expectations; and how | talented people don't have to put up with crap | | that kind of sums it up - talented people won't apply there as | they won't be compensated and they will leave - waste of time. | kennend3 wrote: | myworkday is the flagship reason why! | | Find a job postsing on linkedin, click apply and you are | redirected to [abc].myworkday.com. | | Need an account first, so you create your 20th one on | *.myworkday.com | | Upload your resume for the 20th time, need to fix the exact same | data mistakes myworkday makes every time you upload your resume. | Repeat. | | What value does myworkday offer? why cant i just create one | account on myworkday and use it for any job i apply for? | | Why is myworkday so prevalent when the experience is terrible | from a job applicants perspective? | orthoxerox wrote: | Well, at least it's the same mistakes it makes. | kennend3 wrote: | If you look for the silver lining in things.. Yes, having it | make the exact same mistakes every time would fit the bill. | | Flip side, I'd LOVE to know why companies use it. Like what | does it do for them? Why does every company require its own | login, and its own resume? | | wouldn't it make more sense to have a large pool of resume's | in a single location? | jonathankoren wrote: | Companies love secrecy. However, you could still have | secrecy by just ACLing the resumes across the applied | companies. | | The downside is that you can't customize your resume for | each job, but that's easily fixed by hosting multiple | resumes. | abrax3141 wrote: | I once got banned from Yelp for scraping. (I was indeed scraping, | but it was for a class project. Nothing nefarious. So the ban was | fair, and I was expecting it.) They have some mechanism for | getting unbanned that I don't remember at the moment. So I did | that. Crickets. Still banned. Did it a couple more times. | Nothing. Weeks pass. F!! So I filled out a yelp job application | with random fake great-sounding stuff, and in the cover letter | explained that it was fake but your unbanning system doesn't | work. Unbanned in (as I recall) under 24hrs !! and got an email | both apologizing for the problem and asking if I wanted to come | in for a job interview. (Since this was my real account they knew | perfectly well who I was and presumably looked up my LinkedIn | profile, or something, since I told them that the filled in | resume was faked just to get their attention.) | | Moral of the story (maybe?): Just fill the thing as needed to get | through the automatic gate-keeper, then wow them in your cover | letter and real uploaded resume. Maybe some - maybe even most - | will be pissed off, but you only need one job! | mqus wrote: | Maybe this is the way to contact google in case of issues! /s | TuringNYC wrote: | >> Moral of the story (maybe?): Just fill the thing as needed | to get through the automatic gate-keeper, then wow them in your | cover letter and real uploaded resume. Maybe some - maybe even | most - will be pissed off, but you only need one job! | | Unless Taleo blocks you centrally and now you cant apply to | half the companies in the world. | sigstoat wrote: | > Unless Taleo blocks you centrally and now you cant apply to | half the companies in the world. | | is anyone ever hired through dumping a resume into those big | systems? doesn't seem like a loss. | BeFlatXIII wrote: | None of those companies are worth working for. If they were | worthwhile, they wouldn't use Taleo. | Kwpolska wrote: | Care to share more? How and why did you get blocked from | Taleo? | TuringNYC wrote: | This hasnt happened to me, but I was countering the | original post -- doing strange things (scraping, automated | resume submissions) are not things that _just_ jeopardize | you from _one_ company -- they could theoretically | jeopardize you from all the companies that use a single | platform (Taleo, Greenhouse, Lever.co, etc.) | abrax3141 wrote: | Scraping Taleo (or any such thing) is not what I | proposed. I proposed highlighting your positives (perhaps | burnishing them a bit, but you're not under oath, and who | doesn't!) to get through the automatic agism filter and | then clarify, amplify, and convince in your real resume | and letter. | albrewer wrote: | I haven't looked in awhile, but I used to just back out when | I encountered a Taleo-powered job application website. Their | search interface was terrible, and there was no way to open | job descriptions in a new tab with middle click. No idea if | they've fixed their garbage interface but it left such a bad | taste that I avoid it entirely. | awkward wrote: | Desired salary? As a required field? Not today Satan. | | People don't complete online job applications because they have | all the user hostility of modern nudge driven tech but | implemented with the subtlety of a brick in a burlap sack. | Root_Denied wrote: | CA and NY are about to have laws go into effect that require | posting the salary range, should make that question a bit | easier to answer. Just put in the highest part of the range. | DeathArrow wrote: | As I was recently applying for jobs, I can tell that many | companies have annoying application processes. | | Many require you to apply on their site, ask for LinkedIn | profile, ask to upload your resume but also ask to hand fill the | same data in their forms. | | There is also some stupid web site used by many for the | application process that requires you to create another account | and refill the forms for every application even if you already | uploaded you resume, input LinkedIn profile and completed the | same forms on the same website for another position you've | applied to before. | 12xo wrote: | 752963e64 wrote: | bingobob wrote: | love it in 2022 we still cant agree on some common form standards | for this type of data | jillesvangurp wrote: | Most companies have recruiting backwards. The interview process | is not about selecting the best candidates but about selling your | company so the best candidates are actually willing to even | entertain talking to you. | | Recruiters, HR people, etc. mean well but they kind of just put | up a lot of hurdles for the best candidates to even get far | enough into the process that there's a meaningful interaction. | The profile of the best candidate is that 1) they are probably | not bored or unemployed 2) they have many options if they want to | change their current situations 3) they are unlikely to engage | with cold outreach via email or phone. 4) in the rare case they | show any interest in your company at all, you should be ready to | go and talk business. | jobe_zeeker wrote: | I'm not sure about that. I started programming some 30 years | ago, and wrote quite diverse programs, but not always | professionally. I've been working professionally some of that | time, of course, but in between jobs I've been doing my own | things, which didn't translate into a commercializable products | (but some could some day, I guess) and I keep them out of my | resume. Jobs always found me, not the opposite. So I don't have | much experience seeking one. | | But these last two years I did try to look for one, every now | and then. All in all, I sent my one-sentence-per-job resume to | about 10 companies, which I researched somewhat thoroughly and | concluded that can put my skills into use. I know it's not the | usual shotgun approach of mailing zillions of companies in hope | that one will turn out to be The One, but that's how I work. | Friends and family tell me that I should put more into the | resume, but I'd rather explain stuff face-to-face. Of course, I | don't get there. I'm also very picky (my ethics filter out so | many companies, you know, tracking people, advertising, etc..). | Anyway, out of those ~10 companies, only 3 got back to me. One | of them rejected via email in a matter of hours. The other two | had HR call me. One of the two invited me to a face-to-face | nontechnical interview with a young manager... not the position | I've applied for, but anyway. It was friendly though kinda | stuck at why I decided quit some company 7 years ago. She might | have also found me clueless, since I didn't have a formulaic | conception of software development that she seemed to inquire | about. The next day I got an email rejection. | | Now, I'm a very technical person, and I'd probably have more | success going via a different route, maybe meetups. I'm an | introvert, but don't have difficulty opening up to other | technical persons. So I'll try that. (No LinkedIn or | "networking"... a privacy-conscious introvert). | | But anyway, my point is that I projected a high probability of | providing good value to these companies after nontrivial amount | of research into them and their positions, but it seems they're | all drowning in noise so manage to miss my signal. Industry | situation is poor. | | Luckily I'm keeping to my own projects as well. Some day they | may bear financial fruit. | tomtheelder wrote: | IMO selecting the most talented candidates from among a | candidate pool is, for all intents and purposes, impossible. | Interviews are a joke, past experience ends up being basically | meaningless, and references are too easily gamed. I think the | whole idea of hiring the most talented individuals is a fools | game. I'm sure many people disagree, but this has been my | experience over the years. In fact, I think trying to go for | the best candidates will hard backfire most of the time: you'll | end up paying far more for no real gain. | | So if we assume that we are going to get a more or less random | sample of quality then what you can we screen for? As far as I | can tell there's basically only two positive signals we can | look for: motivation and agreeableness. So I think that | explains why interview processes end up the way they do. | | Maybe that's an overly cynical take, but I really just don't | think that it's possible to find the "best candidates," so you | end up just filtering for what you can control. | donkeyd wrote: | > The interview process is not about selecting the best | candidates but about selling your company so the best | candidates are actually willing to even entertain talking to | you. | | I recently started a new job and interviewed with multiple | companies in the process. At the end, I was still interviewing | with two companies. One of them put me in a room with two devs | who went slightly hard ball on me and seemed to want to try and | catch me on not being good enough. The other put me in a room | with a member of leadership who wanted to discuss a role he | thought would be a good fit for my profile and then have a | casual chat about the organization and the challenges. | | Both wanted to give me an offer. Guess where I ended up | working. | DeathArrow wrote: | >The interview process is not about selecting the best | candidates but about selling your company so the best | candidates are actually willing to even entertain talking to | you. | | Best candidates will require best money. | | Most positions don't need best candidates. For many, even | mediocre candidates will do. | urthor wrote: | HR and recruiting are very aware of this? | | They're absolutely trying to filter out the overqualified. | | Overqualified candidates will resign the second they see the | terrible projects the company contains. | | They're looking for the sweet spot of desperation. | bluGill wrote: | Most over qualified won't accept the job for the pay you are | willing to give. | | I have seen over qualified people take an entry level job - | but it was only offered because they explained they had | personal reasons to want to move to the area we were hiring | (a non-remote job, though this was pre-covid), and were | willing to take a pay cut. As soon as review time came they | go a promotion. (At the time we only had entry level | positions open, as we had "too many" senior people on the | team) | bjarneh wrote: | > They're looking for the sweet spot of desperation. | | You've seen through the fog my friend... | jbirer wrote: | Pretty much, overqualified means they have leverage and are | independent, not easy to jerk around and power trip with. | orangesite wrote: | I'm just going to leave this here: | | https://github.com/jsonresume | cuteboy19 wrote: | No ATS accepts this, sadly. | anthlax wrote: | The current optimal strategy for new grad SWE applications is to | shotgun as many out as possible as fast as possible. I know many | people who've applied to 50+ new grad jobs (even in this market) | and due to its many to many nature, many new grad job | applications get 20k+ applicants (from an inside source at a | medium sized company). It makes new grad applications slightly | better than a random lottery. There is nearly no difference | between an applicant that gets screened in and an applicant that | gets screened out at the margin. Really unfortunate situation, | and I don't know if there's a solution. Colleges solved it by | adding a barrier to entry to apply (you have to pay) but jobs | can't do the same thing. Perhaps a arduous application process is | a kind of mechanism to throttle applicants and weed out those who | are just applying for applyings sake? | sigstoat wrote: | > jobs can't do the same thing | | is there a legal restriction? i'd pay $5 to a company when | applying to an actually interesting position if they promised | i'd get a non-form letter from a human back about my | application, good or bad. | happyopossum wrote: | > The current optimal strategy for new grad SWE applications is | to shotgun as many out as possible as fast as possible. | | > It makes new grad applications slightly better than a random | lottery | | Your second assertion indicates that your first may not be | true... | | Even new college grads know people, have been through | internships, and have the ability to research jobs and | companies to find a better way in. Do that. | | Ever been to a trade show? In a tight job market it's not | uncommon for a good chunk of the attendees to be carrying CVs | and asking about jobs. I used to roll my eyes at that, but now | I see it as a go-getter getting-their-go-on, and if I were | hiring for what they're looking for, I'd shepherd their app | though the process and ensure they made it to the post-screen | interview stage. | | That's just one example of how to do it - there are tons of | others. The point is that straight out of college, your _job_ | is _getting a job_. Spend 40 hours /week on it. Work hard. Try | new things. Learn what works and what doesn't (pro-tip - every | time you make it past the first stage, ask someone _how_ you | got there!). The people that do this are going to go farther | than the people who shotgun 500 job applications then give up. | deeblering4 wrote: | I'll bail from a job application if the tech trivia starts. Even | a fizzbuzz. | | It's a complete waste of time. Easily gamed or "crammed" for and | provides little to no measure of actual problem solving or | capability in the context of actual work. | | On the other hand it's a strong signal that the company adheres | to many "best practices" that aren't grouned in reality. So I say | thanks for the red flag interviewer, goodbye! | PainfullyNormal wrote: | How do you find a job, then? | jonathankoren wrote: | The VAST majority of jobs don't do this during the | application phase. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | The vast majority of jobs don't ask technical questions | during the interview? Have I just been the unluckiest | applicant of all time, then? | Foobar8568 wrote: | As a person employed by a consultancy, working for several | clients, these forms are bloody annoying. Even more when | reruiters don't understand how consultancy works. And if by any | lucks my resume is parsed, I will have to redo everything from | scratch, which at this point, I just close the website. | browningstreet wrote: | I've never gotten a position by filling in a job application. | furyg3 wrote: | Lot of thoughts / questions. First off, if you're getting the | talent you need out of your application process, then who cares. | | If you're not, and your numbers of abandoned applications are | high, then throw the forms in the trash can and see what happens | for a month. Contact details, attach resume done. | | I _highly_ suspect that a lot of these 'applications' are | ad/click fraud (companies spend a lot of money to drive traffic | to their job postings), other bots, recruiters testing the waters | to play middleman, or people who were never going to apply no | matter how easy the process is. | yandrypozo wrote: | especially if I have to write a dumb presentation letter and | write again every skill that I have in my resume | uyuyuyuyuy wrote: | lwhi wrote: | I wonder how many people _think_ about applying for a job | advertised by traditional means; but never actually end up | applying? | | I'd imagine a lot of people do; I know I have in the past. | | Perhaps the main difference with a digital application, is that | we are able to track some of the behavioural artifacts that are | created on the lead up to applying .. which aren't available (or | visible) via the traditional alterative. | tempestn wrote: | One thing to remember about stats like this is that the sample is | very biased. While there are all kinds of reasons a person might | be looking for work, and many people looking will potentially be | great employees, most great employees already have jobs. The | population looking for jobs is going to be, _on average_ , less | suitable for employment than those who already have them. Add to | that the fact that more promising applicants tend to be selective | with their applications, whereas lower quality applicants tend to | spam resumes out widely, as long as little effort is required, | and it starts to become unsurprising that a large majority of | people who click an apply button don't bother to go further when | a minor roadblock is hit. | | Ours is a very different type of business than Home Depot, but we | intentionally put a minor roadblock (a fizzbuzz-level coding | problem) in our job application, specifically to filter out those | applicants unwilling or unable to put in the slightest effort to | apply. (And we see a very similar percentage who don't bother to | complete it - at least 90%.) The question is intentionally easy, | as we don't want to waste people's time, and it's not fair to ask | for much before reciprocating. But it is a fantastic way to | eliminate the applicants who are just using the shotgun approach, | and get down to those who actually have a clue and a real | interest in the position. (Much fairer and more useful than | keyword filtering imo too, and can be a good way to start a | dialogue.) | | So I guess what I'm saying is, maybe this is a feature, not a | bug. | Oras wrote: | Two years ago when I was applying for a job, every application | requested a take-home test. After doing a few of these, I | decided I will NEVER do them again. I will not spend hours | coding only to be (at best case) reviewed for a few minutes by | someone from the other end. | | I know you're saying it is a minor roadblock, but how do I know | that you're not going to ghost my application like most of | other companies do? That's why most people will not bother to | do your test, not something about you, but the broken system. | jlokier wrote: | FizzBuzz is a very small roadblock - a couple of minutes. If | you have your choice of language, it'll probably take less | time than thinking of a creative answer to a form question | like "what do you find interesting about our company?". | | Perhaps the form should say "do not spend more than 5 minutes | on this question", so that people who get stuck don't end | waste a long time. It's really just a captcha to filter out | people who can't program at all and also don't know to Google | for an answer to paste in. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | I much prefer the take home test to a live coding exercise. | Different strokes for different folks. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Take home tests create a perverse incentive, live coding | interviews don't. | | Specifically, a company can blast out a bajillion take home | tests to a bajillion candidates for one position without a | care in the world, but for live coding interviews it | requires their own employee's time, so they're incentivized | to only do it with candidates they're serious about. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | As an interviewee, I don't care. Most take home tests | aren't that difficult and don't take that much time. And | it's coding, which is much more enjoyable than meetings. | | Plus, there's the fact that I don't do well in live | coding interviews. I get a version of "stage fright" | where my mind goes blank and thinking becomes impossible | for a bit. I don't experience it anytime on the job, | either. Just in interviews. | tempestn wrote: | Yeah, we definitely keep the work minimal up front. My | process is to filter applications down to anyone who's | completed the little 5-minute problem. Then I'll send each of | them a quick note thanking them for their application, and | asking a question about the answer they submitted. (Generally | I can just pick from a small set of questions, since there | are a very limited number of ways to solve it given the | simplicity.) That starts a dialogue where I can learn a bit | more about how they think, and they can see that I'm actually | interested/invested. | | From there we make a shortlist based on those discussions and | resumes (and cover letters if present), and move on to a few | more involved programming tests, which try to replicate the | actual kind of work that would be done here. (Each was taken | from actual development or bug fixes we did in the past, then | simplified and encapsulated to make a reasonable assignment.) | We start with one of these and ask that the applicant pull | the assignment repository, create a branch, make some commits | as appropriate to solve the problem, and then start a pull | request, which we review much like we would an internal code | review. We also encourage them to ask questions and share | thoughts throughout the process, as they would as a member of | the team. | | Through all of this the goal is to show both sides what it | would be like to actually work together. (As well as to | demonstrate to the applicant that we are as invested in this | process as they are.) | | I'm sure we do lose some good applicants with the initial | quick question on the application, but it does serve to | filter out essentially all of the really bad applicants, | which gives me the freedom to give real attention to those | who remain. | intelVISA wrote: | FizzBuzz isn't quite a take-home. A good screen is something | that takes under 1minute so it doesn't disrespect the | candidate's time whilst also being vaguely useful -- sure | passing FBuzz means nothing but failure is pretty much the | red flag of red flags for SWE hiring. | throwaway2037 wrote: | If they paid you 100 USD / hour (say, max 2-4 hours), would | you do it? I would. In some places, Amazon gift cards could | be used. | | To me, they should do at least one solid hour on the | phone/vid/in-person technical interview. If OK, then proceed | to take-home test. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | $100/hr is a low salary for contract work (at least for | software engineers in the US). Maybe for $300 I would do | it. | | Of course if I were unemployed and didn't have other | options I'd do it for free... | CoastalCoder wrote: | At least for me, I wouldn't need that hourly rate to | match my _normal_ hourly rate. | | Offering $100/hour for a take-home problem would signal | that they respected my time, which goes a long way. | willsmith72 wrote: | I generally avoid applications like those. | | For one, when I'm applying for jobs, I'm in a totally different | headspace to when I'm programming. It's uncomfortable and takes | me out of the zone. | | And two, sometimes I apply for jobs on my phone. With a saved | resume and autofill from Google it works out really well - but | not if there's a coding question. | tempestn wrote: | I'm sure it results in some false negatives, but I don't know | of a better way to filter the applicant pool to something | reasonable. And so far it's helped me hire a fantastic team | of developers, many of whom don't have the standard | credentials you might look for on a resume. | | That said, I do think I'm going to try and simplify the | question even further, since I think having anything at all | will accomplish the goal, so there's no point making people | do any more work than absolutely necessary. