Applying For Your Next Job May Be an Automated Nightmare (gizmodo.com) 256
merbs writes: If you think looking for a job is already daunting, anxiety-riddled, and unpleasant, just wait until the algorithms take over the hiring process. When they do, a newfangled 'digital recruiter' like VCV, which just received $1.7 million in early investment, hopes it will look something like this: First, a search bot will be used to scan CVs by the thousands, yours presumably among them. If it's picked out of the haystack, you will be contacted by a chatbot. Over SMS, the bot will set an appointment for a phone interview, which will be conducted by an automated system enabled by voice recognition AI. Next, the system will ask you, the applicant, to record video responses to a set of predetermined interview questions. Finally, the program can use facial recognition and predictive analytics to complete the screening, algorithmically determining whether the nervousness, mood, and behavior patterns you exhibit make you a fit for the company. If you pass all that, then you will be recommended for an in-person job interview.
[...] VCV, which did not respond to a request for comment, is far from alone here. A growing suite of startups is pitching AI-driven recruitment services, promising to save corporations millions of dollars throughout the hiring process by reducing overhead, to pluck more ideal candidates out of obscurity, and to reduce bias in the hiring process. Most offer little to no evidence of how they actually do so. VCV's much-larger competitor, HireVue, which has raked in a staggering $93 million in funding and is backed by top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Sequoia, is hocking many of the same services. It counts 700 companies as its clients, including, it says, Urban Outfitters, Intel, Honeywell, and Unilever. AllyO, which was founded in 2015, and "utilizes deep workflow conversational AI to fully automate end to end recruiting workflow" has $19 million in backing.
[...] VCV, which did not respond to a request for comment, is far from alone here. A growing suite of startups is pitching AI-driven recruitment services, promising to save corporations millions of dollars throughout the hiring process by reducing overhead, to pluck more ideal candidates out of obscurity, and to reduce bias in the hiring process. Most offer little to no evidence of how they actually do so. VCV's much-larger competitor, HireVue, which has raked in a staggering $93 million in funding and is backed by top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Sequoia, is hocking many of the same services. It counts 700 companies as its clients, including, it says, Urban Outfitters, Intel, Honeywell, and Unilever. AllyO, which was founded in 2015, and "utilizes deep workflow conversational AI to fully automate end to end recruiting workflow" has $19 million in backing.
It's already like this (Score:5, Interesting)
Applying for a retail job is all about filling out these huge applications with tests and hoping your answers satisfy the algorithm.
If you're lucky enough to pass those tests, only then does it move on to a real person calling you for an interview.
It's absolutely dehumanizing and wrong, in my opinion. Back in the day you could walk into a place that had a "NOW HIRING" sign and talk to the manager, and if they liked you, you were hired. Now it's a huge ordeal and one wrong answer to that massive automated questionnaire means your application goes in the bit bucket.
It pains me to say this as someone who has always loved playing with computers but... Some things in life were better without them. Progress my arse.
Re:It's already like this (Score:5, Insightful)
This is less about computers and more about the pseudo-science of psychology.
Re:It's already like this (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the day you could walk into a place that had a "NOW HIRING" sign and talk to the manager, and if they liked you, you were hired.
You can still do that in many places and fields, but it means that you can't work for big corporate. Some people probably don't want to anyway, so a highly regimented application process like this is just a good way to keep them from getting a job they won't like for some reason.
Also, if this method alienates the most highly skilled employees who won't put up with it, it also means that those companies that employ this method won't be able to hire the best candidates. If that means they go out of business or perform worse than their competitors, eventually businesses will transition away from using it. Some companies don't even advertise jobs. They proactively look for candidates and try to poach them.
This type of nightmare system they've envisioned and fashioned for their own fears would probably fail for any number of other reasons. For example, suppose you only select the people that don't seem nervous or anxious. I mean your company wants people who aren't too jittery, right? In reality you've probably rigged your system to favor hiring psychopaths or pathological liars and guaranteed that your company will become dysfunctional.
I'm sure someone will try this approach anyways, but I won't be surprised if a decade from now we're inundated with articles about how these systems failed and are being abandoned.
Re: (Score:2)
Back in the day you could walk into a place that had a "NOW HIRING" sign and talk to the manager, and if they liked you, you were hired.
Back in the days where only a handful would apply. Nowadays, some jobs have too many applications to be processed by humans.
Re: (Score:2)
The basic problem here is that walking into a "NOW HIRING" place took time, and you couldn't really walk into more than ~2 places/day.
