Company that claims to help you save time with AI is pissed that applicants are using AI to fill out meaningless time-wasting questions on the job application. This exhausts my irony quota for the day.
The job market is hell to apply in. Job seekers are incentivised to come up with strategies and techniques to make mass application simpler, and sure enough, they have. Go team humanity.
Go team humanity until you're the one being under DDoS by irrelevant CVs written by bots and the only way to filter them out is write even more strict filters (we all hate) and use LLMs (increasing our hiring costs).
It seems to me that both job seekers and employers hiring now are largely victims of the arms race that's been going on for over a decade now. The LLM angle is just the latest note in it.
The thing is, it is not a symmetric situation. Barring serious outliers, the worst that's going to happen to a company that can't find "the perfect candidate" is that they hire someone who is suboptimal. Maybe they even don't have the skills they claimed at all. Oh no, efficiency will be down and the execs' stock options might not be worth quite as much.
On the other hand, the worst thing that's going to happen to a typical job seeker who can't find a company that will hire them is that they will run through their savings—wait, do they have savings? this is America we're talking about, so probably not!—and be unable to pay their bills, causing them to become homeless.
So forgive me for having exactly zero sympathy for the companies that perpetuate this ugly arms race.
> In a few words, let us know why you'd love to work at $COMPANY
I would love to work there if you have great benefits. I would love to work there if you have great pay. I would love to work there if you have an excellent culture that suits my personality.
Oh, is that not quite what you're asking? I want the job because it's a paycheck. (let's be honest, ask your board and shareholders why you're in business - the answer is "money" - so that's my answer: money.) I can do the job well because even if my current exact experience doesn't match your current exact criteria, I have the skillset to adapt to whatever software-related task you can throw at me. Again, honesty: the current job description isn't what the job will be in three months, so you don't need someone with "no less than seventeen years" of experience calling a Redis API- you need someone who can use any software stack to get shtuff done.
But you're not hiring for that, though you know you should be.
Due likely to extensions in Firefox, I get empty image previews on X (I believe I deleted my account several years ago). It's not always clear when there's more than one so when I clicked, I saw the response, not the reason. So the one other person on Earth with my wonky setup might get some help ;)
"...the problem with LLMs is they’ve got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a resume, but what you got was a LLM holding the resume, and the entire BANANA."
Not surprising at all. There are some devs on r/csmajors who shared their browser automation bots integrated with ChatGPT to apply for positions. One guy claimed his bot applies to 300+ offers per day on LinkedIn. He also complained that he only got a handful of responses. I'm sitting on the other side and in my team we're rejecting 40+ CV per day... It's time to add some prompt injection to all offers.
This is always my response when someone complains "I filled out 500 applications but didn't get a single response!" The problem is that you filled out 500 applications. Instead find 5 jobs that are actually a good fit for you and spend your energy in applying for those.
Readit News
The job market is hell to apply in. Job seekers are incentivised to come up with strategies and techniques to make mass application simpler, and sure enough, they have. Go team humanity.
The thing is, it is not a symmetric situation. Barring serious outliers, the worst that's going to happen to a company that can't find "the perfect candidate" is that they hire someone who is suboptimal. Maybe they even don't have the skills they claimed at all. Oh no, efficiency will be down and the execs' stock options might not be worth quite as much.
On the other hand, the worst thing that's going to happen to a typical job seeker who can't find a company that will hire them is that they will run through their savings—wait, do they have savings? this is America we're talking about, so probably not!—and be unable to pay their bills, causing them to become homeless.
So forgive me for having exactly zero sympathy for the companies that perpetuate this ugly arms race.
I would love to work there if you have great benefits. I would love to work there if you have great pay. I would love to work there if you have an excellent culture that suits my personality.
Oh, is that not quite what you're asking? I want the job because it's a paycheck. (let's be honest, ask your board and shareholders why you're in business - the answer is "money" - so that's my answer: money.) I can do the job well because even if my current exact experience doesn't match your current exact criteria, I have the skillset to adapt to whatever software-related task you can throw at me. Again, honesty: the current job description isn't what the job will be in three months, so you don't need someone with "no less than seventeen years" of experience calling a Redis API- you need someone who can use any software stack to get shtuff done.
But you're not hiring for that, though you know you should be.
Deleted Comment
Thought I'd share in case others were lacking context. :)
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-ph/money/technology/i-m-a-tech-startu...
Due likely to extensions in Firefox, I get empty image previews on X (I believe I deleted my account several years ago). It's not always clear when there's more than one so when I clicked, I saw the response, not the reason. So the one other person on Earth with my wonky setup might get some help ;)
Lookie 'ere, HR, we didn't start the AI escalation in the application process.
Maybe if you started treated humans like humans again, we could stop treating you like robots?
- Joe Armstrong, in some alternative reality.
I can read half that name without even trying, and could make out the second half in a couple minutes if I cared enough.