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > I'm sure it results in some false negatives, but I don't | know of a better way to filter the applicant pool to | something reasonable. | | You mentioned a better way in your original comment: | | >>> we intentionally put a minor roadblock (a fizzbuzz- | level coding problem) in our job application, specifically | to filter out those applicants unwilling or unable to put | in the slightest effort to apply. (And we see a very | similar percentage who don't bother to complete it - at | least 90%.) The question is intentionally easy | | Use a difficult question, and you'll get a smaller pool of | higher-quality applicants. | tempestn wrote: | We do use difficult questions later in the process. I | don't believe it's reasonable to put a difficult question | right in the job application before the applicant even | knows if we're going to respond. That's why that question | is intentionally easy. As another reply said, it's | basically like a captcha. | thaumasiotes wrote: | What is the benefit of the first stage of the process? If | you do well at the first stage, and poorly at the second | stage, can you be hired? | tempestn wrote: | The first stage is just a quick question we ask people to | answer along with their initial application. The second | stage is what we use as an actual interview process | (described in more detail in other replies here). The | purpose of the first stage is just to filter out the | large percentage of applicants who are unqualified and | just spamming out resumes. Passing that alone is of | course not enough for someone to be hired. | thaumasiotes wrote: | Well, again, what is the benefit of having a multi-stage | process? Is it helping the applicants? Is it helping you? | Start with a harder question, and you're doing them a | favor at the same time you do one for yourself. | | Why would you need one filter for "qualifications > 1" | and a second one for "qualifications > 4" when you could | just apply "qualifications > 4"? | Distozion wrote: | From personal PoV as a software engineer - not that surprising. | | I've yet to have any success from any online application, while | my hit rate when contacted by recruiters is relatively high - | nothing to do with particular recruiters being good at gaging my | wants or skills, simply they have the incentive to get this done, | because only then they get paid. | | My guess is either the official postings are a company policy | requirement to give someone a promotion (get some external CVs | in, do some biased comparison to justify why the person deserves | a promotion - at least my experience from working in a bank) or | the company can't be bothered to spend their own time recruiting | & just outsources it to a recruiting company, forgetting they | have their own listing open. Also, most if not all of those | external platforms are quite bad. | adamsmith143 wrote: | It's pretty simple, if you make me upload my resume and then want | me to fill out a massive form with information directly from my | resume I'm out. | innocentoldguy wrote: | There are two reasons I don't finish some online job | applications: | | 1. Some application processes ask me to upload my resume and then | want me to manually enter it again in a series of web forms. I'm | not interested in spending 30+ minutes manually copying and | pasting the resume I just uploaded. I figure that lack of common | sense is systemic in the company, so I don't want to work there. | | 2. Some companies use third-party services, like icimi.com. If I | submit two or three resumes through these third-party services | and fail to receive a response, I never apply for other companies | that use these same services. | trentnix wrote: | _1. Some application processes ask me to upload my resume and | then want me to manually enter it again in a series of web | forms. I 'm not interested in spending 30+ minutes manually | copying and pasting the resume I just uploaded. I figure that | lack of common sense is systemic in the company, so I don't | want to work there._ | | Workday! If the "Apply Here" button takes me to a Workday link, | that's my off-ramp. | | I have no idea how Workday is so ubiquitous when its user | experience and aesthetic is so terrible. | kennend3 wrote: | Interesting.. i just posted the same thing. Workday flat out | sucks.. i have no idea why it is everywhere. | | Every job i have applied for requires i create a new account | on [abc].myworkday.com. this just seems incredibly STUPID? | hardware2win wrote: | >I figure that lack of common sense is systemic in the company, | so I don't want to work there. | | They probably want you to fill that so they can query that data | easier | | Meanwhile still have access to original CV | auggierose wrote: | They should just put the stuff they extract from the PDF into | some queryable form. Then, when there is a hit on a query, | direct to the PDF. I doubt that the query results will be | significantly worse, probably even better. | auggierose wrote: | YC jobs does that, too ... | duxup wrote: | When I was job hunting the last time I filled out so many forms | that my auto fill values in my browser(s) were just jacked beyond | repair. | | I just deleted them all and let the browser re-memorize them. | | Somehow all the same and yet not same form fields just messed up | the browsers I used. | vhodges wrote: | So... I work for Jobvite (Employ) where I manage the team that is | responsible for (amongst other things) the services that power | both the career sites CMS and the job apply process (on the | Enterprise side of the business). | | The answer of course is not to use the ATS apply process. It's | almost universally a bad experience for candidates. Home Depot | should take a look at our products, they would have different | outcomes if they did. | atlgator wrote: | If I click Apply on LinkedIn and it redirects to Workday or | Brassring, I immediately close the window. I'm not spending 30 | minutes creating an account and filling out endless forms because | the platform can't parse my resume properly. | | Kudos to companies that have adopted simple platforms like | Greenhouse.io. Upload the resume, answer a few supplemental | questions about the job, self-identification questionnaire, and | submit. Easy. | MisterSandman wrote: | Workday needs to die in a fiery death. | washywashy wrote: | Most job offers I have received weren't from a timely response | from a direct application, but from already being in a company's | recruiting database from previously applying. I find savvy | recruiters reach out to people who have previously applied | because there's usually a confirmed interest there, rather than | doing cold reach outs to people they find on LinkedIn. | Taylor_OD wrote: | Feature not a bug. Recruiters want qualified applicants, not | applicants. The easier the application the more absolutely stupid | applications you get. If you've ever handled incoming resumes you | know what I mean. I'm not saying the line cook couldnt learn how | to become a lead software engineer but they probably should at | least have some experience as a developer first. | | HR/recruiting and the managers actually with open roles dont | always have the same goals. | ivanmontillam wrote: | In my experience, while applying to jobs, I've found that | recruiters have become too entitled, and even if you're 100% fit | for the job ad you're applying to, they still want to force some | random process on you. | | I understand recruiters have the incentive to lowball you and | play hardball when you're trying to find, at the bare least, the | salary range. Still, sometimes you're literally overqualified and | willing to take a bit less, but that entitled attitude deters a | perfectly fitting candidate from applying. | | Then you start to post high-quality stuff on LinkedIn, HN or | elsewhere, and when they don't find another candidate to lowball, | they seem to regret it. | | The approach recruiters apparently take is about thinking that | candidates are cattle, numbers on their HR system. | [deleted] | DebtDeflation wrote: | >90% of the Application's Data are already in my LinkedIN, or my | CV / Resume. Why the heck do I have to fill it in again | | It's probably closer to 100%. As soon as I see the application | form wants me to re-enter my entire job history, my educational | background, and my contact info, I immediately exit it. | ttr2021 wrote: | I applied for a role at ThoughtWorks once and their form was an | interesting one. They as all the usual details but they an an | option in leui of uploading your CV and other details 'or enter | manually'. | | It's the most bizarro thing I've ever seen, a single line text | field. | | Feeling kinda leet at the time I decided to take the plunge and | cut and paste cover letter, CV, LinkedIn profile etc into this | small field and let it burn. | | Unsurprisingly I never got contact or received any confirmation | or anything.... | | Why the hell would they even have that as an option? | | (I am the %8 !!) | | Example: https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-au/careers/jobs/4526889 | | Scroll down to 'Apply for this job' and click to activate | JavaScript expanding form....bleaugh | ttr2021 wrote: | Haha, omfg a classic... | | One of the "questions" on their apply for job form is | | TL;DR | | Optional field is REQUIRED and only option is "Yes" | | "At Thoughtworks, we are intentional about making technology a | better place for all. We know that the more diverse our | backgrounds are, the more impactful solutions we build for our | clients. We foster an inclusive community and focus on creating | a balanced workforce reflective of the society we live in.To | help us achieve this balance, we encourage you to answer these | demographic questions. We collect this data to understand who | we are reaching (and who we're not) so we can do better at | connecting with a truly diverse group of potential | Thoughtworkers. Our recruiting teams will only see the data | collected here on an aggregated level, consistent with our Data | Privacy Policy. Responding to the questions is completely | voluntary and anonymous. Declining to respond will not impact | your standing in the recruiting process." | | The field is REQUIRED and the only option is "Yes" | Nextgrid wrote: | It seems like they only wanted to include a block of | informational text but the software only supported fields, so | they had to make it a dummy required field. This smells more | like terrible tech than malice. | willsmith72 wrote: | But why would you enter it manually? Why not click "attach"? | ttr2021 wrote: | Because it was there? | willsmith72 wrote: | I mean it's really common, I've seen it on at least 20 tech | jobs in the past week, but I don't know who would actually | use it. | ttr2021 wrote: | I am the %8!!! | jstx1 wrote: | Thoughtworks asked me talk about a time I've been discriminated | against in their culture fit interview. One of the worst | interviewing experiences I've had. | ttr2021 wrote: | Totally weird! Tell me more! | shapefrog wrote: | Is it a trap? | bluGill wrote: | That question is illegal in the US. There is no way to | honestly answer it without revealing information that they | cannot legally ask, and thus they cannot legally ask it. You | should stop the interview right there, if they are willing to | violate the law then they are not the type of company you | want to work with. | | You may want to contact a lawyer about suing them for asking, | but I'm not sure how that works. | | The above applies to the US. If you are in a different | country then you need to check your local laws. | game_the0ry wrote: | > According to Appcast, one of the industry's most respected | recruitment data providers, the candidate drop-off rate for | people who click 'Apply' but never complete an application is a | whopping 92 percent | | Employers, out of laziness and entitlement, have pushed away all | responsibility and effort in hiring, which fell on to lazy, | entitled _and_ incompetent "human resource" specialists, who | then outsource to applicant tracking systems that have not | changed much since the 90s. | | Predictably, employers complain that the candidates are lazy | entitled when they have difficulty hiring. | naet wrote: | A lot of comments focused on their software engineering | applications, but this article is about Home Depot online | applications which are likely not for technical or computing | positions. Many of their applicants might be great at handiwork | but rarely use a computer (and may not need to use one regularly | on the job). | | I was recently helping my father in law apply for entry level | jobs. He isn't that old but is not a very computer literate | person, and he was getting extremely frustrated when he would | walk into a grocery store / thrift shop / hotel with a printed | resume but they wouldn't accept it and were always telling him he | needed to go through their online application portals... which he | struggled to fill out on his own. | | I helped him fill out a few and honestly I can't even blame him | for struggling on some of the application portals; one in | particular for a Hilton hotel was absolutely awful online | applications that constantly hit errors or timed out for no good | reason. Some were hard to find online, and of course the classic | re-entering all the same info in different ways for online forms | quickly gets annoying. | neilv wrote: | When I'm actually interested in a company/position, and cold- | calling, I'll actually go though the Apply button forms (even | though the forms almost always seem poorly implemented). | | Where I next cut off things is if I invest in their forms, but | then they don't seem serious or savvy on their end. | | The most common problem here is that they say they want a Staff, | Principal, or technical cofounder person-- but the interview | process hoops seem to be for zero-experience new college grad | filtering, or for hazing. | | IMHO, the biggest thing many tech companies -- from startups to | FAANGs -- need to hear about hiring top talent is that they | aren't Google, and they can't just copy Google's rituals, without | having Google's reputation and value proposition. | willsmith72 wrote: | I went through one the other day that had some dropdowns for "how | many years of experience do you have with technology x", which | seemed fine, until I found their form didn't work using the | keyboard (tabs/numbers), and then found there were no less than | TWENTY EIGHT such dropdowns, all required. Do you want to give me | an RSI? | | Other issue is companies with a broken captcha. Can't apply | without proving you're human, can't prove you're human because | their captcha just spins. Wanna refresh? Sure, but you'll have to | enter your details again. | | In saying that, I find the process better than a couple of years | ago. Many companies are able to prefill details like education | and employment from LinkedIn. At least it's better than them | trying and failing to read your resume automatically. | [deleted] | psychphysic wrote: | Most jobs are over subscribed and simultaneously there is low | unemployment and finally many are actually going to be filled by | one of a few candidates who were in mind before application | started. | | I hear all the time, looking for a job is like a job in of | itself. Then why are you leaving so much work unfinished? | hericium wrote: | Questions about race, like on the Wikimedia Foundation's | application forms[1], are completely off-putting for me. | | But I guess it's working for them: folks treating race-based | decision making process as racism would not waste Wikimedia's HR | staff's time. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33086141 | dragonwriter wrote: | > Questions about race, like on the Wikimedia Foundation's | application forms | | Those don't (oddly enough, given that the voluntary self- | identification section for US applicants to support government | reporting has a "race/ethnic definitions" expansion block) have | a question about race, just gender identity and whether or not | one identifies as Hispanic/Latino ethnicity. | | So its kind of odd to complain about a race question with those | as the example. | pabl8k wrote: | I went and looked at the application form for the first job | linked and this is absolutely standard in the US at every | company I've ever applied to. It's not just some Wikimedia | thing. It's voluntary to fill it out and the company is not | supposed to use it in deciding who to hire. The purpose is to | have retrospective data a company can use to make sure they are | not introducing bias into their hiring process. | dragonwriter wrote: | Here's the EEOC information page on the practice: | | https://www.eeoc.gov/pre-employment-inquiries-and-race | | From an applicant perspective, while physical tear-off sheets | for mail-in applocations (one can imagine hand-delivery | setups that solve this) are clearly imperfect, web forms are | even worse. | robertwt7 wrote: | I wonder where does the drop happen in the funnel. Probably the | most troublesome part is writing cover letter? I remember that I | have to create a template in LaTex for my cover letter which i | can just change the company name and responsibilities. | | At this point I'm not even sure if big companies read cover | letters at all. | danieltillett wrote: | As an employer I always read the cover letters. You had better | have a slight clue of what job you are applying for or your | application ends up in the garbage. | Mountain_Skies wrote: | That's probably a big one though I'd guess the biggest would be | the double data entry, where you're asked to provide a resume | (usually in Microsoft Word format) and then enter all of that | information again, broken up into dozens and dozens of poorly | designed textboxes. It really is a huge middle finger to | applicants and makes clear that the company believes your time | does not have value. | 4ad wrote: | I'm just one data point, but every company I've worked for told | they me they hired me because of my cover letter. | | I have 15 years of work experience. | vidarh wrote: | Conversely, after 27 years as a hiring manager, the vast | majority of people I've hired didn't even send one. I think a | good cover letter certainly can make a difference, if it | helps highlight why you're a good fit for _this specific | role_ if it 's not obvious from your CV, but I rarely send | any myself, and not for any of the jobs I've actually gotten | over the years. | quickthrower2 wrote: | The measurement is % of people who click apply. But similar to | "buy" I often click "apply" to find out more. After all I know | that button isn't committing me to the job or the purchase until | I complete, and many sites gate information after clicking that | button. | hourago wrote: | That seems to be done on purpose but I am not sure why. Do | people really buy more stuff because they clicked "buy" to get | the info? Or is it just some arbitrary metric that is being | improved without having real impact on the business? | | Maybe to have a separate "get more info" is worse for business. | At least for me, the opposite it is true. It makes me hesitate | to click in the "buy" button just to find more about the | product. | Frost1x wrote: | I think part of it is to separate information to better know | that a user was interested in a product and read the | information further and perhaps it was price or purchasing | conditions that turned them off. | | When you advertise traditionally you don't get a lot of | information back from consumers other than those who start or | make a purchase. The more actions you put between discovery | and purchase, the more you can refine parts of the process. | | There are probably other psychological elements at play as | well about gradually introducing information so you can | strategically present the better aspects of something before | you talk about say an ugly cost. | csunbird wrote: | Linkedin and other job advertisement sites get paid per | "Apply" click or redirections, so they gate keep the | information on purpose. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | That's exactly it, hitting "apply" is taken as a | performance metric, so (and I'm sure there's a 'law' for | this) everything is optimized to meet that metric. | phh wrote: | Yup, that's called Goodhart law | nfriedly wrote: | It's not uncommon for me to 70% of the way through a checkout | process because that's the only way to figure out how much | shipping is. I'm not trying to buy the product, just get a | single number - but pretending to buy it is often the only | way to get that number! | c7b wrote: | > After all I know that button isn't committing me to the job | or the purchase until I complete | | I used to think that too, until I clicked a similar button on | Amazon... | quickthrower2 wrote: | I think Amazon patented that so all good! :-) | | (Yes it expired was contested etc.) | bstpierre wrote: | I had the same reaction while reading it. It would be | interesting to know what the abandonment rate is lower in the | funnel, maybe after someone creates an account. Because I have | also clicked apply on jobs where I have no real interest but am | curious about the position or company. | | Also, the article is spot on about the tediousness of the | online applications. I applied to a position at my kids' school | last year. School websites are awful enough but then they | bounce you into a separate portal for the application. And the | flow is built around the most complicated job that they might | need to hire for. So, to get a job as, say, a p/t middle school | soccer coach or night custodian, you have to go through all | these steps that really don't apply. And of course then they | moan about how hard it is to fill positions. | linker3000 wrote: | "...user accounts can be helpful for applicants, as they allow | them to track their application status." | | Name, phone, email address, upload CV. | | No account needed and you can push-update me via email. | mikefallen wrote: | The best is when you use the linkedin connection to pull your | resume and then they ask you to fill in the same information | again. Insta close any app that does this | sarchertech wrote: | Having worked for a startup that tried to fix this, a big problem | is institutional inertia/too much deference to Chesterton's | fence. | | In general application form questions have accumulated over the | years. When you dig into why there are 95 questions, you'll find | that no one actually knows who added most of them. Or if they do | know, that person is no longer with the company. | | But "I'm sure each question is there for a good reason." And no | one wants to risk removing any of them. | Root_Denied wrote: | If you can't identify the value of a question then you can't | adequately rate responses to that question. The "risk" of | removing them is what, exactly? | | Unless you're feeding those responses into an ATS system that's | doing some data correlation/massaging on the backend, in which | case can you identify why the _system_ things the question is | important - if not, refer to first line. | agd wrote: | Three reasons for this: | | 1. Difficult/lengthy application processes can filter for intent | | 2. Structured data (obtained during sign-up) is useful for | recruitment platforms | | 3. Some ATS's are just bad | | Point 1. might be difficult for SWEs to understand, but in lower | leverage roles (e.g. non-grad) you sometimes have a 100+ | applicants for a single role, so any filter helps a lot with the | recruitment process. | maerF0x0 wrote: | > so any filter helps a lot with the recruitment | | Only if the filter is good. What's a good filter? | | One that improves the quality of candidates at a given market | price. | | I don't think filtering out people who realize the system is | bullshit/broken is a wise filter. Such a filter means you'll be | capturing the portion of the populace that is unable to think | beyond what they're told and inefficiently bash their heads | against brick walls. | | I know the cynical will say "Exactly! thats exactly what these | employers want!" But truthfully, it's not, it's just what they | think they want... This is part of what is breaking America | down, people getting what they "want" instead of what's | actually "good for them". | | I understand these are just concepts and really messy in | reality, and there's a dystopian take of false benevolence. But | America I believe that America used to work because people used | to be optimistic, which meant they could work with honest | benevolence towards many/most. | | I was telling a friend yesterday that one difference between | the Canada I remember and the America I live in now is that | Canadians used to not chase every last personal profit | (dollar). As an example, if a company could buy a piece of | software that helped them perfectly price their product giving | an average increase of $101 dollars, but at a cost of $100... | most would say "yeah, the company should do that! they make an | extra dollar..." but what is missed is the customer ends up | paying $101 dollars for the increase of $1 profit. I think in | Canada people let some of those marginal dollars lie, thinking | it was just too much effort to chase it, and not good for | everyone involved. Not good for the customer, the software | developer could do something virtuous with their life instead | of predatory, the entrepreneur can both feel good for how they | act in the marketplace and also sell something else for $100 | that the customer now still has.... | | So what does this all have to with hiring software and forms? I | don't entirely know, but I think this form stuff is a symptom | of a real problem to be fixed, not just bandage over. | trentnix wrote: | I just went through the job search process (and actually found my | job thanks to Hacker News) and was astonished at how many job | posting and job application antipatterns I observed. Here's just | a few: | | - job descriptions that don't tell me anything about what the | company actually does to make money | | - repeating the same question in your application form, sometimes | in sequence | | - "submit application" buttons that resulted in a server error or | 404 (and when pressing back to try again, all your previous info | is gone) | | - requiring me to generate an account (with an overwrought | password complexity requirement), validate my email, log in, and | then I can finally upload my resume | | - "we don't discriminate" promises followed by way too many | questions about gender preferences and vaccination status and | diversity pledges | | - absurd captchas asking you to identify the "smiling dog" or | "plant on a table" or "picture of a living room" through multiple | pages | | - asinine questions like "tell us why you want to work at (Acme | Corp or Bunyon Doctors of America or Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company | or whatever)" | | It's all out there and _extremely_ common. If you manage to get | to complete the application and get to the interview process, | things don 't get much better: | | - 5 stages of interviews with 11 people over 4 weeks before the | committee meets to decide if we want you to pitch us on whether | to offer you | | - "as a policy we don't provide feedback" but here's multiple | nagging emails requesting your feedback to help us improve our | process (looking at you, Amazon) | | - 3-4 weeks between submitting an application and receiving a | request for a phone screen | | - an endless barrage of "tell me about a time when..." questions | | Companies often remark they are desperate for good talent but | then invest seemingly nothing in making the process efficient, | enjoyable, and succinct. | [deleted] | tacker2000 wrote: | Havent looked for a job in about 10 years but even back then it | was already loaded with these huge forms that you have to fill | out which i loathe. | | I get it that they want to automate stuff but how much would an | extra employee or two cost to analyse the resumes? The scraping | software is also not that cheap. | | I guess it also says a lot about the companies itself if the | first experience you have with them is using some shitty tool | that nobody really wants to use. | bluGill wrote: | > how much would an extra employee or two cost to analyse the | resumes? | | just send them to the hiring manager. It is very obvious who | doesn't have the skills at all so it takes seconds to reject | them. | | I suppose you could fake someone with the right skills, but I | don't understand how such a scam could make you money so I | don't see why anyone would. | bostik wrote: | > _just send them to the hiring manager_ | | Yes, please do. Spotting odd patterns in CVs is a good | skill. Even with lots of garbage being funneled my way. The | clearly hopeless or flat-out misplaced applications indeed | do get rejected in seconds. | | For one role I was hiring earlier this year, I noted how a | few [recruiter fed] CVs had a striking similarity. Same set | of skills in the exact same order. Same wording in the | skill descriptions. All coming from the same geographic | region. After the third I wrote a remark about the CVs | looking either plagiarised or coming off of a weird | template. Mentioned the similarity explicitly on the fourth | one, with a slightly acidic comment about clearly being a | wrong fit for the role. | | Never saw a fifth one. | jonnycomputer wrote: | Same. Oh, the wonderful difference between sending a small | shop my resume by email with an in-email "cover letter", | followed by an invitation to interview the next day, and | submitting to a big company's convoluted, bug-ridden, | idiosyncratic application procedure. | tumetab1 wrote: | > - "we don't discriminate" promises followed by way too many | questions about gender preferences and vaccination status and | diversity pledges | | That made me laugh :D | | It's