Nowadays, you can blast your resume out to 100 companies before lunch if you aren't too picky.
As a byproduct, companies get all these people who are probably-unqualified, barely interested, geographically distant, and already employed. They aren't even real candidates, but now they have to screen hundreds of these people.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Back in the days where only a handful would apply. Nowadays, some jobs have too many applications to be processed by humans.
This must be because of those record low unemployment figures we keep hearing about.
Re: (Score:2)
Blame the resume distribution bots. When >>90% of applicants are grossly unqualified for a position, the pre-screening time is just too intense. This is clearly a step too far, but it is a natural evolution to the bad practices large companies have had for a long time.
Re: (Score:2)
It's absolutely dehumanizing and wrong, in my opinion.
Look at it this way: it's a good way of removing shitty companies from the pool of ones to apply to. There are plenty of companies out there that don't go in for this kind of bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
Weather you know it or not, you are filtering for people that _skillfully_ tell you what you want to hear.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Is there some reason employers should be allowed to discriminate against sociopaths? If anything you'd think they'd be seeking them out.
To ensure they don't hire them.
Sociopaths are destructive losers that make everything difficult and everyone can't wait to see them go. They're always the victim and as such feel they can perform any immoral act by justifying that "It's what everyone else would do". One good thing I can see about using an AI is that a sociopath won't be able to manipulate it like co-dependents that, whilst competent, are easy prey for sociopath.
Sociopaths are a nightmare to work with and make everyone depressed.
If you don't smell bullshit, you have a cold. (Score:4, Insightful)
"The algorithm" can't do ANY of that shit, and we all know it. This is going to be nothing more than a broken-by-design non-system to take the heat off employers when they use the automation that actually works to shrink their workforces to nepotism-only sizes. This company is selling other companies what they hope will be the future without UBI: nobody has a job, but they can't find anyone to blame but themselves, so they just starve to death quietly.
Seems fine (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
How? Those people normally just process paperwork after the hiring manager has already decided they want you. By the time you are dealing with HR you are on to negotiation.
Re: (Score:2)
'If you're not smarter than some HR drone, we don't want you.'
It's a challenge. But it also says a lot about the environment your going to be working in. Expect politics and BS.
Re: (Score:3)
It's interesting that everybody likes to talk about the special characteristics of startups, but they don't really seem to direct any attention to some of the biggest differences between a large corp and a startup.
Startup:
- no HR getting in the way
- hiring (or equivalent) done directly by someone directly involved in the company, usually the CEO.
Already is (Score:5, Insightful)
It already is a fucking automated nightmare. Start by uploading a resume or some shit, on dice, monster, or zipfucker. Then you go back and repair the damage the automatic software did when trying to parse it. Then you start to look for a job, make a profile for that. Next morning your inbox is full of shit jobs that have nothing to do with your profile. So you try to fix that shit.
Mean while your profile has been harvested by some bot in some call center in india, pakistan, fucktard, and you spend the weeks trying to sort out the good jobs from the shit they try to send you.
Automated hell already.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
look at the lucky larry over here that applied under systems that even tried to parse the resume. in my experience i've had to always fill out the forms from scratch regardless.
Re: (Score:2)
I wish it was that easy. Half the time you upload your resume to some shit job site and then still get redirected to the actual empployers site where you get to upload it again and sort through the massive number of shittastic hoops just to get it submitted, followed by the 500 questions about past employment and education no one every fucking reads anyway.
I had one before that was so fucking long I could save my progress and return at a later date to finish. I did this 3 times out of frustration. I later t
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like you dodged a bullet.
When I used to hire technical people... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I also _always_ have great metrics (that I construct myself).
85% five year retention of 'good employees' sounds like you are operating in a one company town though. That or you're self deluded (or not in tech).
Re: (Score:2)
sounds like you are operating in a one company town though
Nope. Southwest CT. I just looked for good engineers and technicians, provided an environment that they enjoyed to work in. It is not that hard to retain good employees, you just have to want to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
The trick to retaining good employees is be a good employer. Like attracts like. A job is exactly as disposable as the employee doing it.
The smart applicants... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The term for what you described . . . . (Score:2)
...there's another way... (Score:3)
I work for a large corporation, and they've found a pretty smart way to hire the right kind of people.
We were tired of the HR departments, we were tired of the recruitment companies who constantly sent us people who didn't fit in the company profile, didn't have passion for the job and our core values.