funny as a non-american dealing with those kind of things. | Onetime I amused myself by checking their definitions: a person | from Spain, which speaks Spanish and has a non-white skin is | neither Latino or Hispanic; a diabetic is a disabled person. | | Since most those questions are optional, I just do not answer | them to any of them. | Hasnep wrote: | I'm interested why you think a diabetic isn't disabled? | throwaway2037 wrote: | <<tell us why you want to work at (Acme Corp or Bunyon Doctors | of America or Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company or whatever)>> | | I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read this! | "Dunder-Mifflin" -- Me thinks: But, do they know it is a Python | term (__xyz__)? | dcminter wrote: | > asinine questions like "tell us why you want to work at (Acme | Corp or Bunyon Doctors of America or Dunder-Mifflin Paper | Company or whatever)" | | "Tell us why you're _passionate_ about middle-of-the-road | paper-pushing " is a favourite. Come on people, I don't think | "passionate" means what you think it does. | axiolite wrote: | > "Tell us why you're passionate about middle-of-the-road | paper-pushing" | | You're missing out on the perfect opportunity to tell them | about your severe head injury and/or paper-pushing fetish... | dcminter wrote: | "Before I reply, why don't _you_ tell me why you are | (pause) literally (pause) _passionate_ about working here. | " - maintain eye contact until escorted from building... | | Tempting, but no. | donretag wrote: | Online applications are indeed ridiculously long, yet somehow, | when a recruiter contacts you from LinkedIn or other method, they | do not require any of this info. No formal resume, no references, | nothing. | | A large part of the problem in the us is the required "Voluntary | Self-Identification" information. It is voluntary, but it still | needs to be filled out, even if the response is Decline to | Answer. Should be optional. Companies are now taking an extra | step and asking about pronouns and other identifiers, beyond what | is required by law. I just want to complete this application and | move on. | _fat_santa wrote: | > Online applications are indeed ridiculously long, yet | somehow, when a recruiter contacts you from LinkedIn or other | method, they do not require any of this info. No formal resume, | no references, nothing. | | This is one of the reasons I don't fill out job applications | anymore. If there is a company I would like to work for I find | their recruiters on linkedin and reach out to them. Though my | past few jobs have come from either a recruiter messaging me | with a position and me messaging them with any open positions | they are trying to fill. The last time I filled out a job | application I was in college applying to my first tech job. | Maursault wrote: | It never ceases to astound me that employers are apparently | incapable of reading a resume and have absolutely no | consideration for the fact that job seekers are not merely | completing their single aggravating application, but hundreds, | and expect that work, _and it is work_ , for free. Look at the | resume, if there is strong interest, interview me, if interest | continues, check references, and if you want me as an employee, | make an offer and hire me upon acceptance, _and then and only | then_ require the application be completed when I am being | compensated for my time. It is bad enough that even once hired, | payroll is offset by two to six weeks before compensation for | work completed two to six weeks earlier finally arrives, that I | still an required to volunteer an hour or more of my time to | painstakingly complete a job application. | Aachen wrote: | Has anyone ever heard back after filling an online form to apply | for a job? After moving to a new country where I didn't have a | network, I looked online what companies are here and tried to | apply to various. Most had some online system, a few just told | you to send an email. The only responses I ever got were from | companies where the job ad had the email address of someone whom | I should send my CV to. Better, even, if it's a real person and | not hiring@example.com. | | I think _one_ of the ten "automated" companies sent an automated | email after a year that I might want to check the site for new | ads. Lol yeah sure I will, great success last time. They were the | one where I had worked for before but in another country (and had | multiple good references), and they couldn't be arsed to respond | at all (just like all the others with online application forms). | Rot in hell. | throwthroyaboat wrote: | I applied for ~50ish jobs online when I graduated (90% at | overseas firms). Only one company (FAANG-ish) sent me a | response, and that's where I ended up getting a job. | aeyes wrote: | I once did it when I found a job posting on one of these sites | which looked very interesting interesting to me. I didn't | really expect anything from it and I wasn't really looking for | a job at the time. But I thought it couldn't hurt to see what | would happen. | | Got a call the next day, interviews the same week, contract | signed the following week. | athinggoingon wrote: | The absolute worst is iCIMS. It's probably used as an | obedience/submissiveness test by the recruiters. If you make it | through the application process you've shown that you're | desperate enough for this job. | lkramer wrote: | What I have noticed is that the more menial, low paid and | generally low desirable a job is, the higher that initial barrier | is. I suspect it is to at least some extend intentional, though I | struggle to understand why that is. | | On the other hand the initial step in software development job | application (my current profession) typically seems a lot | smoother, though of course then they are followed up by more | technical steps (which generally makes sense). | | I do see start ups here in London who try to make the process | smoother. I do not know how successful they are. | intelVISA wrote: | It's more about power than hiring in those cases. | | My fave interview was when I was still in college I think the | recruiter messed up and put me up for a sr role or maybe the | company was a true unicorn: very few generic HR hoops, and | heavy on the interesting problem solving with engineers. | | Aside from that particular company I had weeks of HR screens, | re-fill out your race/gender please(?) emails, and lots of time | wasting that was a very very stark contrast for sure. | Jochim wrote: | I once failed a quiz that would have granted me the privilege | of frying chicken at KFC. There was no feedback on which of my | answers made me an unsuitable fast food worker. | | > What I have noticed is that the more menial, low paid and | generally low desirable a job is, the higher that initial | barrier is. I suspect it is to at least some extend | intentional, though I struggle to understand why that is. | | It's down to scale. Low paid work has historically had more | applicants than positions. Poor conditions resulting in lots of | turnover aid in that also. | | It's fairly simple to find work in a small restaurant by | walking in or knowing someone already there. Even if the | owner/manager treats you poorly there's still a social | connection. | | Large companies have no social connection with their workers. | They adopt language intended to dehumanise. Take | "person/worker/employee" being replaced by "resource" as an | example. Resources don't have feelings or families. That's then | reflected in their recruitment process. | | Software companies partially avoid this by have a smaller pool | of candidates to draw from and lower turnover. They're - | generally - incentivised to improve those processes because | they don't want the right candidate to go somewhere else. Yet | even then we see a lot of software companies with awful hiring | processes. | | > I do see start ups here in London who try to make the process | smoother. I do not know how successful they are. | | I don't think it's a problem that can be solved with | automation. The solution is bottom up management. You need to | trust the people you hire directly to hire wisely themselves. | If you can't do that then maybe your company is too big. | veltas wrote: | I did this quiz, I think the quiz question I failed on was | "have you ever told a lie?" which I answered with "yes". | Can't be sure though. | | Also for a KFC job. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | > I suspect it is to at least some extend intentional, though I | struggle to understand why that is. | | To limit the number of applicants; like you said, menial and | low paid, so having people go through hurdles to apply makes | them more motivated than shotgun applicants - and reduces the | amount of applications HR has to sift through. | 3825 wrote: | > What I have noticed is that the more menial, low paid and | generally low desirable a job is, the higher that initial | barrier is. I suspect it is to at least some extend | intentional, though I struggle to understand why that is. | | One suspicion I have is perhaps the people in hiring whether | consciously or not believe making the process more difficult | improves the signal to noise ratio of applicants. Makes sense | when there are 10+ applicants for each open position I think. | They don't care about the people they are turning away. | nonrandomstring wrote: | Optimising for desperation is great if you're building a | criminal gang in which most of the day-to-day activities go | against a normal person's good moral judgement. | Bakary wrote: | To some extent a State is a gang, but at a larger and more | sophisticated scale. So is any sufficiently large company. | The 'criminal' aspect is always a relative measure. | nonrandomstring wrote: | Some true words. | | One should generally prefer criminal gangs elected | according to social contract, since they are basically | "our* criminal gang. | | As for moral relativism - not so much. There's enough | consensus for judiciaries and criminologists to define | objective criminal behaviours. I think you mean that we | exercise more or less tolerance of the criminal behaviour | of certain groups. | Bakary wrote: | It's a bit of both. We discriminate with regards to | groups, but the measure of crime shifts quickly. Drugs or | sexual orientations become legal or illegal. Killing is | legal or illegal depending on whether it is performed in | an approved way. Certain types of non-consensual genital | mutilation are legal, others illegal. States tend to | clash when their conception of justice differ too much. | There are foundational concepts that most legal systems | seem to share to provide stability, but for anything more | complex there are always exceptions. The right to | pollute, employment relationships, defamation etc. as | soon as you move away from basic disorder removal it | becomes more and more relative. | gwbas1c wrote: | > they are being asked to answer the same question more than | once, or they are being asked to enter data that is already | contained in the resume that is also being uploaded | | That's pretty much the point that I stop. As a professional in | demand, I'm not going to do data entry for a mere job | application. (But, if I see an apply button on some other job | board that lets me upload a resume, I'll let the company's HR see | my resume and do their own data entry.) | | The problem is that hiring companies are treating applicants like | a captive audience; and have little empathy for how frustrating | their expectations are. | | Interviewing for a job, especially a professional job, is always | a two-way street. When I apply, it's because I want to know more. | Extensive data entry for a job that I'm not sure I want, or that | I'll be hired for, is a waste of my precious time. | pandemicsoul wrote: | The interesting thing to me about this, and many other | responses here, is that it's so blind to the reality beyond the | tech space about how hiring actually operates for a job seeker. | If you're in a position like, say, "software engineer," your | skills are clear and unambiguous. You can list the same skills | for every job application and eventually find what you want. | But many - if not most - job seekers don't actually have that | kind of experience. There's a ton of experience that needs to | be tailored to the employer. I'm in the nonprofit operations | space and there's about 10 different ways I can spin my | experience based on what's being asked in the job listing. I | don't WANT to copy & paste my LinkedIn because that's not going | to get me the job - it reflects what my previous employer | wanted, not what my new one might want. | conductr wrote: | If an employer doesn't review my resume and consider if my | experience _could be a fit_ in their organization then I don | 't want to work for them anyway. They know their needs and | organization better than me and it's likely that half of the | job description is fluff anyways. | | Usually when an employer thinks I could be a fit, they call | and we chat and see if it makes sense to continue talking. | The resume and job application is just meant to be a signal | of "hey I might be interested & qualified in what you're | doing" if they can't be bothered to put in any effort, it's | probably a sign they won't put any effort into making an | enjoyable workplace either. | Bakary wrote: | David Graeber wrote a great book about this phenomenon | zimzam wrote: | Isn't that the job of the cover letter to connect the dots | and show how previous experiences & skills could meet the | demands of the role being applied to? | noirbot wrote: | Does anyone ever read a cover letter? In all my years of | being an interviewer, HR has never once given me a cover | letter along with the resume of the person I'm | interviewing. I just assumed cover letters went straight to | the trash because there's no way anyone in HR is going to | have the time to read them all, let alone know enough about | the role to glean anything useful from them. | dentemple wrote: | Many sites that allow you to export stored resumes (such as | LinkedIn) will also allow you to store _multiple_ resumes. | But even when they don't, there's nothing stopping you from | having these multiples ready on your machine and updating the | aggregator site as necessary. | | So even in situations where tailoring is needed, it's still a | completely unnecessary step to solicit details that are | typically found on a resume. | | Prior to becoming a software engineer, I had to tailor my | applications just as you pointed out. BUT I ALSO HAD MULTIPLE | RESUMES READY for each situation, since writing a new one | from scratch--each and every time--would've been a completely | pointless use of my precious job-seeking time. | Bakary wrote: | By definition if you are not captive they won't have much use | for you since you'll end up wasting _their_ time | tejtm wrote: | Of the two sides, only one is currently being paid to address | the companies needs. If they are indeed a waste of time, then | you have found another problem that needs addressing. | Bakary wrote: | What I mean is that from a hiring company's POV an in- | demand candidate who won't submit to nonsense because they | can afford to will usually be a liability due to the power | imbalance. They will either not need the company and bypass | them in the first place, or create the risk of dangling | interest for a long time before ghosting or declining. | | Of course, for the target company itself that is looking | for hires the employee in question may well be great but | the incentives are not always aligned with that of the | hiring company | donkeyd wrote: | > being asked to enter data that is already contained in the | resume that is also being uploaded | | I've seen forms where they want you to enter your work history | including descriptions of all your roles... And then they also | ask you to upload your resume. | cuteboy19 wrote: | Why do I even need to fill out your stupid forms? Just get all | the info from LinkedIn, I'll authorize it. That way I can rescind | access where needed. | tristor wrote: | I've done this in my past when I was younger and looking for more | menial work. I remember distinctly that I had decided my side | hustle of repairing PCs for the elderly and doing networking for | small businesses would be good experience to support me applying | to Geek Squad / Best Buy while still in high school. The moment I | finished entering my basic information, their hiring form was a | multi-page psychological evaluation, which I did not feel was an | appropriate thing to do on a prospective candidate so I noped out | immediately. | | This article isn't really focused on applying for software | engineering roles, but for menial roles. When that happened to me | decades ago it was rare, and Best Buy was one of the first | companies to do it, now I see my teenage daughter applying to | entry level roles and it seems nearly every company is doing | these sorts of psych evals, and worse your profile is tracked | across multiple employers because the company offering the | service is the same. | | No wonder people are noping out. Nobody should have to undergo a | psych eval done by a computer program, and not even a qualified | person, just to be able to flip burgers or stock shelves. It's | demeaning, dehumanizing, and it frankly should be illegal. | eastbound wrote: | As an employer in France, the employee has so many rights that | you are very conservative on who you hire, and if you can ask | for a psycho evaluation, you're tempted. After all, you want | employees to not steal, and the government doesn't take care of | putting those in prison, so you have to filter that yourself. | | In theory the diploma should be enough, but the govt doesn't | take care of sustaining the diploma levels, because it's unfair | for some protected groups. So I just fired my first _person_ | who I had assumed having a Masters degree in communication | implied they could use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Turns out in | communication they don't type much in Word. | | Now it's gonna be on my hiring test. | JustSomeNobody wrote: | If your hiring process sucks, everything else about the company | must suck, too. | | First impressions and all that. | iancmceachern wrote: | 100% my experience. If it's too difficult or confusing I move on. | The linkedin one click apply is pretty sweet, thats the way it | should be, fill all the relevant info out once, not over and | over. Also, this is what a resume is for. | vidarh wrote: | The furthest I'll go is filling in 2-3 form fields or write a | short cover "letter" in a form _if I 'm particularly | interested_ and the job ad provided sufficient detail that I | know there are particular parts of my experience worth calling | out to them and explain how it relates to the job in ways that | might not be obvious to the first line recruiter. | | But yeah, if there isn't an "easy apply" button on a LinkedIn | job ad it takes a _lot_ before I 'll click through and even | more before I'll consider filling in yet another form. | JoeDaDude wrote: | I agree on the benefits of the LinkedIn one-click, but it's all | about who receives it on the other end. I did the LinkedIn one- | click apply once and received a questionnaire with 10-15 | questions, the answers to which were all on my resume. One of | the questions: Please provide a link to you LinkedIn profile. | netfortius wrote: | IT jobs requiring upload of a resume, then asking to retype the | entire content in a web interface of the job site == drop | pursuing such. | tumetab1 wrote: | > The InFlight audit found that the average time to complete an | application is 4 minutes and 52 seconds, with the large, legacy | ATSs returning the longest application completion times and the | newer, more-flexible systems delivering faster results. | | This seems way to fast for me. | | I usually take much more longer to known what to write in those | damns forms "Why you want to work here?" usually takes me at | least 20 minutes to write. | dagw wrote: | _" Why you want to work here?"_ | | A lot of people will write that once and then just copy paste | everything over and over again. Some people believe that job | searching is purely a numbers game and that 100 crappy | applications is more likely to lead to a job than 5 well | thought out ones. And for all I know they might even be right. | notch656a wrote: | In my experience they're right at least at the junior level. | As a fresh grad I knew I was as shite as everyone else so I | sent several thousand applications and then only put effort | into the few that contacted me back. I think the more senior | you get _you_ are the one selecting and not the other way | around, so it makes more sense to put the full effort in up | front. | ativzzz wrote: | > I usually take much more longer to known what to write in | those damns forms "Why you want to work here?" usually takes me | at least 20 minutes to write. | | I think this is only worth doing for companies you REALLY want | to work at. for the other 95% just write a mostly generic two | paragraph response and swap out the company name and your | passion for the specific problem they are solving | electrondood wrote: | The point of these obnoxious forms is to filter you out as a | candidate. Every step of the process is meant to filter you out | as a candidate. | | Referrals as 5% of applicants, and 50% of hires. Make friends | with coworkers, and then as they move on you have a massive | network that allows you to bypass all of this bullshit. | | Also, I've consistently found that any company that uses this | shit software is addicted to complexity and unnecessary | processes, and was worth later quitting. | more_corn wrote: | Let me guess. Applicants upload resume. They are then asked to | paste 30 different fields that could be parsed from the resume. | They figure "if you can't be arsed, I can't be arsed" and then | thy go apply at a place that's not so cavalier about wasting | their time. But it turns out that most companies hiring practices | are archaic and broken. Hence the "most" part of the headline. | FriedrichN wrote: | If they don't want to hear from me by phone, e-mail, or in | person, they'll never hear from me. Maybe that's the advantage of | working in an area with a permanent labour shortage, but I simply | refuse to jump through hoops before getting paid. I will not fill | out a huge questionnaire which will leak my data, I will not | record a video, I will not do a little dance and show my tushie | (without getting paid, that is). They can go fuck themselves. | dr-detroit wrote: | Joel_Mckay wrote: | Most online forms are simply lead-generation collection for | illegal staffing agencies, silly scams, or asshats social- | engineering market data. Other forms retain detailed sensitive | information for marketing/business-intelligence reasons, or ask | flat out illegal questions only a naive kid would answer | (targeting those who are vulnerable to legal exploitation). | | A long time back, I would take the effort to expunge information | from staffing services masquerading as company contacts (some | places have data retention laws). As experience taught this was | the number one warning sign for internal toxic business cultures, | low ball compensation packages, and position instability. | | If the first thing a company does is discriminate, manipulate, | and or deceive... you likely won't want to work there... Again, | please consider becoming a plumber , as it is the reductionist | logical dream of all techs =) | parthianshotgun wrote: | Or a carrot farmer! | danielvaughn wrote: | I just went through a round of applications recently. Luckily I | got hired from someone reaching out to me on HN, because the | experience was fairly miserable. | | More often than not, they'd ask for my LinkedIn, which I'd assume | would pull in my resume. But no no no, I then had to manually | enter all of my past experience. When you have over a decade of | relevant experience, this is quite cumbersome. | | By the end of each application, I was so irritated that I | declined to submit a cover letter to any of them. No one has time | for that. | | Out of 12 applications, I got 7 flat out rejections and 5 no- | responses. I chalk it up to the cover letter, but I'm sticking to | my guns on this. Cover letters aren't useful these days, | especially when platforms such as GitHub exists. | lelandfe wrote: | FWIW, I spoke with 5 recruiter friends about cover letters | while I was applying last year. | | Their stance: ain't no one got time for that - unless it's a | _tiny_ company. Each of the 5 said they never ever read cover | letters, but allowed that truly small startups, who are thus | extremely selective, may put some weight into them. | bluGill wrote: | Cover letters are useful for two types of candidates: | | Fresh our of college (or even looking for an internship), or | other non-traditional path to a technical job, where you | don't have experience and need to convince me you are | technical enough to interview. (this also covers people who | have large gaps trying to get back into something technical) | | Candidates who know they are over qualified and need to | explain why they would accept the position anyway, and thus | it isn't a waste of our time to interview you for a position | that can't pay something reasonable. | | Otherwise I read them, but they don't tell me anything. I | want to see evidence you have done technical things like the | type of things we need someone to do. Your resume should give | me a better indication of what you can do because it is what | you are doing. | danielvaughn wrote: | The fresh out of college situation is a good point - I'd | recommend a cover letter in that scenario. There isn't | enough experience to assess a candidate so makes sense to | counter it with a letter. | bluGill wrote: | With fresh out of college you have a degree in computer | engineering just like the other 20 applicants for the one | position. What you need is some reason - any - to stand | out. Otherwise we will randomly interview until someone | passes the interview and if you end up last on the random | list you won't get an interview as odds are one of the | first 5 accepts an offer. If you can stand out you can | get to the top of the list, and that gives you a better | chance. | | When you get more experience, your experience speaks for | itself. (not always a good thing - if you want to change | from embedded development to front end for example you | will be overlooked even though there is no reason someone | cannot make that change quickly) | dagw wrote: | One other case I've seen of a 'useful' cover letter was | from someone who wanted to completely change fields. The | cover letter explained while they had no education on the | field and had never worked in the field, they where | passionate about it and spent the past several years of | free time doing it as hobby. That was enough to get them an | interview, despite their 'irrelevant' CV, and the interview | was good enough to get them hired | lelandfe wrote: | It varies of course - these 5 do not claim to read cover | letters in either of those scenarios, and each work for | important recruiting firms. They said they simply look at | too many candidates a day to possibly be able to read cover | letters regularly. | | Depending on the person, the time spent writing a cover | letter may be better put to just more applications. | drc500free wrote: | > Out of 12 applications, I got 7 flat out rejections and 5 no- | responses. | | This tracks with my experience applying through the front door. | I've spent my whole career on data analytics products and tech, | first as an engineer and then as a PM. I have a CS degree from | MIT and an MBA from Wharton. I'm applying only to jobs looking | for a Product person to build/expand analytics and ML | platforms, and getting screened out of literally 100% of non- | referred applications. | | This has not been my experience up until this year. With my | background, it's always been easy to get my foot in the door | and at least have a conversation with the hiring manager. The | backchannel/referral approach still works great, but the front | door is locked by someone or something that doesn't seem to | really be looking for candidates. | auggierose wrote: | I don't know, as an employer I would do optional cover letters, | so it is up to you if you want to provide one. If you don't, it | is an instant reject, because it just shows that my company is | not interesting enough for you to even write a measly cover | letter. Obviously depends, if I just need mercenaries I would | not require cover letters. | vsareto wrote: | This is just deceptive as you're saying it's optional but | rejecting people behind the scenes. Stop wasting peoples' | time and just mark it as required. | francisofascii wrote: | I guess it depends how interesting your company is. If you | have a great company, than maybe you can afford to filter out | based on cover letter. I would suspect most employers don't | actually read the cover letter and have it simply as a | formality. It is simply another time sink for job applicants: | scan the website, try to find out what this company does, | insert a few custom sentences into your cover letter template | about you are exited to work on the {insert specific tech} | here. I don't buy that it signals much of anything, but I | could be wrong. | tekeous wrote: | But my time is valuable, even as an employee, or prospective | employee, and the reasons why you should hire me are listed | right there on my resume. I should not have to give a reason | why I want to work there, or I would not have turned in an | application. | | Cover letters are a waste of my time. | triceratops wrote: | So then how is the cover letter optional? You're just wasting | the time of everyone who applied with a cover letter. | ranger207 wrote: | Personally I wouldn't want to work for a company that doesn't | state its requirements up front and likes to play games like | explicitly marking things optional when they're actually | required | PainfullyNormal wrote: | How would you know? Companies aren't going to tell you they | rejected you because you failed to fill out an informally | required field that was marked optional. | auggierose wrote: | Problem solved then! | kube-system wrote: | I agree that recruiting shouldn't involve playing games -- | but also, the ability to identify inferred requirements is | a pretty useful soft skill for a software developer. | danielvaughn wrote: | I can kind of understand the sentiment, but as we're all | discussing in this thread, it takes serious time to fill out | applications. The reality is that applicants are submitting | their applications to dozens of companies. It's a significant | burden to write a long form letter for each individual | company. | | Plus, it's just kind of dishonest to have a requirement and | list it as optional. No offense but that sounds toxic. | CM30 wrote: | Given how awkward the process is, I'm not surprised. You'd think | it'd be 'upload CV, maybe fill in a few fields and submit your | application'. | | But nope. In many cases it's a lengthy multi part form with | dozens of things to fill in, usually asking for way more | information than you'd ever want to give. Like a ton of personal | demographic info that has zero relation to the job in question, | and feels invasive as all heck. Or instances where you've | manually got to fill in your past jobs in some of multi part | field that has to be slowly filled in piecemeal rather than being | imported from your CV or what not. | | And let's not even get into stuff like "please make a video | explaining why you want this role" or some of the other | ridiculous things I've seen in these applications. Unless you're | working as a TV presenter, actor or other showbiz related role, | you shouldn't need to do a literal audition. | | So usually I'll click an apply link, find a huge form waiting the | other side (or some other 'trendy' bullshit), and immediately go | back to find something else. I'm not wasting my time on providing | some fifty pages of documentation before even getting an | interview. | citizenpaul wrote: | HR/Hiring has become toxic. Companies lost a little leverage in | the pandemic. Now they are stomping on people to "get them back | in line" with horrible "hoop jumping" to prove you are worthy of | a job. Why would you want to finish an application when you can | read between the lines that this company is terrible. | qikInNdOutReply wrote: | I m one of these, i fill out the form, then i get the memories i | had interacting with some of these companies, working at other | companies. The Process-Dementia, the hostilitys, the relentless | culture of using all things in human interaction as renegotiation | ammonition. The relentless pressure, ignoring all social norms | and employee health, to complete a task. The shallow | friendliness, that ended as soon as your usefullness expired. The | internal fights, silos and slightly drunk employees, who hated it | there, but couldnt say it, cause big Brother Middle Management is | everywhere. | | Its considered the "good jobs" in my area, as in well paid enough | to own a house, but every time im tempted to apply and see the | logos, and the memories come back, i abort these applications. | | Some companies are cesspools and its good to remember that and | stay away from them. I also warn others to stay away from them. | Some people hack these companies and get the easy life there, | which is nice, but for people who actually want to work and not | interact with such a culture.. not even as customers, if it can | be avoided. | baxtr wrote: | Thanks for sharing. Many of us feel similar. I do. | | There are good companies out there though. Finding them is | difficult though. | _def wrote: | What even makes a good company? Everytime I think I found | one, after some time I realize it's really not. Are the small | ones the key? | lowercased wrote: | Even at a small company... the 'good' aspects are in the | eye of the beholder, and can change quickly. | | Some places I've been have been 'good' by department. | People in dept X really ... tolerated things. Pay was | decent, but periodic pushes for more 'work' burned out | quite a few. But people in dept Y _loved_ their setup. Each | dept rated 'the company' relatively differently (not | surprising). | | Another place was... nice. Good... Pleasant. I was on the | tech side - around ~20 people in the tech dept (a little | bit of networking, some software dev, some testing, some | support, etc). We had around a year of everything just | humming. Then a new day to day CEO comes in and 8 people | left in 8 months. Out of 20... that's a lot. The new CEO | was quite damaging (and, I think he knew that he was having | a negative effect, and wanted that for reasons that would | only benefit him). Suddenly, that company that was 'good' | for years got bad real quick. | | Perhaps the 'good' companies are the ones where some larger | culture can endure top leadership/personnel changes? Does | that ever happen, or is it an inevitability? | baxtr wrote: | Good question. IDK. I think for me it's a mix of good | people and a good cause. What do you think? | arethuza wrote: | Working with good people is the key to me. The problem | with that is that it can change overnight when a senior | leader leaves and someone new joins - I had one place | that went from "great" to "awful" when a new CIO started | and his culture started filtering down. | seb1204 wrote: | There is truth in the saying that people don't leave | companies but managers. | lb1lf wrote: | To paraphrase Chekhov - All large companies are the same. | All small companies are different in their own different | ways. | | IMHO large, corporate-style companies all appear to have | read the same manuals on how to organize a company, so, | minor variations aside, you know what you're going to get. | | Small companies don't hire from the same sources or don't | reach critical mass in any departments to start down the | track of the larger companies, so your experience there may | vary a lot, for good and bad. | | I've spent approx. 12 years at large multinational | engineering companies and 8 at small/medium size companies. | I am now at a good, medium-size one (~150 employees, all | told), and unless things change dramatically, this is where | I'll have to clean out my office when I retire. | | Edit: To elaborate a little, I think the sweet spot where | you are quite likely to find a decent experience is in a | company which employs at least several tens of people, but | no more than a couple hundred. | | Why? Because by the time it has reached that size, you will | have dedicated people (that is, people allowed to spend | time to become good at their niche, rather than being | generalists) for most functions. | | Still, the company is small enough that most people in the | organization at least are familiar to each other, making | most interaction more flexible (IMHO) than if you're at a | huge corporation where anybody is viewed as an easily | replaceable resource. | mejutoco wrote: | (Sorry to be that guy) Tolstoy. | | All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is | unhappy in its own way (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina) | lb1lf wrote: | D'oh, you're right! Sigh. I thought it had a Chekhovesque | ring to it and was too lazy to look it up. Thanks! | P_I_Staker wrote: | Idk it seems like many small companies can be just as | toxic, and you can probably find a lot of cushy positions | for big companies. | | Actually, small companies can be even more toxic, because | the chance of this toxicity blowing something up is much | less, and there may be powerful individuals, who have | little to checks and balances. | | It seems like at most big companies no one person can | really do anything major, it takes 2-5 powerful people; | plus there's oversight above them that could theoretically | act if the whole team starts going rogue. | | I've heard horror stories. Some of my colleagues have had | to admit that while everyone may resent HR, you do NOT want | to work for a company that does it badly. | nonrandomstring wrote: | A poetic summary. | | Toxic work culture is a very serious thing. It's both a cause | and symptom of a dysfunctional economy and we need to fix it | with the same urgency as problems of transport, environment and | health (and it relates to all). | | Every small company starts out "like a family", full of good | intentions, and then ends up in a psychological race to the | bottom of naked exploitation, greed and systemetised ignorance. | | Modern HR selects primarily for desperation and compliance. | Management is essentially an activity of self-preservation. | Qualities like duty, loyalty, initiative and industriousness | are deemed weaknesses. | | There is no way we can build globally competitive and | innovative business in this milieu. How do you do full hard- | reset and reboot on an entire culture? | P_I_Staker wrote: | > we need to fix it with the same urgency as problems of | transport, environment and health | | So do nothing and ignore it, especially if the person is | poor. | thethethethe wrote: | > How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire | culture? | | easy, hire management consultants | Mezzie wrote: | > There is no way we can build globally competitive and | innovative business in this milieu. How do you do full hard- | reset and reboot on an entire culture? | | Leave and build lifestyle businesses. Not every business has | to be globally competitive. Create more opportunities for | freelancers. Basically, there need to be attractive options | for employees outside of working at globally competitive | companies in order to force the change. After all, from the | already existing global businesses' point of view, the | current methods are working fine. | kuramitropolis wrote: | >Modern HR selects primarily for desperation and compliance. | Management is essentially an activity of self-preservation. | Qualities like duty, loyalty, initiative and industriousness | are deemed weaknesses. | | This is true for the white collar world - the entire point of | which is to put restraints on the actual skilled workers, so | they don't start changing the world quicker than psychopaths | can adapt. Otherwise the idiots will just drop off the gene | pool, and then who's gonna start our wars for us, eh? | | >How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire | culture? | | You ask this rhetorically, as if it's some sort of | intractable question, but the 20th century is full of | examples of the West "rebooting" the cultures and economies | of non-aligned states, and it sure ain't pretty. Takes about | a generation of chaotic violent struggle, give or take. Then, | a new local optimum emerges as power inevitably consolidates | into the same externality-blind primate hierarchy, "but | different". | nonrandomstring wrote: | > You ask this rhetorically, as if it's some sort of | intractable question | | Sorry if it came over that way. I certainly didn't mean it | to sound rhetorical. I'm all about actually changing | things. | | > 20th century is full of examples of the West "rebooting" | the cultures and economies of non-aligned states | | And Britain long, long before that. All have been failures, | since all were looting presented as benvolent reform and | aid. People help themselves, which can generally happen | only once the boot is romoved from their faces. So perhaps | "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're suggesting that a | new boot will simply take its place :) | | Maybe de-booting is what we're after? | | One cannot impose a culture. But there's no reason it need | take "a generation of chaotic violent struggle". That seems | a little pessimistic. Historically, "blind primate | hierarchies" [1] have civilised themselves rapidly under | the right conditions. It would be nice to think we could | reason our way into a better place before it comes to the | point W. James's "Moral Equivalent of War", as climate | change, inevitably brings us to our senses. | | [1] Do you think of Western culture as a blind primate | hierarchy? Is not that very perspective part of the | problem? | kuramitropolis wrote: | >Do you think of Western culture as a blind primate | hierarchy? | | Honestly? I used to think of it as an edifice of | enlightened human thought... HAHAHAHAHA. | | >Is not that very perspective part of the problem? | | Don't think so. I'm not even sure there is a problem. | | >I'm all about actually changing things | | Oh, I wish things were different, too. But IMHO all I can | possibly ever change are my local circumstances, and even | that is not always particularly tractable. Intentionally | "changing the world for the better" kinda sounds like a | single cell of your body arbitrarily changing the laws of | physics under which it operates. (Stretch that metaphor a | bit and you get cancerous ideologies. We saw how well | that worked...) | | The world can evolve, though. Over feedback loops that | take generations. | | >So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're | suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :) | Maybe de-booting is what we're after? | | Now that's some pretty cool wordplay - the world needs | more of that, so you made a positive change right there | :) The Butlerian debooting :D | nonrandomstring wrote: | Tiny changes with a smile. Now there are two of us. :) | Pass it on. | openfuture wrote: | > I'm all about actually changing things. | | Me too. | | Where I am from there is a lot of bullying. All the way.. | from small kids and up to the political representatives. | | What I am doing (and I do not recommend this btw) is to | exit every norm, so I do everything superficial poorly. I | never edit anything I write, I just post the first draft, | I don't cut my hair, I don't wear shoes, my clothes I've | just found, I can't remember when I last bought clothes, | I don't own a phone, I don't use any social media. | Basically I set myself up for being bullied. | | However! I also work on the most important problem; the | idea being that the absurdity may wake people up to the | idea that maybe it's better to help me (by editing things | or contributing things) than it is to bully me when what | they are doing is nonsense and what I am doing is | necessary... The point is that if you cannot use violence | then you've got to use humor and poke fun at the holes in | the opponents argument. | parthianshotgun wrote: | Are you a hermit? | kuramitropolis wrote: | People who care about you, care about you. | | The rest is trapping(s). | | I thought our individualistic culture was based on the | shared understanding that, the more value you provide to | others' lives, the more your nonconformities are | accepted. | | Aint much you can do for your fellows when your hands are | in handcuffs though, golden or otherwise, so we better | keep up with 'em Joneses and don't dare imagine freedom, | or else. | parthianshotgun wrote: | I'm not quite sure how to parse this or if this was even | meant for me, but I do hope that this isn't some pretense | to dispair or annihilation (the bad kind) | kuramitropolis wrote: | I look up to you. | DeathArrow wrote: | >How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire | culture? | | One way would be for people to team up and form cooperatives. | A cooperative is owned by all the workers and all the workers | share the profits and have a saying. | edmcnulty101 wrote: | It goes in hand with monopoly culture in society. | | When you have so many mergers/aq. that build de facto | monopolies there's no incentive for companies to care about | their employees and the emphasis becomes on the image of | caring vs actual caring. | | As the employee has a small selection of companies to work | for and jobs become about bureaucracy and politics instead of | actual `work` and there's not much you as employee can do | about it. | | The companies not caring about customers but pretending to is | another story tangential to this one. | spaetzleesser wrote: | " Qualities like duty, loyalty, initiative and | industriousness are deemed weaknesses." | | Wherever you look, loyalty is for suckers. Be it as employee, | car insurance or cell phone plans. Only the new guy gets | respect. | badpun wrote: | Everybody is hoping to acquire lazy and complacent suckers, | who won't switch to another employer or cell | phone/insurance provider even though the terms they're | getting are no longer on par with what the market offers. | This strategy largely works too, as I've worked with some | exceptional developers working for really meh salaries. | They don't think about leaving, too. | Frost1x wrote: | >who won't switch to another employer or cell | phone/insurance provider even though the terms they're | getting are no longer on par with what the market offers. | This strategy largely works too, as I've worked with | some. | | Acquiring competitive market rates and competing in | market rates isn't always easy or even reasonable. | Sometimes it takes significant effort due to barriers and | some of these barriers were erected by companies. Take | the modern interview process. Weeks of evening prep time, | lots of applications/artificial networking/cold | calling/recruiter responding, the time/emotional/ mental | energy to step through several hoops, etc. and all this | for a chance to compete at a position that probably isn't | all that great anyways beyond TC. | theteapot wrote: | Do you have friends? | _jal wrote: | Not the OP, but mixing employment with friendship can be | difficult to navigate. | | I know from personal experience that is is possible for a | friendship to survive adverse shocks involving money. But | it is difficult, it does change things permanently, and | it seems rare that it survives at all. | maerF0x0 wrote: | > mixing employment with friendship can be difficult to | navigate. | | This is only true if you both dont either have eachother | as a priority or act hypocritically in light of that | stated value. | | Losing $100 to a false friend is a great way to pay your | enemies to get lost. | _jal wrote: | I'm thinking specifically of a situation where things | were much less clear-cut, and involved far more than | $100. | | It is easy to make grand declarations. But when ethical | considerations are not very clear-cut and you're talking | real pain, you really figure out what a friendship is | worth. | mmmpop wrote: | nonrandomstring wrote: | That sounds a little rude as a bare question. But it's a | good one. Because _friends_ (real ones that would drive | to to the hospital) are where we start to rebuild this | mess. | theteapot wrote: | I'd drive pretty much anyone to the hospital if they | asked. I also ask rude questions -\\_(0.0)_/-. | nonrandomstring wrote: | Well done. Rude questions are good. If anything there | aren't enough of them. | club_tropical wrote: | "Modern HR" (aka in-house commissar) is a top-down legally | mandated entity to 1) exert regulatory control on all but the | tiniest companies and 2) reward the useless-nagger | constituency of the party with jobs. | | There is no system-wide hard-reset, not in our lifetimes. | There is retreat & regroup, away from the eye of sauron, | while the parasite devours the host. | imwillofficial wrote: | You know I always joked about getting a goat farm. | | Now it's looking more and more likely every day. | club_tropical wrote: | do it before they force Beyond Goat! | imwillofficial wrote: | Don't get me started | alpaca128 wrote: | > There is retreat & regroup, away from the eye of sauron, | while the parasite devours the host. | | Especially when the CEO publicly brags about being called | the Eye of Sauron by employees, as Mark Zuckerberg did. | edmcnulty101 wrote: | > There is retreat & regroup, away from the eye of sauron, | while the parasite devours the host. | | This is a great way to put it. | Ancalagon wrote: | Oh god, "Process Dementia" is such a good term. That's how I | felt in those Amazon interviews. | | "Give an example of how you used Amazon's Leadership Principle, | Customer Obsession, in your current position." | | "I just did that in the last interview." | | "Oh, I just wanted to see if you could extrapolate or give | another example." | | "But... I just... told you..." | | My god that gives me nightmare flashbacks to that horrible | process. | eigart wrote: | I do this a lot. | | One job I am considering applying for right now is a bit light on | the details, and there is no contact information. The full | application form is the only way to interact with them. I've | filled out and closed the form three times. | rlpb wrote: | Is this really accurate? Usually when I'm doing something I | consider important, I get partly through the flow, go offline to | prepare further, and then come back later with a more detailed | answer. This is especially true if it isn't obvious at the | beginning what I will need later on. | | Are they identifying if somebody does this, or counting the first | visit as a person who left without returning? | vidarh wrote: | That's a valid question, but keep in mind that for most of the | people clicking through it's unlikely to be something they | consider important. When looking for a job, I click through on | a _lot_ of jobs where I simply haven 't got enough information | yet to be invested in any way, and part of what will make me | decide is whether the application form makes them look like | idiots I don't want to work for. | mouzogu wrote: | I did this twice today. | | 1st time: "after the initial HR screening and meeting with Dept | head, you will have 4 interviews with 4 of our engineers" | (expressvpn) | | 2nd time: "please tick to confirm your data being shared for the | purpose of automated application processing" (crossover) | | F!#k this job market. | littlelady wrote: | I'm in the same situation. One company that was interested in | me would have offered me a junior position as a "full-stack" | dev, that should also be able to do "some embedded work". Also | they don't "track hours", which is illegal in my country. | | Jumping through hoops during the process has also left a sour | taste in my mouth.Even after spending hours on an application, | cover letter, customizing my CV, often no response comes. Even | a form letter would be better than nothing! It feels like I'm | sending a part of myself into the void. | tomp wrote: | Excuse my naivety, but what is wrong with these processes? | | Would you rather they use your data without your consent? | | 4 interviews sounds reasonable, and also useful for you to meet | the team | bigDinosaur wrote: | 4 hours doesn't seem reasonable to me for anywhere that's not | top tier. How many interviews would you consider | unreasonable? | briga wrote: | 4-5 hours of interviews seems pretty standard even for | companies you've never heard of. Nowadays every tech | company pretends like they're FAANG, and then they complain | about how hard it is to hire new devs. As if the Leetcode | rigamarole weren't bad enough every company expects you to | do 7 interviews. Finding a tech job is a full-time job in | itself | happyopossum wrote: | My most recent FAANG job (this year) was a total of 3 | interviews (~45 min each), plus an optional reach out | from the hiring manager's boss who simply wanted to know | if the process was going well and if I had any questions. | | Add in a couple of convos with the internal recruiter and | the negotiation session, and I was still under 3 hours | over the course of a week or 2. Completely not | unreasonable.. | ghaff wrote: | Even interviewing out of school way back when, 4 or 5 | interviews seemed pretty normal for all sorts of | different roles whether or not there was a phone | screen/on-campus interview. And, of course, this was all | in-person so you're probably talking a couple days | especially if you consider some modicum of research about | the company. More recently, aside from a very small | company, the few interviews I've had it's been a fairly | standard 4 interviews or so panel after whatever initial | contacts I had with people I knew. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | When is "way back when?" 2007-2011, the interview | consisted of one or two hours in person on location. | That's it. 20 minutes with HR, 20 minutes with the hiring | manager, 20 minutes at the whiteboard, 20 minutes with a | VP/CTO/CEO and you were done. Segments were often ended | early because you were taking up a conference room, so | there was an incentive to keep things brief and at a | brisk pace. | | I'm not saying the in-person experience was superior or | inferior to how it is now, but it was considerate of | everybody's time. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | I interviewed at around 10 companies in 2009 and all were | 4+ hours. These were all Bay Area startups or FANG. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | Mine were all bay area startups too. No FAANG. Crazy. | mouzogu wrote: | > Would you rather they use your data without your consent? | | the wording was different, it was meant as we will filter | your application automatically based on the data you provide, | are you ok with that y/n | Jochim wrote: | It's more like 6 once you include the HR screen and | Department head meetings. 4 interviews seems totally | unnecessary in itself. Especially if they were all 1 hour or | more. Their current process would take 4-6 hours and that's | only if they don't have any take home technical tests. | | 1) Quick phone chat 2) Technical interview - Either review or | carry out technical test. 3) Team interview | | Even then the team and technical interviews can be doubled up | and the phone chat can easily be cut out entirely. | tjpnz wrote: | Aside from the usual resume data entry I especially dislike being | asked to write mini essays. GitHub is a particularly egregious | example in my own experience. Never again will I invest multiple | hours into an application only to be quickly rejected by what I | assume was a machine. | blackbear_ wrote: | Automatically writing cover letters could indeed be a good use | for all the recent advances in AI text generation | jstx1 wrote: | Great, more stuff for the cover-letter-reading AI on the | other end. | Sirened wrote: | Would anyone with an OpenAI key be willing to share? | Interesting to see what it gives for an "enthusiastic cover | letter for a software engineering job at Google" or whatever | shapefrog wrote: | Write the greatest ever cover letter for a job at Google (I | am open to offers - 7+ figure offers only please) | | To Whom It May Concern, | | I am writing in regards to the open position at Google. I | believe that I would be the perfect candidate for this job | and I would like to explain why. | | First and foremost, I have a passion for technology and | Google is at the forefront of technological innovation. I | would love to be a part of a team that is constantly | pushing the boundaries and developing new, groundbreaking | products. | | In addition to my passion for technology, I have a strong | educational background. I hold a degree in computer science | from a top university and I have consistently achieved | excellent grades. My skills and knowledge would make me a | valuable asset to the Google team. | | Finally, I have a proven track record of success. I have | previous experience working in the tech industry and I have | a history of meeting or exceeding expectations. I am | confident that I would be a high-performing employee at | Google. | | I believe that I have the skills, knowledge, and experience | that would make me a perfect fit for the job at Google. I | would love to have the opportunity to discuss my | qualifications further and I thank you for your time and | consideration. | | Sincerely, | | [My Name] | arrow7000 wrote: | This is the kind of cover letter that Patrick Bateman | would send | itronitron wrote: | _on the face I use an exfoliating gel cleanser_ | shapefrog wrote: | Produce a cover letter that a psycopath would write for a | job at google. | | To Whom It May Concern, | | I am writing in regards to the job opening at Google. I | believe that I have the perfect qualifications for the | position and would be an excellent addition to your team. | | I have always been extremely intelligent and have a | natural knack for computers and technology. I have also | always been very good at working with people and have | always been able to get along with everyone I meet. I | believe that these qualities would make me the perfect | candidate for the job. | | I am a highly motivated individual and I am sure that I | would excel in this position. I am eager to put my skills | to use and I am confident that I would be a valuable | asset to your company. | | Thank you for your time and consideration and I look | forward to hearing from you soon. | | Sincerely, | | [Your Name] | robryan wrote: | Even worse when after writing these you get asked questions | that you have already answered in the application. | vidarh wrote: | I'm happy to provide reasonably lengthy written responses | (though not multiple hours) if it's well into the process, but | just last night I had a recruiter who on the back of me saying | I "might be interested" decided to ask me to fill in a form | with multiple free-form text fields where he advised me to | provide lengthy answers before he'd even convinced me the role | is worth my time. | | Being in a position to be picky it felt great to send him a | list of pieces of information I expected from him before I'd | _consider_ filling in their form. | bluehatbrit wrote: | Can definitely relate to the GitHub example. I sucked it up and | went through the application, assuming that if I was putting | this much effort into an application then I'd at least get some | feedback. Got a short blanket email saying they'd gone with | someone else and no feedback as to why. | | I don't mind being rejected at all, but it's clear they have | absolutely no concept of how much time it takes applicants to | submit. The thought of ever going through that again means I'm | unlikely to ever re-submit in the future. | intelVISA wrote: | Hook up GPT-3 and thank me later. | peer2pay wrote: | Gitlab does the exact same thing only to then reject you | because you haven't had a previous tenure last longer that ~3 | years. Strange culture. | sdfhbdf wrote: | Or they just stop hiring in your country for some HR reasons, | in the middle of the process and never start back again. | | So much for worldwide hiring and all-remote. | ksec wrote: | 1. 90% of the Application's Data are already in my LinkedIN, or | my CV / Resume. Why the heck do I have to fill it in _again_. | | 2. Some companies even / still requires you bring your University | Certificate or whatever as proof. For Pete sake. That was | _decades_ ago. Can I pay $5 to LinkedIn or whatever so once and | for all they can verify it from there. | | 3. The other 8% of the application that I have not included | details in my CV/ Resume or LinkedIn could have been reused | across all applications. Why do I have rewrite it again. | | 4. You are not fucking suppose to verify or reference check on me | before I even had my interview or offer. So now my boss / | management knows I am job hunting? | | 5. By the time I get to the end of the application I am already | exhausted depending how bad the day I had. And some form of PTSD | from previous interview where i had to contain my thermonuclear | anger or else going absolute animal against the HR / agent / | interviewer. Because I have to be _professional_. | | 6. My thought on why all these are so bad is because job | application, listing site, social network ( LinkedIn ) all work | for hiring companies, they are the ones who pay them. And not job | seekers. Someone needs to figure out a way where we can turn this | around and empower ( I hate this word, but I dont have anything | better in my vocab ) employees. | twawaaay wrote: | Because not everybody is the same as you. | | > By the time I get to the end of the application I am already | exhausted depending how bad the day I had. | | If filling a job application is too hard for you, wait until | you actually have to start working. Maybe it is not such a bad | idea to put an application process like that to filter out | wimps who do not intend to exert themselves, ever. | the_only_law wrote: | Yeah I guess a mindless drone who will exert themselves any | tedious and inefficient thing is something companies may | want. | twawaaay wrote: | You are getting paid for work done. Complaining that you | actually have to do your end of the contract is just stupid | and is why the job market is so broken. | | Remember, those hiring managers and HR are the same people | as you -- got the paycheck, try to do as little as you can | to just slip under the radar. | ROTMetro wrote: | Wait, are people getting paid to fill these applications | out in your mind? Or are they not getting paid to do the | work that hiring managers USED to do but are now TOO LAZY | to do and have automated away? And why are businesses not | cutting lazy management salaries now that their work has | been moved to be automated? | twblalock wrote: | You must think you are special and that employers should be | coming to you, or should suspend their normal hiring processes | for you. Maybe you are -- but the vast majority of people are | not. Most people need to jump through the hoops to get seen. | noirbot wrote: | Or they think this situation and the "normal hiring | processes" are stupid for everyone? The fact that all this | redundant work, manual data entry, and hoop-jumping is the | status quo doesn't make it good or fair or reasonable. | twblalock wrote: | You would have a different view of this if you were posting | job offers and got hundreds, or thousands, of unqualified | applicants and fraudsters piling on to every single one. | noirbot wrote: | But do almost any of the OP's complaints actually help | with stopping that? Do fraudsters and the unqualified not | have references and form-filling capabilities? | | I get that there's problems these things are trying to | solve, but it doesn't seem like it's doing anything to | solve them _and_ it 's frustrating all the people who | aren't the ones you're trying to run off. | sibit wrote: | > You are not fucking suppose to verify or reference check on | me before I even had my interview or offer. So now my boss / | management knows I am job hunting? | | I've changed jobs 3 times in about ~10 years and this has | happened to me both times. I want to leave my current position | but the anxiety of dealing with this again is one of the | primary reasons why I haven't started looking yet. | happyopossum wrote: | > Some companies even / still requires you bring your | University Certificate or whatever as proof | | What? I'm in my mid-late 40s and have NEVER been asked for a | diploma (in the US). Is this a regional thing? What country are | you in? | conviencefee999 wrote: | It's a legal requirement for termination if you lied about | anything it's not legally bound. Linkedin can never solve these | problems because well, it's impossible to. As for the | background checks, that's usually done because of agreements | with other companies to not poach other employees without | forewarning. Which technically isn't illegal unlike the stuff | Apple and the others used to do. | [deleted] | club_tropical wrote: | > 6. My thought on why all these are so bad is because job | application, listing site, social network ( LinkedIn ) all work | for hiring companies, they are the ones who pay them. And not | job seekers. | | It is even worse: They work for HR departments in those | companies, whose primary goal is 1) to produce automated | reports and statistics about their "pipeline" so they seem | important 2) have an auditable paper trail for legal risk, and | a distant 3) hire people. | | Ultimately, there are only 2 kinds of companies: owner/majority | shareholder operated or manager/minority shareholder operated. | Owner operated companies have far quicker and more painless | procedures- so you can prioritize those. For manager-run | companies, you need to find an inside human recruiter first, | before applying. | | This is more legwork, but it will ensure that 1) your | application is not in vain, a human will take a look 2) none of | the pre-calling references 3) might even let you talk to some | teams informally. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | >Can I pay $5 to LinkedIn | | why should you have to pay? They're the ones that want it. | mingus88 wrote: | I would prefer that they charge me for the service, if that | means they keep my data private and don't sell it to any | number of shady brokers who aren't acting in my best | interest. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | Ok good point, on the other hand I believe most modern | corporations respond "Why not both" | idontpost wrote: | chiefalchemist wrote: | > 4. You are not fucking suppose to verify or reference check | on me before I even had my interview or offer. | | "We just met...You know very little about us...Now give us the | personal details of 3 people that you know but we do not. Just | trust us..." | | WTF? Really?? What kind of fool would go for that? | | This is another perfect example of my 1st Law of Hiring: | | How you hire is whom you hire. | | Full stop | gumby wrote: | > 90% of the Application's Data are already in my LinkedIN... | Why the heck do I have to fill it in again. | | Why isn't LinkedIn providing this info as a glob of structured | JSON for pay to the ATS sellers? | | Or just offering their own ATS for that matter? They could own | the whole process from search (most recruiters just use | LinkedIn anyway) to hire, as a springboard for expanding beyond | there? | | They could go the other way too: fill out the application and | it generates a LinkedIn profile for you. When my gf worked | there there was a push to expand LinkedIn beyond | "professionals" to trades. | 542458 wrote: | LinkedIn does have a jobs platform. I'm not an HR person, but | the bits of it I used were pretty good. I liked the AI bit | that auto-filtered-out people with nothing at all relevant on | their resumes (which was pretty accurate from my spot | checking). | pc86 wrote: | These are all things that LinkedIn could and probably would | do if it were its own company. But unfortunately it's owned | by Microsoft, and there's just not enough revenue in these to | justify it. | gumby wrote: | The purchase of LinkedIn made and makes no sense to me | unless they increase its integration with other services. I | know they are trying to integrate github and linkedin but | that doesn't seem particularly useful or significant. | cj wrote: | While I sympathize with the OP's complaints, as an employer | (small 15 person company) I would defend most of these | practices (employment verification, reference checks, | university degree verification, etc) | | I've (literally) employed people who were working 3 jobs | without any of the other employers knowing about one another. | We were being scammed. This happened not just once, but with 2 | people (1 full stack engineer who is a HN regular, and another | was an account manager). | | This was at a 15 person company, and 2 out of the 15 were | working multiple full-time W-2 jobs all with full time | benefits. At the end they were both let go once we discovered | the deception (their downfall was neither of them were meeting | productivity expectations, not getting their work done) | | After this, we heavily beefed up our pre-employment screening, | which is all of what this person is complaining about. | | Unfortunately there are people in the job market who scam | companies. To find and weed these people out before they make | it in the door, we need to do things like verify your degree | (even if it was 20 years ago) not because we care whether you | have a degree, but as a test to see if you were truthful on | your resume. | | Edit: Also, if anyone requests reference checks from your | current employer, you should say no. It's not standard practice | to check current employer, only prior employers (at least in | the US). | lucasgonze wrote: | I don't believe that you are going to do all that screening | before talking to the best candidates. It's just not true. | You wouldn't invest like that in every candidate to submit a | resume. | | Your process is like everybody elses: | | 1. automated resume screen hunting for keywords 2. HR human | review 3. HR call 4. 3-4 other calls 5. detailed screening 6. | offer | | If you are doing detailed screening BEFORE interviews, stop | right now. It is wasted effort. Nobody else does it that way. | axiolite wrote: | > I've (literally) employed people who were working 3 jobs | without any of the other employers knowing about one another. | We were being scammed. | | I fail to see how verifying decades-old degrees would have | prevented this. | pclmulqdq wrote: | Most dishonest people don't stop at one lie. The smart ones | do, but once you get away with one, you are a lot more | likely to try just one more. It works until it doesn't. | [deleted] | mejutoco wrote: | I agree it is not a bad idea to confirm previous employment. | It still does not prevent the case you mention, but it might | help. | | I just wanted to add to anyone: make sure you actually | understand who was the employer and give an opportunity to | address the potential lie. | | Sometimes people (in a rush to read the cv) assume that a | contract position, for instance, was a permanent role and | similar mistakes (even when clearly specified in the cv) and | these checks might make people drop out of the process | unfairly, without recourse. | karmelapple wrote: | Agreed. We hired someone who simply lied about getting their | degree. | | OP mentioned having to bring a diploma, and to me that does | indeed seem ridiculous. | | In the USA, the National Student Clearinghouse [1] provides | degree verification that is the standard. It is much more | reliable than someone showing a piece of paper. | | How do I know this? The hire who lied about graduating also | produced a falsified diploma, which blew me away. I confirmed | it was false because when I checked with the university in | question, they pointed out some things that confirmed | although it was similar, they never would have issued one | like this. (And the registrar confirmed this person did | indeed never graduate) | | [1] https://nscverifications.org/ | ghaff wrote: | I would have no idea where my actual physical diplomas are. | itronitron wrote: | Most, and possibly all, universities have a registrar's | office through which you can order copies of | transcripts/diplomas. I only know this because I had to | submit transcripts as part of a job application, decades | after graduating :) | coldpie wrote: | Attending university is one of the biggest regrets of my | life. I'd rather find a different job than have to have | any contact with that scam world again. | bane wrote: | In the U.S., almost all registrars offices now just use | the National Clearinghouse service. Many schools will | simply refer you or your browser to their site. They also | track student enrollment, so if you are a company paying | for somebody to go to school and want to verify it, you | can, or if somebody claims they are close to finishing | you can verify enrollment through the Clearinghouse. | ksec wrote: | Oh this is _exactly_ what I am looking for. I wonder if UK | and EU has something similar. | karmelapple wrote: | Glad it's helpful! That's why I shared it - I had never | heard of it until someone with more HR background than me | recommended it. | derjames wrote: | I the UK, I used at some point an Apostille service to | verify my UK issued degree. This additional document | helps on the verification of authenticity of the degree. | caskstrength wrote: | > Agreed. We hired someone who simply lied about getting | their degree. | | Were there any problems with their performance? I mean, why | do you care about their diploma if they were able to pass | interview and then perform on the job afterwards? | SoftTalker wrote: | If they lied to get the job, they've demonstrated a | willingness to be dishonest for personal gain. What will | they do on the job if an opportunity presents itself? | karmelapple wrote: | Exactly this. | yamtaddle wrote: | ~Everybody lies to get jobs. The interview process | demands it. "Why do you want to work here?" being a | common one. In most situations you can't answer that | honestly without being rejected, and there are other | similar, very-common questions. You're supposed to be | socially-aware enough to tell the right sort of lie. 10:1 | you've repeatedly been lied to regarding "tell me about a | time that..." questions, if you ask those, and had no | idea it was a lie (though you may have caught, or | suspected, some poorly-done ones). Why? The good story | will beat the truth every time, unless you've lucked into | your truth also being a good story. At a minimum most of | the ones that give a good impression have had a _lot_ of | editing and embellishment. | | I do agree that outright fabricating credentials is a | _worse_ lie, but the job market and interview process is | morally corrosive by nature. | trap_goes_hot wrote: | You can answer most 'tell me about a time' questions | without outright lying. A question can be taken at face | value, or you can recognize the intention behind the | question, and rehearse an answer that goes to the heart | of the issue. The concern from the other side is perhaps | a reassurance that the candidate can think critically, or | how they work in a team, or handle conflict, etc. | _carbyau_ wrote: | > The good story will beat the truth every time, unless | you've lucked into your truth also being a good story. | | I'd argue this is about story telling capability. Telling | a story well, is an art. Chances are you've seen a number | of stand up comics tell an otherwise factually boring | story - but somehow made it hilarious. This is why there | is the "they were so funny when they said | 'foobar'....guess you had to be there." | | The problem here though is now your interview process is | evaluating stroytelling skills rather than job skills per | se - well unless you're looking to hire a good | storyteller. On the other hand, interpersonal | communication is important... | throwaway1995v2 wrote: | I totally agree with this, In particular with the typical | "Why do you want to work for this company?" or "Why are | you leaving your current job?" | | The honest and most common answer "I want more money" | makes you look greedy and you had to come up with a more | acceptable excuse, Like "Your product is very | interesting", "I'm "Looking for new challenges". | | kind of like the initial steps of dating where you kind | of know what the other is up to but you don't talk about | it until you had evaluated each other and decided that | "yeah I want to be your girlfriend" or "yeah I want to | hire you" and then you finally can take your mask off and | talk with honesty. | | Monkey brain fault, I guess | trap_goes_hot wrote: | There is no need to lie though. "I didn't feel that my | compensation matched my responsibilities, for e.g. ---- " | | These are just normal human things. Like for e.g. How to | give negative feedback to a direct report, while not | discouraging them to keep trying harder and motivating | them. You need to have tact and be strategic in how you | approach that conversation. | | The common retort "Well I just want it straight without | sugar coating, corporate speak sucks!" doesn't address | that not everyone is the same, and you need to apply a | layer of human sensitivity to certain types of | conversations. The more you know someone the more you | will be familiar with their mental state, and the more | freely you can say things without this 'emotional | handshake'. | y-c-o-m-b wrote: | > What will they do on the job if an opportunity presents | itself? | | What kind of opportunity are we talking? | | I think it highly depends on the circumstances. Job | performance and lying to gain entry don't necessarily | correlate. The "dishonest for personal gain" argument | goes out the window in this profit-driven world. If | anything, it's encouraged with the precedence already | being set by the employer market itself. Employers will | cheat candidates out of whatever they can get away with; | that's the norm not the exception. | | If a candidate has more work experience than their would- | be college educated peers, you've effectively shut out a | valuable asset for no good reason. Maybe they've assessed | the position and determined it's an arbitrary barrier for | getting hired, but honesty would be far too risky. If | they passed your interview, then either your education | requirement is unnecessary or your interview process | sucks and you're allowing bad candidates in regardless. | Maybe this trait of fabricating education credentials | means they're actually resourceful and understand risk | assessment? | | FWIW I'm a high school drop out, no degree. I work in | FAANG and I'm going on 17+ years of work experience in | tech. Lack of degree has never been an issue for me. If I | see the requirement there, I still apply and each time | the employer has waived it. I'm just playing devils | advocate here. | Balgair wrote: | Well, I'm horrified by this. I don't want anyone to have | such easy access to such personal information of mine | without my consent. | | The opt-out process for the site is detailed here: | https://www.studentclearinghouse.org/privacy-policy/ | | Crtl+F for 'opt-out" and you can find the email address | there and other information. | karmelapple wrote: | As the FTC mentions on their website [1]: | | > Most college registrars will confirm dates of | attendance and graduation, as well as degrees awarded and | majors, upon request | | And for the National Student Clearinghouse, you do need a | person's name, school, and date of birth. Although date | of birth might not be wildly difficult to get, it is an | extra piece of info that won't surface if finding | someone's name randomly on the internet or in a phone | book. | | The report is very plain - it confirms basically what the | FTC quote mentions. | | Given that registrars give out that info, are you still | concerned? If so, I'm interested in what you would | propose as a solution if you are applying to a job and | they want to confirm that what you have stated on your | resume is true. Perhaps a system like credit scores use | where you can lock your credit against being checked, and | then unlock it for a short time window? | | I'm sure HN can think of all kinds of clever approaches | to allowing this, and perhaps the clearinghouse website | will indeed change significantly sometime. | | I consider the clearinghouse's approach as similar to the | insecurity of checking account numbers. Basically, if | someone has your name, checking account, and routing | number, they can ask a bank for money from your account. | As an account holder, I've asked my bank, "Can I tell you | to not give money to certain parties from my account?" | And their answer was a flat no. I am much more concerned | with that, and nothing is changing on that front anytime | soon. At least I can move my money somewhere without a | checking account, but it's still fairly hard to live | without a checking account somewhere. | | [1] https://www.ftc.gov/business- | guidance/resources/avoid-fake-d... | charlieyu1 wrote: | Isn't it criminal offence to provide fake documents? | bluedino wrote: | This happens quite often. We had a mayor in the past who | claimed to have a degree in civics or something from a | university, when that was found out to not be true, they | issued a press release trying to save face. He was re- | elected, somehow. | darkhorn wrote: | Same issue with Erdogan. He was never able to prove that | he had a university diploma. Plus, while he opens | criminal cases for absurd tweets he never went to court | for people who claimed that his diploma is fake. | merely-unlikely wrote: | I get the anecdotal impression that bad deeds in politics | mostly serve as confirmation for those who already don't | like the politician and are largely ignored or excused by | those who do like him/her. | lazide wrote: | In most jurisdictions, you bet. It's also a criminal | offense to lie about material job history or | qualifications. | | It's rarely prosecuted outside of high profile cases | though. | | So employers beware and all. | betaby wrote: | "Ex-Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson claimed he had computer | science and accounting degrees from Stonehill College in | Easton, Massachusetts. In fact, he only had the | accounting degree." | https://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-big-shots-who-lied- | on-th... | [deleted] | vxNsr wrote: | The sad part was he was actually a very competent CEO and | after he left they had a revolving door of CEOs until | they admitted failure and sold the company. | ZanyProgrammer wrote: | *citation needed. You're gonna have to be a lot more | specific | malfist wrote: | If they were doing their job well enough that you couldn't | tell they were employed elsewhere, were you really being | scammed? | | Or did you get pissy because you didn't have a person's | livelihood to hold over them to make dance to your song? | llanowarelves wrote: | I hope more people double and triple-up on him. | | You know, we could get people recruited on a double/triple | and take an ongoing %, to monetize his crying. | twawaaay wrote: | As an advisor for startup CEOs who also worked for a lot of | large known brands, I fully agree. | | Even just a tiny bit of effort in the application process | does miracles to filter out people who do not really want to | work for your company. Because sending hundreds or even | thousands job applications requires you to optimise your | efforts and reject possible employers who would require you | to spend total of one day in the process. | | On the other hand if found the company you would like to work | for, you researched the position, you have realistic demands, | spending that time is just an investment in getting the job | you really want. For example, when I interview I take a day | off so that I am rested, fresh and with my head reasonably | empty of the projects I am currently running so that I can | present my best on the interview. | colonelpopcorn wrote: | I think you've overestimated how many people look for jobs | because they "really want to work" for a particular | company. Further, you're asking candidates to eat the | opportunity cost associated with spending time on one | employer's application process. | massysett wrote: | Job postings trigger a flood of applications. It's not an | efficient use of staff time to trudge through | applications from people who couldn't be bothered to | create a login. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | Creating a login can be automated. You're not filtering | for qualified job applicants by doing that. You're | guaranteeing that the only applicants you ever see are | bots. | mjhay wrote: | Getting a job these days sans personal collections | requires sending out many, many applications. Each job | one applies to only has a small chance of getting a | callback. Given that, I'm not going to spend 30 minutes | filling out pages of redundant information. | | If a company has that little respect for my time to make | me jump through all of these bureaucratic hoops, | seemingly to prove I can tolerate mindless nonsense, I | don't want to work for them. | bbarnett wrote: | _If a company has that little respect for my time to make | me jump through all of these bureaucratic hoops, | seemingly to prove I can tolerate mindless nonsense, I | don 't want to work for them._ | | Yup, all my data is on linkedin, then I click apply, and | I get taken to a whole other website? And no way to fill | in from linkedin? | | Clearly corp x cares little about my time. | | And for what? Why? Is 'Apply with linkedin" that bad?! | | Here's the truth, top talent? Corps need to do the work. | Not us. | twawaaay wrote: | > Getting a job these days sans personal collections | requires sending out many, many applications. | | I am sorry this is the way you see it. | | Have you ever _tried_ figuring out where you would like | to work, researching the company, be excellently prepared | for the interview and working them to get the best terms? | | Trust me, it is easier than ever and I have been a long | time on the job market. Right now, trying to put _ANY_ | effort will immediately put you in front of other | candidates because 99% of candidates, frankly, are too | lazy for barest effort on their part. Which this entire | comment section is an excellent example of. | Silhouette wrote: | _Have you ever tried figuring out where you would like to | work, researching the company, be excellently prepared | for the interview and working them to get the best | terms?_ | | One of the reasons I got fed up of being someone else's | employee and shifted towards B2B and entrepreneurialism | was exactly that the above strategy wasn't really working | even back then. If it's a direct approach without a | personal introduction there's just too much randomness to | justify jumping through a lot of hoops in a recruitment | process even if in fact there would be a great fit and | everyone would be happy if they ended up working | together. | | With the kind of market we've had in the tech industry | for at least a decade now it just doesn't make sense for | good candidates to spend too much time on potential | employers who make it too difficult to work with them. | Maybe that will change again if the growing economic | problems persist for more than a year or two but I'm a | long way from placing that bet right now. | ROTMetro wrote: | Found the manager/C-level. a thread with 8 million valid | reasons why people are unwilling to do this and | Twawaaay's takeaway: | | 'candidates, frankly, are too lazy for the barest | effort'. | twawaaay wrote: | You know what they used to call people who would not do | something unless they were greeted with red carpet? A | diva. | | If you join the company, there will be a lot of things | that will not work perfectly and yet you will be asked to | do things anyway. Everything is in constant flux at any | startup because of growth and at large companies things | are broken because of entrenched mistakes. | | If everything works perfectly it means the company | obsesses over its internal processes to the point of | ignoring everything else. Which is also a problem. | | There exists no company that is in a state of change | where everything works perfectly. And every non trivial | company is always in a state of change. | | If you can't get over one broken form you simply aren't | cut for the job. | ProZsolt wrote: | But that state I will be payed for my efforts. | | Unless you do something truly groundbreaking or | contributing to a cause I deeply care, which makes me to | want to really work there, I will just go to the next | company where will be a lot of things that also not work | perfectly, but I don't have to jump through these hoops. | ROTMetro wrote: | And the above comment is how the candidates with the most | opportunities will see things, meaning your system to | find the best candidate by default filters out valuable | candidates that also value and are rational about their | time but great for finding 'wage slaves' that will accept | unreasonable demands of their time and don't really have | other options. Gee, what a funny, totally unexpected | result for the company -\\_(tsu)_/- | massysett wrote: | Oh wow they have so many opportunities that they need to | go on websites and click buttons to apply? The ones with | all these opportunities coming out of their ears are | getting recruited, not spamming websites. | | Setting up a spam magnet just attracts spam, not the | "candidates with the most opportunities." | happyopossum wrote: | > Getting a job these days sans personal collections | requires sending out many, many applications | | I think this may be more a consequence of blasting out | numerous applications, than the cause of having to do so. | | Every job I've gotten in the past 20 years has been a) | the company I was targeting to work for, and b) the | result of a targeted, careful, and studious effort to get | in there. | HyperSane wrote: | Unless you have a clause in your employment contract | forbidding employees from having another job you have no | right to care if they do as long as they are meeting | productivity requirements. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _you have no right to care_ | | An employee lying on their W-4 about having multiple jobs | can create a lot of legal and bureaucratic overhead. | HyperSane wrote: | Where is the lie? | splitstud wrote: | [deleted] | ericd wrote: | Most full-time contracts have exactly that clause, you can | safely assume that theirs did. | | That employee also likely assigned all IP they created | during work hours to two companies. | philote wrote: | Not in my experience. I've worked one salaried job for | over a decade alongside other salaried jobs. I let my | employers know (and ensure them my long-standing job | won't affect my other one), and also checked the | contracts to be sure I'm all good. | Anderkent wrote: | obviously no one has issues with this scenario where both | employers know. but the recent overemployed scheme where | you get multiple jobs, do nothing for months while taking | advantage of remote & people understanding that it takes | time to get started, then look for a new job once you get | fired from one - that's clearly abusive & wrong | HyperSane wrote: | I only worked at one company that explicitly forbid me | from being employed by another company. | lazide wrote: | They weren't meeting productivity requirements. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | And how are you supposed to know that before hiring them? | lazide wrote: | Huh? | PainfullyNormal wrote: | This entire thread is about pre-screening job applicants | so you know before hiring them that they're working | multiple W2 jobs so you don't get "scammed" and | accidentally hire somebody who is already working | multiple full time jobs. But, it's not a scam unless | they're not meeting productivity requirements. How do you | know the person you're going to hire is not going to meet | those productivity requirements before hiring them? | tomtheelder wrote: | > How do you know the person you're going to hire is not | going to meet those productivity requirements before | hiring them? | | You don't. But you never know that for sure. The whole | interview process is just gathering data to make an | estimate about whether or not the person will | successfully perform in the role. Them having another job | would be almost the strongest indicator I could imagine | that they will not be successful. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | > Them having another job would be almost the strongest | indicator I could imagine that they will not be | successful. | | As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, many people | successfully work multiple jobs. | tomtheelder wrote: | Firstly I'd imagine there's actually a minuscule number | of people who actually do that successfully. But even so, | the fact that some can pull it off doesn't mean that it's | not a very strong indicator toward poor performance. | lazide wrote: | The sub thread you are replying to was from someone with | specific anecdotes where _people whom they had hired were | not meeting performance goals and it turns out were | working for multiple companies_. | | The relevance here is many managers have experience with | employees who seemed fine in interviews and barely met | performance bars (or just flat out didn't) despite | working just one job. | | It's well within their legal rights (and a useful | heuristic!) to not hire someone because they're not | comfortable rolling the dice on a candidate being able to | meet performance criteria because they're working | multiple jobs. Because working multiple jobs is a lot | harder than working one job on pretty much any metric one | can think of, and is not a protected class or status. | | They'll also reap any blowback or rewards from doing so, | including difficulty finding candidates, or not. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | It's also well within their legal rights to not hire | somebody because the hiring manager doesn't like people | who wear plaid. Not such a useful heuristic. | lazide wrote: | It depends entirely on the industry and job of course. | Managers (and owners) prosper or not based on a number of | factors, one being their ability to hire and retain | employees that bring value to the company in excess of | their costs. | | A manager considering it for something like a software | dev position would just be hurting themselves, though | likely only a little as I doubt 'candidate wears plaid' | comes up often. | | If it was someone hiring for a fashion designer position, | or a public facing spokesperson position, plaid could be | a huge plus or a huge minus (I'm guessing huge minus as | of right now for most), and what the candidate wears and | how the they present themselves relative to current | fashions and norms is a huge and important element that | the hiring manager would be incompetent to not consider. | | That said, there are plenty of managers who are pretty | incompetent. | gattilorenz wrote: | You can't. But the op had already hired scammers, and | they were not meeting the productivity requirements. | | Or, you can try to guesstimate that by checking with | previous employers. Which was the OP's point I guess, or | alternatively the OP's point was "I give my employees a | 40 hours/week contract, so they can't really have another | job (and still perform adequately, or simply they can't | depending on the law of the country)" | balderdash wrote: | There are plenty of reasons to care, off the top of my head | 1) are they working for competitors 2) are they more likely | to burnout or not stay in the role, 3) can you really trust | them given their deception, etc | philote wrote: | There's generally non-compete clauses in employment | contracts in my experience. I think #2 is a valid | concern. And #3 only is if they were deceitful, which | isn't always the case when someone is working multiple | jobs. | idontpost wrote: | PainfullyNormal wrote: | > There's generally non-compete clauses in employment | contracts in my experience. | | Non-competes are illegal or unenforceable in the | following US states: California, North Dakota, the | District of Columbia, Oklahoma, Maine, Maryland, New | Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Washington. | | Also, if a company asks you to sign one, you can say no. | I always do. | s1artibartfast wrote: | I don't think that is true in this context. | | For example, in California, you can't ban someone from | working for a competitor after leaving. | | You absolutely can ban them from working for a competitor | at the same time. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | > You absolutely can ban them from working at at a | competitor at the same time. | | How? | s1artibartfast wrote: | You write it in their contract or fire them when you find | out. | | California offers protection for "lawful conduct | occurring during nonworking hours away from the | employer's premises." | | Note that it specifies "nonworking hours". There is also | an exemption for working for a competitor. | | https://www.mossbollinger.com/blog/2020/december/my- | employer... | PainfullyNormal wrote: | How does that "ban them from working at at[sic] a | competitor at the same time"? So, you fire them. They'll | still have the other job and can get another. | s1artibartfast wrote: | Im not sure what part you are confused by. Is it the word | ban? | | My employer can also ban me from stealing money or tools. | If they discover it, they can legally fire me. | | You stated that non-competes are illegal. This is | incorrect in the context of moonlighting with competitors | or concurrent employment (with anyone during working | hours). Those types of non-competes are completely legal. | | I expect we will see a rise in the number of contracts | that explicitly state no other employment during business | hours. | Tangurena2 wrote: | Non-competes in CA & CO are totally enforceable if: | | 1 - you are a manager. | | 2 - you are selling a company. | | If you are a coder or regular employee, then no, the non- | competes are not worth the paper they are printed on. | | > _The Jimmy John's agreement prohibited employees during | their employment and for two years afterward from working | at any other business that sells "submarine, hero-type, | deli-style, pita, and /or wrapped or rolled sandwiches" | within 2 miles of any Jimmy John's shop in the United | States, according to Madigan's lawsuit. An agreement in | effect from 2007 to 2012 extended that to 3 miles._ | | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jimmyjohns- | settlement/jim... | | https://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/22/jimmy-johns-drops-non- | compet... | | They were being sued in IL & NY by the states' attorneys | general over the issue. | Supermancho wrote: | > Non-competes are illegal or unenforceable in the | following US states | | Non-compete in this context means post-facto (forward- | looking) non-competes. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | Section 16600 of the California Business and Professions | Code provides that "every contract by which anyone is | restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, | or business of any kind is to that extent void." | s1artibartfast wrote: | California also provides an exemption if the second | employment is during business hours of the first employer | , or with a competitor | Supermancho wrote: | > Section 16600 of the California Business and | Professions Code provides that "every contract by which | anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful | profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that | extent void." | | That is the letter of the law, but that has not been the | interpretation (re: a 2020 appellate ruling mentions | this) | | https://calawyers.org/business-law/california-appellate- | cour... | | I also happen to know that ND non-competes are | enforceable in a limited fashion. | consp wrote: | Do note that in Europe these have been (severely depending | on where you exactly live) restricted. In my case for | instance you need an objective reason to limit someone from | having other employment which is quite restrictive in what | you can limit as an employer. There is no case law yet (as | it's very recent) so we will see what happens in practice. | shagie wrote: | How are benefits impacted when an employee's hours are | reduced? - https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools- | and-samples/hr-... | | > Most benefits plans will detail the eligibility | requirements to participate in the plan, including employee | classification (full-time, part-time, regular, temporary, | etc.) and/or numbers of hours worked per week or month. | Once these classifications change for a covered employee, | his or her eligibility will need to be reassessed. | | > Short-term, temporary changes usually will not change an | employee classification. For example, if a full-time | employee goes on vacation for three weeks, most employers | would not change the employee's full-time status. However, | if an employee reduces his or her hours during the school | year to accommodate his or her class schedule, employers | may want to reclassify the employee to part time due to the | length of the arrangement. It boils down to how the | employer defines the classifications and how they are used | in the eligibility requirements of each plan. | | --- | | Without getting to an attempt to measure productivity... | | The nightmare scenario for HR in this situation is to have | someone who is a full time worker and getting full time | benefits is found to be splitting their time between two or | more companies in a way practically means that they | couldn't be working the necessary number of hours to be | eligible for benefits at the company. | | Having an insurance company or similar decides that your | employee isn't eligible for the benefits that you claim | they are and ask for an audit of employee time now and | going forward, this gets into the "this is gonna suck" | category. | | There are also issues of IP assignment where one (or both) | companies make claims to the inventions that were produced | "during work hours" at the other company. | 3pt14159 wrote: | I agree with most of this, though I don't bother checking | degrees. Coding samples have way more signal unless the | degree is from a premier university. So for Waterloo, MIT, | Stanford, Harvard, etc. I would check if there was any doubt, | but for the rest of it I've honestly not seen too much value | in specific universities. | | As for reference checks: If a reference is on a resume that | I've been handed by a candidate or that candidate's agent I | check it. Glowing references really highly correlate with job | _enthusiasm_ and honestly most developers don 't list them | anyway, so even having one that's positive without being | glowing is a good signal. | bumby wrote: | Is there evidence that the institutional prestige is a | better signal? I thought there was a movement away from | that because it wasn't shown to be a particularly strong | predictor. | alistairSH wrote: | Only speaking about recent graduates (0-2 years) and | making what are obviously pretty broad generalizations... | | Anecdotally, there is slight correlation between | university prestige and interview performance. But not | enough to toss lower tier university graduates - if their | resume is otherwise strong, they're worth interviewing | regardless of school. | | The strongest signal I have as a hiring manager is a | successful internship/co-op. If the candidate worked on | interesting projects and can discuss the tech stack and | business problem being solved, they're likely to be a | good hire. | | The few collegiate athletes I've hired have also been | top-notch. But not enough of them to claim correlation. | Would be interesting to see if there's a real correlation | there. | bumby wrote: | My experience is anecdotal as well, but it confirms your | hunch about collegiate athletes. The have been the best | performers, but it's a small sample size in my case. It | would be interesting if there is a different correlation | between sports (e.g., individual vs. team sports). | | The main complaints I've heard about the prestigious | institution hires are: | | 1) They tend to excel well when given a problem that can | be solved with a rather templated approach, but tend to | struggle more with poorly defined problems | | 2) They tend to have higher turnover, with the | speculation that they jump ship as soon as a perceived | higher status opportunity arises. Meaning, they start a | lot of projects but don't see them to completion | | I don't know if I've had enough experience with the | differing groups to draw strong conclusions one way or | another. | 3pt14159 wrote: | My experience with the premier university grads is that | they know the details really well. While a bootcamp | trained dev can roll out features and tests for line of | work crud APIs, they may not be able to handle the 5% of | the job that requires deep knowledge of mathematics, | internals, or similar type things. I don't think you need | many of them on a team, but it's good to have them around | to fill in where the technically strong, but less | rigorously trained, may struggle. | trap_goes_hot wrote: | It's easy for outsiders to point out flaws, but if the system | you have in place is allowing you to hire and retain talent, | then you've succeeded. | devwastaken wrote: | If they don't perform because they have three jobs, fire | them. You're trying to protect against rare circumstances and | it is reducing the number of quality candidates that don't | have to play that game and will go elsewhere. | tomtheelder wrote: | Hiring someone, having them under-perform due to having | multiple jobs, and then firing them is _incredibly_ costly. | Having at tighter application process to prevent that and | other similar situations is likely worth the loss in | candidates. | [deleted] | richiebful1 wrote: | > You are not fucking suppose to verify or reference check on | me before I even had my interview or offer. So now my boss / | management knows I am job hunting? | | OP is okay with employment verification, but it should wait | until after the offer is signed. Any offer will be pulled | back if the job seeker lied about their job history | chias wrote: | We're talking references here, so this gets very sticky. | They're not just wondering "were you employed at X from | dates Y to Z", they want to get that person's opinion on | what kind of employee you are, then make a judgement call | on whether that's the kind of employee they want to hire. | | If you move a judgement call of that kind to after the | offer stage, then the offer letter becomes a lot less | meaningful. | [deleted] | time_to_smile wrote: | > they want to get that person's opinion on what kind of | employee you are | | At least in the US such reference checks are impossible | these days. To avoid litigation any serious company is | going to: | | a.) have the call directed to an HR rep rather than the | manager or any other employees | | b.) the HR rep will _only_ verify title and dates of | employment. | | I haven't heard of anyone doing the type of reference | check you're describing since the very early 2000s. | jlokier wrote: | > If you move a judgement call of that kind to after the | offer stage, then the offer letter becomes a lot less | meaningful. | | That may be true, but if a potential employer gets | _current_ employer references before any offer is made, | the candidate is at serious risk of unemployment (let go | and no offer to replace it), or an uncomfortable change | in relationships at the old job. The risk to the | candidate is high. | | Besides, many offers are lowball without much room for | negotiation. Why would a candidate take the risk, not | even knowing if there's a good enough offer contingent on | the reference? | | If a potential employer asked for a current-employer | reference from me before making any offer, I would | terminate the process even if I expect a great reference, | because it shows the employer doesn't care about (or | doesn't think about) the fundamentals from an employee's | perspective, and that is a big clue that it's likely to | be an awful place to work in other ways. | | A good employer doesn't act as if employer and employee | are in equal positions