But we love loyalty, so we took those who had worked in our company for 10-30 years and made those go trough the hiring process instead, in other words our company valued the experience of the old with the influx of the new inspiration, but they all have to have ONE thing in common - passion.
When you use external recruitment systems, whether that's a computer, a recruiter or a hiring company, you don't get passionate or the kind of people fit in. Of course people can LEARN to fit in, so nothing is entirely black and white, but the thing is...when you worked in a company for 30 years, you tend to know who survives and who doesn't.
Those who DO survive, are those who shares the passion that our colleagues do, this is hard to teach if you don't do it already, no algorithm can teach you passion for your job, your work - your 33 percent of your entire life - every day!
Re:...there's another way... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't have a college degree (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
respond to startups with Craigslist ads looking for resumes
Never fucking again will I respond to a Craigslist ad. It was looking for a "Brilliant Senior Technician."
Turned out to be heldpesk work at a tiny mom and pop MSP, at a rate barely above minimum wage. No respect for work/life balance, wanted to account for every bit of my time, was hounded for "What did you do in this 10 minutes here between tickets?" Read /. of course, that's what. They had cameras to see if we were talking to each other. Fun not allowed!
At least it got me out of the convenience store
URGENT need for heart surgeon (Score:3, Interesting)
URGENT need for heart surgeon.
Must have 17-22 years experience with #2 Acme brand scalpel. ACE BRAND NOT ACCEPTABLE!
Should have top tier academic degree, be able to drive own car and lift 60# during house calls.
Nice to have:
Neurology experience with tumor removal from the LEFT hemisphere.
Salary: DOE
(aka, minimum wage of the nearby largest city, travel costs not reimbursed))
This is a joke of course. A real post would have more requirements and less forthrightness.
Re: (Score:2)
Ugh! I worked for a privately-help company that was like that. I walked into a department one day to find dozens of laser printers stacked up along the wall. The manager had gotten permission to buy every single employee in the department their ow
You can't really do that anymore (Score:2)
Even medium sized companies won't field your calls, they'll ignore your emails (or mark them spam). I've gone to quite a few tech conferences for low tier techies and they're basically worthless. It's literally a bunch of guys looking for jobs and a bunch of sales reps looking for people to sell their product to. If you're in the higher end of th
Re: (Score:3)
Those guys went to college, they just didnt finish. No one with a masters is a moron, you just dont agree with them.
I've met plenty with Masters & Doctors who are (Score:3)
You'd be amazed how far you can make it in your education an sheer blunt force of studying plus having parents who support you in school so you can focus on those studies w/o working full/part time.
Wow. (Score:2)
"utilizes deep workflow conversational AI to fully automate end to end recruiting workflow"
That's some PhD-level buzzword doublespeak there! Could it be any more laden with nonsense?
Only an MBA (Score:5, Funny)
PhD? I'm only an MBA and even I see that they missed 'synergy' and 'win-win'.
Re: (Score:2)
PhD? I'm only an MBA and even I see that they missed 'synergy' and 'win-win'.
Literally laughed out loud when I read this comment. If I had mod points today, you'd get 'em.
Re: (Score:3)
utilizes workflow.....to automate....workflow.
Checks out.
In Soviet dystopian future ... (Score:2)
Humans interviewing robots [youtube.com] is the nightmare scenario.
I'll take the automated nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)
...over the total train wreck that is our existing system of recruiters and HR people. Perhaps before describing automation using such negative language as "de-humanizing," we should consider the (often utterly broken) human system it's replacing.
Recruiters are massively more biased than even the algorithms we see in the news for being biased. They know nothing about the field they are recruiting for, or else they'd be working in it, rather than in a much lower-paid, also-ran job that gets cut as soon as a recession looms. Worst of all, they have only-human levels of throughput: I can say from experience that after reading only 10 or so resumes, my brain goes so numb that I'm desperately searching for any simplifying bias I can, in order to get through the 100 I'm supposed to. And I'm the hiring manager, so I'm not even on the front lines - the recruiter probably has to screen 10 times that amount.
An algorithm can actually read and digest your resume. It doesn't throw it in the trash just because you didn't go to one of 8 colleges, or because your last name sounds like it has a certain ethnicity (or doesn't). It doesn't heavily favor the first few it reads, in an effort to just fill up the positions to end the torture of reading 100 more resumes.
Will it be a little weird to send in videos of myself answering interview questions to a program? Maybe. Then again, maybe that'll be better too. I'm not knocking it until I try it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How good humans do depends on how skilled/specific the job you are recruiting for. Sure, if you are recruiting for a job with minimal qualifications and/or that many people are qualified for, you will get deluged with little means to cull. But for a job requiring very specific skills, graduate level education, and professional licenses, it's a lot easier.