with the same to lose. I've been | jerked around by too many employers and potential ones | who don't care about effect on their employees, sometimes | at large financial cost to myself, so these days I'd just | drop the company if they seem oblivious to how things | affect the candidate. There are plenty of good ones who | also pay well, and those are also the ones I'd rather | help succeed. | | If it's just about the amount of the offer or level of | the position, they always have the option to revise it up | after they get a reference they like. | ghaff wrote: | Yes. I give references that aren't problematic from a | tipping off current employer perspective. If references | are going to factor into the employment decision it sort | of has to be before the offer or what's the point? | imwillofficial wrote: | How is it your business if your employee is moonlighting? If | they are delivering, what's the problem? | | If they are not delivering, other jobs are irrelevant, they | aren't meeting the bar. | dinkleberg wrote: | Many of these people aren't moonlighting, they are working | both jobs in the same 40 hour work week. They are just half | assing two (or more) jobs and putting in the bare minimum. | | Look up the overemployed subreddit. | photochemsyn wrote: | How is that different from a corporate board member who | sits on several different corporate boards, which is a | very common practice? | jibe wrote: | Corporate boards typically meet at most once a month, and | often only a few times a year for 3-4 hours. That is very | different from a 40 hour a week job. | llanowarelves wrote: | How much knowledge, wisdom, and value did Hunter Biden | add to get $40k a month from Burisma? Goes for most board | members really. They are all "quiet quitters". | | If that's not "stealing" but regular people actually | working multiple jobs with actual deliverables in a way | you couldn't even tell is, | | then "stealing" is good and I will help as many to do it | as possible, especially from the HN poster companies | coming out and countersignaling it so hard. | skinnymuch wrote: | Everything you said makes it even worse. They are barely | working and making many times more than full time | employees. | balderdash wrote: | Because a board member works like 12-15 days a year if | your super diligent about it, and way less if you half | ass it. | omginternets wrote: | One big difference is that everybody is aware and has | agreed to it. | hobs wrote: | The other obvious difference is they are rich and the | rest of us are not. | | "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor | alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and | to steal their bread." | lazide wrote: | Board members are supervising operations and overseeing | executives (or are supposed to - many get 'captured' by | management depending on the company), not running them. | | One thing that is REALLY helpful when supervising highly | complex operations like a large corporation is _knowledge | of how similar operations are run at a large number of | other companies_ | | It makes it easier to identify things like pointless 'not | invented here' syndrome, or where a company is being very | inefficient in an area because they don't know of any | alternatives. | | It's common for companies to hire in outside consulting | firms or independent contractors who also work for a | great many companies in an industry for the exact same | reason. It's a way of keeping on top of what the industry | norms are so the company doesn't fall behind and lose | competitiveness. | | Plenty of pros and cons there, but that is a big part of | why. | | The other reason is the board of directors _works for the | shareholders_ , and represents their interests. | | Institutional shareholders hold shares in a _lot_ of | different companies, and if they have someone they know , | trust, and are happy with performance wise, most would | prefer to have them on the boards of as many companies as | they think they have the expertise to oversee. | ROTMetro wrote: | So you are saying it is GOOD if an employee is working | two jobs because they are then exposed to more solutions | and actually SAVE the company because they can reuse | existing knowledge other companies have taken the time to | develope? I like your thinking :) | lazide wrote: | If that's what happens, everyone is fully informed, and | they mind the NDA? Sure. That's pretty much the | definition of an (actual) software engineering contractor | for instance. | | That's pretty much never what happens though if someone | does it when applying for a full time salary position, | and line managers know it, which is why you see people | get worked up about it. People doing it try to convince | themselves it's not a scam, but it almost always is. | | The folks doing this on boards, despite any hate and | derision they are getting here, are often exceptionally | talented, educated, and have a long list of references | where they have been doing it before successfully. They | were voted in with full visibility to their other board | memberships, and while being open about it and any | potential conflicts of interest. They're just not | software engineers. I have yet to meet one that didn't | work their asses off either, just not in the way you | might recognize. | | There can be (and is, of course) nepotism, cronyism, etc. | that happens, same as anywhere, and the shareholders who | vote that in get what they deserve as well in my | experience. Sometimes it's also as simple as 'x owns this | company, and wants y to takeover when they're gone, so y | sits on the board.'. Rare in public or widely held | companies though. | | Ownership has it's privileges, and it's costs after all. | skinnymuch wrote: | The upper class have agreed to it. Everyone else has to | go along with it. Why would the majority of people with | an average middling 5 figure salary agree that it's cool | people can make 5-10x+ the average income to go to a | handful of board meetings? | | Just because something is the status quo and it is | happening without mass protests, doesn't mean people are | agreeing to it. | noasaservice wrote: | Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. | | Too fucking bad they don't "like it". I don't give one | bit of care to the centimillionaire and up club. | olddustytrail wrote: | A centimillionaire would be on about $10k (hundredth). | You want "hectomillionaire". | | Oddly, that's the second time I've used that word today: | talking about Rishi Sunak earlier. | mingus88 wrote: | Board members aren't creating IP. That's really the only | issue I can side with on the employer's side. | | I've worked a full time w/ benefits job and freelanced on | the side. The only aspect of that I would feel that would | be unethical is if I were to mix IP from the firms that | should remain private. | | Otherwise, who the hell cares. If I'm doing task work and | meeting expectations then I'm holding up my end of the | bargain. I'm not a slave and my work does not own me. | Standing around the proverbial water cooler wasting | company time is acceptable, but doing something | productive during my downtime is not? | pclmulqdq wrote: | Most companies are okay with it if regular employees sit | on a board, too, as long as there isn't a conflict of | interest. | ghaff wrote: | I'm on unpaid board member of a non-profit. May not be | what people think of as board member but it's perfectly | normal. Obviously being a board member of a company in | the same industry makes conflicts of interest potentially | trickier | mlindner wrote: | If the "bare minimum" looks no worse than any of the | other employees then I think you have a corporate culture | problem. | | If the people are actually delivering equivalently to | other employees then there's no need to worry if they're | working one or two extra jobs. | mejutoco wrote: | Fire them with cause then. I fail to see the problem. At | some point you have to trust people. No amount of | screening will fix this. | ameister14 wrote: | I don't really care, so long as the job's getting done. | Underperformance, sure, that's a problem. But if I pay | salary it's not about the hours it's about the job. Hours | are the wrong input. | | It's my job to balance the workload such that they have | enough work to make it worth it for me to employ them, | and increase that workload where bearable so I can make | more profit from their employment. If they are not | underperforming and still doing two jobs, then I have | failed my task because I have not effectively exploited | their abilities for profit. | WaitWaitWha wrote: | Just some of the problems I have dealt with _undisclosed_ | moonlighters - | | Ever had a medical claim by your over employed staff? | Which insurance pays? | | Do you pay for training? | | In case of intellectual property theft from you or the | other company, do you know what are your obligations? | (Receiving company is can held liable.) | | What amount of taxes do you withhold? What are the | penalties for withholding significantly wrong taxes in | your jurisdiction? | ameister14 wrote: | None of this is unique to people with multiple jobs. | | 1. The employee's insurance pays; in the US, they pay at | least part of their insurance costs so it is unlikely for | them to be covered by two services. If so, they can | choose. If they were injured on the job, or in some | capacity based on your work, then how is it different? | Actually, how is this situation different from them | purchasing outside insurance or being covered by their | spouse? It's unlikely to be a problem and if it is it's | not unique. | | 2. Sure, why not? | | 3. What does this have to do with them having multiple | jobs? If they steal your intellectual property, that's a | problem whether or not they are employed elsewhere. How | does double employment compound this? If you hired | someone from another job and they brought stolen property | with them, is that different? | | 4. They are responsible for letting you know how much to | deduct. You can do standard mandatory deductions based on | expected salary and as long as you pay the required | employment taxes based on the salary you pay them there | isn't a difference in withholding on your end, only on | theirs. If they owe more in tax, what do you care? | pc86 wrote: | Having coverage with multiple insurance companies is | pretty stupid. Typically the employee will only have | coverage from the "primary" job. | | Of course you pay for training, why wouldn't you? | | Working for competing companies is even more stupid than | being overinsured, and could potentially be illegal (for | the employee). And rightfully so. | | Company withholdings don't change so this is not your | concern. | DeathArrow wrote: | >If they are not underperforming and still doing two | jobs, then I have failed my task because I have not | effectively exploited their abilities for profit. | | It's not like that. Since work is a market, you exchange | a previously agreed amount of money for a previously | agreed amount of work and knowledge. | | Otherwise, the employees can also say they failed at | their task if they wouldn't determine you to part with a | large sum while putting in the minimum possible amount of | work and working two jobs minimum. | | That coin has two sides. | time_to_smile wrote: | This logic doesn't make any sense, is it okay if I half | ass and put in the bare minimum for just one job? | | How does have more than 1 job change this logic? | | If you can get the job done then I don't see why it | matters, and if you can't I don't see why it matters if | you can't and you only have 1 job or you can't and you | have 2? | | Especially since rescinded offers have suddenly become | acceptable, I think most people going forward should at | least have the two jobs overlap by 2 weeks. | nsxwolf wrote: | As long as everyone is happy with the output, I don't see | it as a problem. | cacois wrote: | Working multiple full time W2 jobs without employer consent | is not moonlighting. Both employers believe you are working | for them full time during business hours, which would be | false. This practice is deceptive. | | Meeting productivity targets is an important aspect of your | job, but so is being available during business hours, | meetings/collaborations, etc. | | Moonlighting is working another job outside of business | hours - which I agree, employers have less of a right to | object to. | pc86 wrote: | If you're attending the meetings you're required to | attend, are completing the work you're required to | complete by the agreed-upon deadlines, and are not | working for a competitor, it is no business of my | employer's what I'm doing at any given hour of the day. | | This paternalistic bullshit will be the downfall of | companies who care more about micromanaging and | controlling their underpaid employees than they do about | actually delivering something to the market. If someone | isn't producing, fire them. If someone is only being | given 10 hours a week of work, and they have enough free | time to get another W2 job and earn another full-time | salary, that's 100% a company/management problem. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | At most companies, part of what they're paying you for is | to be engaged during business hours. You're not just a | contracting service who accepts requirements and tosses | results back over the wall; you're a human resource, | meant to be available for your coworkers as needed. | | In a hypothetical case where someone only has 10 hours of | stuff to do a week, I'm sympathetic, I'd be pretty bored | by that too. But when I see a SWE describe a scenario | like that, most of the time they end up meaning that they | have 10 hours of _coding tasks_ a week, because they don | 't consider anything else to be a real part of their job. | balderdash wrote: | Except in your example, did the employee turn in the the | work that was assigned Monday morning on Tuesday morning, | and say "I'm done what's next", or did they lie and turn | it in Friday and say it took all week? | | If you want to get paid by the hour or unit rate, be a | consultant. | lucasyvas wrote: | This doesn't make any sense. Most people are salaried and | their time isn't tracked that way anyway. | | To a certain point I agree with you, but how much an | employee actually outputs is a constant negotiation | between the business and the employee - this is where | expectation comes into play. | | If you are performing beyond the baseline, you can | negotiate to be compensated for exceeding it, or you can | take a break. | | There is no expectation that an employee should perform | more work "for free" just because they can. | | I believe in fairness between both sides - there is no | free lunch in either direction. | s1artibartfast wrote: | Ultimately it comes down to deception. If an employee can | do everything requested without lying, then maybe there | is a defense. | | This position collapses the first time someone's boss | asks about workload and the employee has to lie or admit | they have tons of free time. | | Im sure there are unicorn cases where employees are never | asked how long a task will take, or about their bandwidth | for new tasks. However, in reality, the vast majority of | situations require constant deception. | | Most of the time the lying starts at the beginning with | false employment history. | bbarnett wrote: | _This doesn 't make any sense. Most people are salaried | and their time isn't tracked that way anyway._ | | Most employment contracts, even for salaried workers, | list things such as "37.5hrs per week". | | If this is the understanding, and you aren't working | diligently for those hours, you're a thief and fraudster, | a scam artist, and should be fired. | | If you get done a task early, ask for more work! | | The attitude of people in this thread is laughable. | People in this field are some of the most privileged, | well paid members of our society. | | To hear such persons moan and bleet over their lot is | laughable. Grow up people. Just disgusting. | treis wrote: | The point of a salaried position is that you're a | professional filling a role for an organization. That | role is not "do tasks assigned". It's spend your working | time to make stuff better. With "working time" either | explicitly laid out or implicitly, for the US, roughly 40 | hours a week M-F. | | Working beyond explicitly assigned tasks is not | "performing more work for free". It's doing your job. | ameister14 wrote: | I've never read a contract that outlines job duties as | "spend time working to make stuff better." Mostly they | have a list and then 'tasks as needed/assigned.' | | If you want people to work beyond the bounds of their | contract, then renegotiate the contract. | DeathArrow wrote: | >The point of a salaried position is that you're a | professional filling a role for an organization. That | role is not "do tasks assigned". | | That's funny because if I hire a company to do some work | on my house, they do strictly the tasks assigned and even | try to charge me more than agreed. They don't try to make | my house better. | pc86 wrote: | If it was due by Friday who cares? | ameister14 wrote: | Are there incentives in place for the employee to turn in | work early and ask "what's next?" | | Most people won't lie about it when they turn it in on | Friday, they'll just turn it in when it is due and not | explain. Why turn it in early if there is no reward for | doing so other than more work? | | As I've said elsewhere, this is a management problem, not | an employee problem. As a manager I made sure people knew | that there was a path to promotion, to advance within the | corporation. I checked and tracked their progress and | their work, and worked myself to make an environment | where contributions were noted and rewarded. If a company | or manager doesn't do that, they won't have people | outperforming the base expectations for long, and they | don't deserve to. | analog31 wrote: | It's impossible to manage. Continuously monitoring workers | to make sure they are "delivering" is too hard, and doing | so tends to create a work environment that drives other | workers away. Rules such as "no moonlighting" are just | simple heuristics that make management easier, and in turn, | make it easier to hire and retain managers. | | On the other hand, speaking of "delivering," companies like | Amazon and UPS have figured it out. Amazon wouldn't care if | you were working a second job, because they know your | output down to the nearest Joule at any given moment. | VHRanger wrote: | Amazon and UPS know the output because it's an easily | measurable menial task. | | You won't be able to do that for knowledge work, and | you'll end up using proxies like butt-in-chair time or | jira-tickets-closed which are easy to game and push away | the actually competent workers that have outside options. | | Just do your job as a manager. | imwillofficial wrote: | Interesting, thanks | malfist wrote: | > Continuously monitoring workers to make sure they are | "delivering" is too hard | | Wow. That's...astounding. If you're such a poor manager | that....managing...is too hard. Perhaps you should go | back to IC work. | | Employees don't have to be continuously monitored to see | if they're doing work, that's how you wind up with | spyware and butts in seats mentality. Are they checking | in their work? Are they completing their stories on time? | Are they getting near the average number of story points | done in a sprint? If so, leave them the fuck alone. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | An environment where your productivity is measured by the | amount of code you check in and the number of story | points you complete is exactly the "work environment that | drives other workers away" analog31 mentioned. Many ICs | (and frankly most of the best ones) consider this to be | micromanagement. | malfist wrote: | I'm sorry, why should measuring story points be | considered micromanagement? | | Story points are supposed to be a proxy for amount of | work required, seems reasonable to track that. It's not | like I'm saying you should be measured by the lines of | code you add or something arbitrary. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | Often a task ends up requiring much more work than | expected, or some more important task displaces sprint | work, or you need to do something like prototyping or | design work or customer consultation which can't be | expressed well in terms of concrete deliverables. An | environment where your boss is going to call you to | account for only getting 2 points done last sprint when | you were supposed to do 10 creates nasty incentives to | avoid these things in favor of small easily-defined | tasks. | walls wrote: | This is partially why everyone hates managers. | | What the hell else are you even doing that you don't have | time to ensure your employees are doing their job? You're | really not that busy. | registeredcorn wrote: | >Edit: Also, if anyone requests reference checks from your | current employer, you should say no. It's not standard | practice to check current employer, only prior employers (at | least in the US). | | Question for you: One of the previous companies I worked for | changed their name after I left. The company is still | searchable under the old name. Should I list the new name, or | old name on the resume? I feel like it's not really my | problem, but also _is_ my problem, you know? It 's a weird | thing. I'm not sure how common of a problem this is. | JacobThreeThree wrote: | NewName (formerly OldName) | klodolph wrote: | Weyland Yutani (formerly Yoyodyne Propulsion) 1980-1984 | | Vice President of Red Lectroids | ralph84 wrote: | I put the name of the company when I worked there, then the | current name in parentheses. | | For example: EMC (now Dell) | ghaff wrote: | Ditto. It's a good idea because you don't want someone in | HR thinking there's a discrepancy. | danjoredd wrote: | >I've (literally) employed people who were working 3 jobs | without any of the other employers knowing about one another. | We were being scammed. This happened not just once, but with | 2 people (1 full stack engineer who is a HN regular, and | another was an account manager). | | If that employee does all of their work for you, why does it | matter if they work another job? Are they underperforming? | I'm sorry, but I don't see how that is a scam. In retail, | people work multiple jobs all the time. Why is it suddenly | unethical the moment it turns into an office job? | [deleted] | vsareto wrote: | If you can get the work done, it's not unethical. Sounds | like they weren't getting it done though: | | >(their downfall was neither of them were meeting | productivity expectations, not getting their work done) | [deleted] | LambdaComplex wrote: | > Why is it suddenly unethical the moment it turns into an | office job? | | It's only unethical if you're not in the ruling class. If | you're an executive, it's perfectly fine to sit on the | board of multiple companies simultaneously (each one paying | you $50,000+ per year). | tomtheelder wrote: | No, it's unethical to do it without disclosure. You can | have as many jobs as you want as long as they are aware | of one another. | sahila wrote: | Why though? What business does one employer have knowing | what else you do in your life? Do you tell them what | hobbies you're into or what tv show you watched last? | Test0129 wrote: | > I've (literally) employed people who were working 3 jobs | without any of the other employers knowing about one another. | We were being scammed. This happened not just once, but with | 2 people (1 full stack engineer who is a HN regular, and | another was an account manager). | | We've had several instances of foreign contracting companies | forging identities and using paid actors (who sound and act | American) in order to get into our company. Not only do these | scams seem somewhat common they are also a massive security | risk. We usually find out quickly because there is almost | always an inconsistency in their employment history. | deeblering4 wrote: | > At the end they were both let go once we discovered the | deception (their downfall was neither of them were meeting | productivity expectations, not getting their work done) | | > After this, we heavily beefed up our pre-employment | screening, which is all of what this person is complaining | about. | | So practices were already in place to detect and correct | this. | | That makes it quite foolish to distrust all applicants across | the board, and make their experience worse, when performance | tracking and correction was already a solved problem. | PainfullyNormal wrote: | To be fair, the earlier in the process you can disqualify a | bad candidate, the less money and time you waste. It's | generally positive to re-assess the pre-employment | screening when it fails to do it's job. | | That said, making the process worse for your good | candidates is a horrible solution. | bbarnett wrote: | _That said, making the process worse for your good | candidates is a horrible solution._ | | I feel for that employer, but making the application | process more onerous would be a red flag for me, as a | candidate. | | They are going to potentially hurt themselves if not | careful. | ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 wrote: | thermonuclear rage? go to anger management | [deleted] | pc86 wrote: | Seriously, if you're raging out at unrelated people because | you have a bad day, as an interviewer and potentially | coworker I _really_ want to know that, because I don 't ever | want to work anywhere near you. | mozman wrote: | Employment is a relationship. If you can't be bothered to do | mundane work to apply how do I know you will dutifully complete | those menial but necessary tasks that come with all jobs? | hobs wrote: | Do you normally fill out a 1 hour questionnaire with bizarre | drop outs for your first dates? Don't accept the power | imbalance that is the status quo. | happyopossum wrote: | That's a complete straw man. TFA we're discussing is about | a 5 minute application process. Five. Freaking. Minutes. | | If you can't fill out a 5 minute form to get a job, that's | a problem. | hobs wrote: | Most job applications are not five minute processes, even | for day laborers. Source: me, doing payroll for thousands | of staffing companies. | noirbot wrote: | If the 5 minute form got me a job, sure. But it's a 5 | minute form to chuck a bunch of my personal information | into a black hole where, most likely, I'll never hear | anything, or will get a form letter back in two weeks | telling me they're not interested in me for the role I | already have at a different company. | | So really, as OP put, it's 20-50 5-minute forms that are | all exactly the same, so that you might get a single | interview. Or you just know someone who works there and | skip the whole thing because woo nepotism. | CoastalCoder wrote: | If their recruiter is "super impressed with my resume" | and thinks I'd make great things happen at ${COMPANY}, | then why can't _they_ enter my experience into their | proprietary system? | | I mean, they were so confident in their initial email to | me. Were they not _actually_ as amazed as they stated? | registeredcorn wrote: | Aren't the most valuable employees the ones that hate mundane | and repetitive tasks, who find a means to make their work | easier? A job is of little value if the man performing it has | no interest in improving it. | | If I pay a man to move boxes from here to there, should I | fault him for asking where the pallet jack is? Certainly not! | When he was done with that, I had other things which he could | be doing for me instead. I'd rather pay one man handsomely, | than two adequately. A man who _doesn 't_ have a disdain for | the inefficiency of the thing is the one I aim to replace. | jstanley wrote: | Employment is a relationship. If you can't be bothered to | treat me as a human being when I apply, how do I know you | will dutifully treat me as a human being when I'm working for | you? | BolexNOLA wrote: | I know not everybody is going to agree with this, but cover | letters are in most cases a complete waste of time. If you MUST | see my writing then ask for a personal statement, I have that | templated and ready to roll at a moment's notice. You will | clearly be able to tell if I can write. | trentnix wrote: | _4. You are not fucking suppose to verify or reference check on | me before I even had my interview or offer. So now my boss / | management knows I am job hunting?