When I last hired, the HR folks did a pretty good job culling out anybody who wasn't qualified for the position. And when I say "wasn't qualified", I man l
Re: (Score:2)
An algorithm can actually read and digest your resume.
Depends on how fuzzy the matching is. Unless you want to go back to 90's era keyword stuffing and SEO. Think search engines that can't distinguish between one phrasing for a certain type of experience and another.
Re: (Score:3)
Will it be a little weird to send in videos of myself answering interview questions to a program? Maybe. Then again, maybe that'll be better too. I'm not knocking it until I try it.
I'll send in videos of Max Headroom answering their questions.
Only one person will benefit from this (Score:3)
The person who finds a way to in-effect break the system using some automated process ("AI") to get the system to hire them.
Someone will think that that person was clever, and would like to hire him/her because of it, to do something with similar technology --- not necessarily the job that was applied to in the first place.
But once the system is broken, it is broken.
Or ... you could argue that it was already broken by design to begin with.
"hocking" (Score:2)
No, that's not the word you intended to use.
Seriously, rppofread.
They're hocking their product? It's that bad? (Score:2)
VCV’s much-larger competitor, HireVue, which has raked in a staggering $93 million in funding and is backed by top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Sequoia, is hocking many of the same services.
I suspect the word they meant to use is "hawking".
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe they're pawning the services.
Monster Board (Score:2, Offtopic)
Opportunities (Score:2)
Once that takes over, it sounds like an opportunity to grab skilled employees who "fall through the AI cracks", ones which are always annoyed by talking to a stupid machine, therefore the AI detects they are always in a bad mood, and never hires them.
Another opportunity is for an AI driver interview bot company - if you want a machine to interview me, meet my AI interview bot representing me for all automated interviews. It can simulate any emotions the interviewer robot is looking for.
With this... (Score:2)
You see, if you look, folks on street corners holding up signs and whole camps of people collecting in certain corners of cities manifesting a sub-culture.
Problem with all of this is that on one point, the efficiency of the current capitalistic = exploitative system will be unable to sustain itself and collapse.
Propaganda (
Automaton (Score:5, Funny)
We would like to extend you an offer for the position of Server Error in '/' Application!
Compensation will be $. annually, with additional bonuses commensurate to performance.
Re: (Score:3)
It is a problem (Score:2)
Hiring is a painful process whenever you don't know in advance whom you want to hire. Or if you totally luck out.
I have done bad hires. Getting rid of those people is probably the hardest job function I have ever done. It is often not that they are bad people or not willing to work. What happens is they are clueless or the wrong fit and you can't tell until they have been on the payroll for at least a few cycles.
I imagine trying to avoid that pain is what companies to place their faith in such
Until it's challenged as illegal (Score:3)
I see a ton of ways this can be illegaly abused.
The simplest argument is that such a method discriminates against the deaf. But similar algorithms can easily discriminate against the old, the young, by race, etc. etc. etc. Worse, this is easily proven.
Much harder to prove such a thing against a guy who happens to mostly hire young white men. If only because he hires 5 people a year, rather than an math equation that hires 5,000
One case gets proven or one smart congressman and this crap turns into a huge pile of law suits.
I am surprised people are not already suing to prevent people from asking for social media account information. By definition those accounts contain information that it is illegal to ask for.
HR Manager Here (Score:2, Interesting)
A couple of things. First off, HR people make fun of how rude and lazy recruiters are. Seriously. I got hired as a SR HR Manager at a company recently. My purview is all the HR processes, shared services, etc... This was very clear to the recruiter who sent my offer to the wrong candidate, called me to rip me a new one for not signing the offer, and when she realized her mistake, she ghosted the candidate she sent the offer to instead of owning her mistake. First day, VP asks where I wanted to focus my effo
I wonder . . . . (Score:2)
I recall this from the late 1970s and 1980s, and when
huh (Score:2)
That sounds more pleasant than the current jobhunting process, where you have to find jobs yourself, upload your resume, then manually enter in each aspect of your resume because the programmers who designed the software to harvest information from resumes are apparently horrible incompetent, then wait 5 months until an automated system tells you you're not selected.
applying for my last job was a nightmare (Score:2)
The moment companies chose, for the best of reasons, to outsource the hiring process, they pretty much released control of whom they actually end up with.