_ | | Many years ago, I posted my resume on a job site to see what my | options were. An enterprising recruiter called my current (at | the time) workplace asking if they'd need help filling the | position I might be leaving. | | To make his pitch, he asked to speak to the "hiring manager", | which happened to be me. He quickly hung up. | kodah wrote: | I once got a call from my mother, who lives in a different | state, that someone was calling her looking for me. They'd | called a number of times by this point. I returned the call | and it turned out to be a recruiter who I had not responded | to. The recruiter proceeded to use a lookup service which | correlated my mothers phone number to me, which he then used | to get in contact with me. | | I understand that finding people who do what I do is hard, | but that scenario made me sick to my stomach. | mihaaly wrote: | I am shocked how dumb recruiters could be in many cases, | typically at bigger organizations. Sometimes it feels like | the _human_ resurces department consists of algorithmic | devices, it woud be more appropriate calling them _robotic_ | resources. | | Apart from this reference nonsense asked right in the first | form - refused of course leading to exclusion by some | automation immediately - I met with ability test of rapid | finance related calculations - not enought time to complete | all and only tests how good I am in finance tests having a | non-relaistic idealistic scenario as a context - for an | engineering position - which then "will be the baseline for | promotion decisions" later. Refused to take the test, then I | was refused too. All this after successful engineering | interviews and conceptual agreement on particulars (salary, | location of work, start date). | | Not remembering I got refused and calling me with the same | kind of position in couple of weeks, greeting me with "you | have experience that fits perfectly" just to offer me | something require experience I don't have so obviously not | reading the long forms they mandate to fill in down do the | last dot, and similar clue and careless aproaches are what I | experienced. | | There are dozen or (famous in their field) organizations I | could discourage people from applying to due to the dumb | procedures even on the most elementary level. Frightening | what could go on there concerning organization and | administrative tasks. | | All have very cutting edge approaches to forming a perfect | work environment that they consider the utmost importance if | you look at their career pages with explosively happy all | young and dynamic and diverse and smart and pretty people. | They are full of bulls..t and they know that (or hopelessly | clueless which is equally frightening). | ww520 wrote: | Once I had a recruiter asked me to sign a NDA before the | interview. I laughed and said thanks but no thanks. | asoneth wrote: | As a data point, I give my interview candidates the | _option_ to sign an NDA. | | The only benefit is If they sign I can use customer names | instead of generic descriptions (e.g. "large bank" or | "telcom provider") and I can show product interfaces. | | Personally I thought an optional NDA strikes a good | balance, but I've been surprised at how many candidates | just sign NDAs automatically. We communicate that it | otherwise has no bearing on their application but I | suspect some believe that it'll increase their odds. | johannes1234321 wrote: | Even if you say not signing has no consequence a | candidate might not be so sure and see that as a | trust/loyalty test. | georgeecollins wrote: | I believe there is a lot of ignorance about NDAs, in | particular by people who just default to NDA'ing all | external parties. Doing a lot of NDAs can be helpful in | creating a legal record that you communicated with | another party. | | Enforcing an NDA is more difficult then a lot of people | think _. If you have a legal department you can threaten | to sue an individual for anything including breach of an | NDA and in that sense it can be effective. But the only | times an NDA has been enforced in my working experience | is when there is real theft of intellectual property and | you don 't need an NDA to prevail in that situation. | | _ https://www.acc.com/resource-library/issues-enforcing- | nondis... | TheDesolate0 wrote: | marcosdumay wrote: | "Human resources" is the thing they manage. The department | itself is an AI tasked with minimizing legal risks and | employment costs. | danjoredd wrote: | This is what terrifies me about leaving. My current job | almost called the place I was working at to verify my | employment, but I requested them to wait until the interviews | were over, because my last boss was the kind of guy to fire | people arbitrarily. | | Once he fired a guy for not working on his house...that | employee was hired as help desk. Thankfully I passed all my | interviews and they called him right after I was almost | guaranteed to get the position. Took a few insults from the | guy, but haven't heard anything from him since I left | thankfully. | gavinray wrote: | Can't they just look at your company's Github and see you | belong to their org + your commits to their repos? | Chico75 wrote: | Doesn't apply to most companies | tharkun__ wrote: | This is effed up. In my book, the company that you're | interviewing with should _never_ call your current | employer. Call my ex-employers and references I provide all | you want. But if you call my current employer, I will not | work for you and I will deny ever having spoken to said | other company if my boss asked me. It 'd be a surefire way | to make me stay at my current company (and keep | interviewing in other places, because I probably do want to | leave). | | Heck I don't even update my LinkedIn until a year or more | after I move companies. I do update it way _before_ I might | want to jump ship again, just like the "Looking for work" | flag. My current employer's HR department will get no | direct signal that I'm actually looking if I can avoid it. | I'd go as far as not using LinkedIn functionality to apply | to something. For all I know LinkedIn provides a paid for | service to my current employer that notifies them, that I'm | interviewing. | number6 wrote: | What stops your boss from lying to the company: danjoredd? | Never heard of this guy. Never worked here and if he did, | he would have done a lousy job. Glad I could help! | selectodude wrote: | The fact that it's a slam dunk lawsuit for the plaintiff. | | https://www.justia.com/employment/defamation/ | rootusrootus wrote: | Perhaps one of the upsides to working for big companies. | It's probably not going to be your boss they call, it'll | be the HR department. And they probably won't say | anything more than "yes, this person worked here." Both | because they don't know you, and because the legal | department has carefully educated them on what they can | and cannot say. | bathtub365 wrote: | Except you have to be willing to take someone to court | over that. | kube-system wrote: | You just have to make someone _believe_ you'd be willing | to take it to court. In reality, very few civil disputes | make it to a court room. | | In a case like this, your lawyer would send their lawyer | a letter, their lawyer would tell them they're going to | lose, and you'd negotiate a settlement. | dylan604 wrote: | Except, you don't sue the individual. You sue the company | since the individual was acting as a representative of | the company. The company has much deeper pockets than the | individual. | | On "slam dunk" cases, some lawyers will work for small | retainer and large cut of settlement. You no longer have | to spend time chasing. You just supply lawyer with info | when requested. | ryandrake wrote: | Exactly, and you have to be willing to bear the time and | expense of suing a corporation with more money and | attorneys than you. | | Every time someone has a casual "Well, you can just sue | them" answer to being wronged, they forget that the court | system (at least in the US) is inaccessible unless you're | rich and richer than your opponent. If my employer does | something wrong to me, like wage theft, fraud, | harassment, discrimination, it doesn't matter that I can | sue them in theory. In practice, it's me and my $5,000 in | life savings vs. 100 corporate attorneys working at a $N | billion company who will inundate you with paperwork and | motions and procedural tricks. Not to mention, if you sue | them, they will fire you in retaliation (which is also | probably illegal) and may even go so far as informally | blacklisting you in your industry. So you're giving up | your time, your life savings, likely going into debt, and | giving up your future employability, just to pit your one | already over-worked attorney vs. their army. Good luck. | danjoredd wrote: | Thats why, even if I hate the company I work for, I | always do my best to keep a good relationship with them. | Thats not always possible of course, but having former | coworkers being able to say good things about you helps | take a lot of worry off my back. | OkayPhysicist wrote: | In slam dunk cases, either because you're being sued | frivolously or suing someone for a well-documented | violation of a clear-cut law, then the legal work can be | cut down dramatically by filing a motion for summary | judgment. If you're not relying on disputed material | facts for your argument, i.e., "I'm being sued by my | former employer for violating my non-compete clause. This | is the non-compete clause. It is not enforceable because | it violates California labor law", it' definitely the way | to go. | whatshisface wrote: | > _If you 're not relying on disputed material facts for | your argument_ | | Vis a vi the original question, | | "I never said that. Do you have a recording?" | ncallaway wrote: | I feel like the jury is more likely to believe the | unwilling subpoenaed witness from HR from the company | that turned you down who says: "we turned the candidate | down, because when we checked their references, Bob at | XYZ corp said that the candidate never worked at XYZ | corp" over Bob (who has every motive and reason to lie). | | Especially when you get the follow up questions, and find | out HR left contemporaneous notes in their HRIS tool, | which corroborate the story. | | Remember that the standard for a civil suit is not | "beyond a reasonable doubt", but "more likely than not". | I really don't think you'd need a recording to win that | case. | whatshisface wrote: | Sure, but now that you're talking about a jury you're in | court and you don't have a summary judgement. | ncallaway wrote: | Ah, yes, of course. I missed the point about handling the | case on summary judgement. | marcosdumay wrote: | The extent varies, but courts do see in a very bad light | companies applying too many resources against people they | clearly harmed. When those people are employees, the view | gets worse. | | That doesn't mean that suing is easy or cheap, but only | that things are way more balanced than your comment makes | it look like. | TheDesolate0 wrote: | dragontamer wrote: | I'd at least speak to a lawyer to see how "easy" a case | is. | | One attorney may be all you need if the evidence is | grossly in your favor. No point denying yourself the | opportunity, especially if you can afford the | consultation fees. | | If its a difficult case, then a good lawyer will tell you | ahead of time that they don't think they can win and that | you probably shouldn't pursue the case. If its | borderline, they'll probably accept the case but you | gotta pay them. | | If its ridiculously easy, they'll take the case for free | on their dime / contingency (because they're so confident | they're gonna win). | WalterBright wrote: | > the court system (at least in the US) is inaccessible | unless you're rich and richer than your opponent. | | Employees with grievances sue companies all the time, | because it works for them. | | Companies may have lots of money, but that doesn't mean | they want to burn it. They'll often settle even frivolous | lawsuits because it is cheaper than litigating. | BolexNOLA wrote: | Gotta prove it and go through the not-so-easy process of | suing someone in the US. | selectodude wrote: | It's really, really easy to sue somebody in the US. Even | easier when you have an attorney who will take something | like that to court on contingency since it's such an easy | payout. | BolexNOLA wrote: | Maybe so. But I think a lot of people feel like me in | that they find the entire process daunting. I've got | young kids, a full-time job, I'm pretty much slammed all | the time. Just the theoretical idea of adding "lawsuit" | to my to-do list is already exhausting. | selectodude wrote: | Fortunately enough people have sued where the official | policy of any company larger than like, 1 employee, is to | confirm dates of employment and say nothing else. | dylan604 wrote: | >But I think a lot of people feel like me in that they | find the entire process daunting. | | Consider that is exactly what bigCorp wants to you to | feel. With that in mind, your feeling of daunt is doing | exactly what the bigCorp? So do something for yourself | and not in bigCorp's favor, and get over it and do what's | right. | BolexNOLA wrote: | Not sure why you're coming at me for expressing | apprehension. Ease off the throttle, please. | dylan604 wrote: | If you read that as an attack, then I apologize as I | worded it poorly. On a re-read, yes, it could have been | worded better. Meant to been more of encouragement as | "just swallow the fear and get over it" vs "don't be a | wuss and just get over it." | BolexNOLA wrote: | All good, definitely felt like the latter and I'm glad to | see it was just miscommunication. | | Trust me I do what I can where I can! | Supermancho wrote: | > It's really, really easy to sue somebody in the US. | | Small claims, yes. District court and above, not always. | Winning the case? Even harder. Trying to a get _any_ | lawyer on contingency against deeper pockets is not | practical 99% of the time. | ipaddr wrote: | Lawyers will only sign on to a contingency deal against a | big pocketed entity (government or large corp) | [deleted] | selectodude wrote: | You have it turned around. If you get sued by a major | corporation, you're fucked. They can outspend you and | even if you win, it's a Pyrrhic victory. | | Suing a major corp with cause though? They're going to | spend $10,000 just to respond. If you have any basis for | your suit whatsoever, they're going to settle. See: | almost every patent lawsuit. A corporation's in-house | counsel is there to _avoid_ getting sued. Once you sue | them, they need to get outside counsel involved and the | costs mount very, very quickly. It's just not worth it. | Supermancho wrote: | > You have it turned around. | | I would talk to a lawyer before assuming this kind of | thing. In my experience (having tried), I do not. | | > Once you sue them, they need to get outside counsel | involved and the costs mount very, very quickly. | | The retainers are already paid for or insurance covers | that. The sentiments (eg inefficacy of David vs Goliath) | are built up over common experiences, not simple | misunderstandings of how a case is likely to proceed. | danjoredd wrote: | I had other forms of proof that I worked there like | paystubs. He could have lied, but it would not have | worked. Now my performance? He could def lie about that. | Thankfully my other past jobs could verify my hard work | because I left with good relations, so if he lied it | would have been an outlier. | | Reputation is important! It can be the difference between | one company having complete control over your future, and | being able to choose to do what you want. | [deleted] | pevey wrote: | If he did lie about your performance, and if there were | not documented examples of your performance to back up | every single thing he said, that would also be grounds | for an easy lawsuit. Tortious interference with | employment. That's why most companies ask (beg) | executives not to give any type of employment reference. | They have a department or outside company who handles | that by giving factual information only. Employed, yes or | no, and dates. That's it. Even if you think you are | giving a positive or "balanced" reference, something you | say could spook the potential employer, and you could be | sued for it. | workingdog wrote: | I work around people who are reluctant to give an honest | appraisal because of the fear of legal repercussions by | asking: | | "Would you hire this person again?" We get a 99% answer | rate on that question. | Tangurena2 wrote: | One previous employer said (to the reference/background | checker) "our corporate policy is to never rehire anyone, | no matter what". This quote was typed into the background | check. | | Another said "all our records are in a storage shed in | another state, so we have no records of anybody". This | stopped the background check dead. Until I called that | employer "but I still have money in the 401k system!" | HR_drone says "why yes you certainly do, have them call | me back". The results of which also appeared typed into | the background check results. | chimeracoder wrote: | > I work around people who are reluctant to give an | honest appraisal because of the fear of legal | repercussions by asking: "Would you hire this person | again?" We get a 99% answer rate on that question. | | "Trick managers into exposing the company to lawsuits | with this one sentence! In-house counsel HATES it!" | | In seriousness, answering this question with "no" would | quite likely still constitute tortious interference. | rootusrootus wrote: | To be honest, I'm surprised that question works. It's | close enough to a real opinion that eventually someone | will lose a defamation case on it and then legal will | tell HR to stop answering it. | SoftTalker wrote: | It's a simple statement of fact, so it's pretty safe in | most cases. Employment dates and "would we rehire" | (simple yes/no, not getting into any reasons why) have | always been the only questions we answer. | rootusrootus wrote: | In that case, you could just say "So-and-so worked here | since X date, and they were fired on Y date" and answer | the real question. The value to "would you re-hire" is | that it is vague, there could be other perfectly good | justifications than "they were fired." But now we see | people using the latter question as a 1-for-1 replacement | for the former. So I expect eventually HR will decide | it's too risky to let a civil jury decide if wink-wink is | good enough. | jamiek88 wrote: | 'Would we' is subjective too. Different hiring managers | would give different answers. | | The actual answer HR will give you, the magic words are | 'are they _eligible for rehire_ '. | SoftTalker wrote: | Yes, that's correct. HR, not managers, provide these | answers. The answer to the rehire question is not an | opinion, and it's not subjective. It's a checkbox on the | personnel record. It doesn't mean they were fired, | either. The reason for or nature of their termination | would not be discussed. | sidewndr46 wrote: | Why would he need to lie? Couldn't he just tell the | caller to stop wasting his time and hang up? | m463 wrote: | A friend of mine was looking at a job and wanted to use me as | a reference. | | Eventually I got a call about my friend, and I discussed my | friend and my experience working with him. But at some point | the caller asked me about myself, and if I was interested in | other positions. | | This turned out to be a recruiter (who was placing my | friend), but he was not interested in my friend - he | recruiting from the reference list. | | ugh. | nick478016 wrote: | That actually seems like a clever way to generate leads | notch656a wrote: | Lol recruiters have all kind of tricks. I've been used by | recruiters for positions that turned out that the | recruiter knew I was horrible fit for, and I later | realized I was being used as a guinea pig to discover the | interview process for their favored candidates. | more_corn wrote: | That's a clever way to get me to block your number and | add you to my list of people who need a kick in the | pants. | mmmpop wrote: | SoftTalker wrote: | You're also not supposed to make up prior employment and | experience, but many people do. So companies have started to | do some due diligence on your background so that they don't | waste time interviewing liars. | | </devils-advocate> | UncleOxidant wrote: | 7. The websites for entering your application are across the | board very buggy and there's apparently no incentive to fix | them. The employer is unaware of the bugs and wonders why | they're not getting "quality" applicants. The company that | creates/manages these sites doesn't hear about any problems and | is blissfully unaware. There's no way for an applicant to tell | anyone about a bug they've encountered in the application | process. | gadders wrote: | >> 1. 90% of the Application's Data are already in my LinkedIN, | or my CV / Resume. Why the heck do I have to fill it in again. | | Not only that, but the terrible Taleo software consistently | fails to import a CV without completely failing to parse it and | leaving you to manual update what was imported. | chiefalchemist wrote: | Why isn't there a json based schema standard at this point? | At the very least you import once, clean it up once, save the | clean version, and then upload that one going forward? | | There's got to be a smarter way. | gadders wrote: | The stupid thing as well is most of it is SAAS Taleo, so | there should be a button that says "Share my upload of CV | data from Company A to Company B". It's not impossible to | move the data from one instance to another. | jabroni_salad wrote: | Maybe google can come up with a way to profit off indexing | resumes so it becomes desirable to do so. | | As fun as it is to rip on recipe blog it's really nice how | standardized they've gotten so your plugins can yoink them | easily. | CoastalCoder wrote: | "Before I tell you about my work experience, let me | relate a wonderful story about what work means to | different people around the world. My great-grandmother | was born in ..." | stevekemp wrote: | There have been several attempts, such as: | | https://jsonresume.org/schema/ | | But nobody uses them, because nobody uses them. LinkedIn | and other proprietary recruitment services like TeamTailor | want to keep all the details locked in - there's no | advantage to them to allow you to mass import/export | candidate details. | chiefalchemist wrote: | No one uses them because I don't think I've even seen an | application process that offers it. Mind you, I rarely | get to the end of those because that's why I have a CV. | | That said, why doesn't LinkedIn throw its weight behind | this? In that context, it would make sense to have and | maintain my CV there. With some sort of authorization | confirmation that would let a 3rd party import it into | their system? | BeFlatXIII wrote: | ...and it's not like it goes to some centralized Taleo | tracking system when all the inane details can be pre- | populated on the next application you send. | piinecone wrote: | > Someone needs to figure out a way where we can turn this | around and empower ( I hate this word, but I dont have anything | better in my vocab ) employees | | My friend and I are trying to do this with a matching tool | we've been working on lately. You describe what you're looking | for (pay, schedule, etc.) and then you only hear about jobs | that match your criteria: | | https://polyfill.work | | If you like the job, you can accept the match, and then you and | the employer are introduced. | | It's early days still and we have plenty to iron out, but we've | started making matches, so please check it out and let Ryan or | I know what you think (at team at polyfill dot work). | noirbot wrote: | Isn't this essentially what Hired does? I've actually had | decent luck with them in the past. | joelcfont0214 wrote: | Agree. LinkedIn should contain the most accurate and up-to-date | professional information about each member. This in itself is a | resume. There is no need for double entry elsewhere. If a company | can not extract that info when recruiting, it is clearly behind | the times and losing candidates. I certainly look down on | companies that still have such antiquated and awkward job | applications. | hardwaregeek wrote: | Job application portals are hot garbage too. Regularly lose your | state, regularly require lots of manual, slow entry forms. | Regularly have like 2 minute AJAX calls that could fail at any | moment. | | There's also the vaguely insulting patterns like only putting | MIT/CMU/Stanford/Harvard/etc. on your college list, punctuated by | "Other". | | I have a love/hate relationship with applications that are just | an email. On one hand it doesn't box me into the requirements of | the job and lets me make my own case. On the other hand I know | that the company is missing out on so many excellent candidates | simply because writing an email is a lot more work than filling | out a form (at least for most people). | mixmastamyk wrote: | Writing an email and attaching a resume is a small fraction of | time it takes for job sites. | hardwaregeek wrote: | That's true, but it is a major blocker for people. A lot of | people find sending an email daunting, especially more than | an impersonal form. They need to compose a message and make | it personal to the company. | neilv wrote: | > _There 's also the vaguely insulting patterns like only | putting MIT/CMU/Stanford/Harvard/etc. on your college list, | punctuated by "Other"._ | | To select where candidate went to school, and they only listed | options of big-name schools and then "Other"? | | Maybe they were trying to make a joke, and it was | inappropriate. Or maybe they were being surprisingly | transparent about the brand-seeking prejudice that some | employers have. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-26 23:00 UTC)