Automated Respondents (Score:2)
As long as they don't mind us developing automated response bots that search stack exchange, google, and wikipedia and respond perfectly to all of their questions, then fine. It would only be fair (and expected) that if you are okay with conducting recruiting with bots that job seekers respond with bots of their own.
I'm going to call my bot Adam Selene [wikipedia.org].
Cue the cries of "We can't find talent!" in... (Score:2)
Left out a step (Score:2)
You left out the step where you spit into a test tube and send through the mail for DNA analysis.
Personally I predict a future with a resurgence of small local businesses, and any international mega-corporations that cannot completely automate are doomed to extinction.
Re:I'd like to see (Score:5, Insightful)
My bet is that an entire industry will arise from this, with firms that help applicants beat these systems, guaranteeing them "an in-person interview or your money back!"
Re:I'd like to see (Score:5, Insightful)
My bet is that an entire industry will arise from this, with firms that help applicants beat these systems
A smart entrepreneur could do both: Offer screening services to companies, while selling services to beat the screening to the candidates.
By controlling both sides of the process, optimal outcomes could be guaranteed. The entrepreneur would make a profit, the candidate would get the job, and the company would get an employee smart enough to figure out the process. Win-win-win. This is why capitalism is the most successful economic system.
But we prefer docile and cheep employees! (Score:5, Insightful)
Discussion is clearly off on the wrong foot. So let me try to introduce a corrective ontology:
(1) Stellar employees. Wildly desirable, actively recruited, get to call their own shots. Scarce as lottery winners.
(2) Average employees. Competent but easily replaced. Numerous as the losers whose lottery tickets didn't win. In the context of this story, it is obvious the system will be focused on finding the most docile employees who are competent to do the required work as cheaply as possible. You'll have to prove your total docility before you ever get considered. At that point they'll offer the cheapest salary to the surviving candidates until one of the suckers accepts. It's a race to the bottom for the employees, but the soulless corporate cancers will never solve their fake problem. There is no profit large enough.
(3) The unemployed. Never even got a ticket to the lottery. The problem is that more and more people are being shoved into this category. By nationality. By inferior or obsolete education. By love for their family. By age. By robots and automation. By sickness. By 20 other factors. They could, in theory, still contribute to the economy, but the corporate cancers don't think so. Cancer literally does not think.
Me? I'd like to think I'm a human being with some special and even unique characteristics that could even be commercially valuable. And yet I'm NOT laughing all the way to the bank. I do NOT think this system is likely to help much. The lottery winners will continue to win big, the suckers will continue to lose, and the house (which includes the corporate cancers) will continue to win even bigger.
Re:But we prefer docile and cheep employees! (Score:4, Funny)
FTFY - You claim that more and more are being shoved here, which is bullshit because fewer and fewer are out of work. With around 4% unemployment rate, that's 1 out of 25 people looking for work that are not working, but still looking. If you can't find work in this economy, that's on you. As a former (recently retired) hiring manager, I can tell you that we were constantly pressured to fill all of our openings in order to generate sales. Refusal to hire someone who just had a pulse, but had no chance of being successful in the position was even frowned upon. You've clearly never been on the other side of the equation, or you'd know better.
(3) The unemployed.
- Got a lottery ticket and won, but blew it all and ended up broke again
- Too drunk or high to get to the 7/11 to buy a lottery ticket
- Went from one winning ticket to the next, but constantly caused trouble, complaining that it's all the "corporate cancer's fault.
- Too dumb to know a winning ticket from a traffic ticket.
Ontology of bosses? (Score:3)
Now I feel like I should add a few comments about managers. The bosses actually do matter quite a bit, and I dealt with a lot of them over the years.
The good first-line managers were always humanists (like the best teachers). They really put people first and sincerely cared about the people who worked for them. The worst first-line managers were materialists. (Actually now I'm remembering one special case of a really bad first-line manager who was also a humanist, but in a negative sense of caring about peo
Re:I'd like to see (Score:5, Insightful)
My bet is that it will be yet another system that discriminates in favor of paper credentials. Betting on the people who can game the system the best is a given outcome, any system works best for those who can game it most effectively.
How discrimination is done these days (Score:5, Interesting)
You [Shaitan] reminded me of a related story. Not really "these days", since it happened many years ago, but I'm sure it's still going on with new disguises.
In my student days I did a lot of work for a famous temp agency. A bit off the topic, but as background, they actually used me as a pinch hitter "word processing specialist" when they didn't have anyone else. It didn't matter that I'd never seen the system. I could always figure out how to turn it on and start typing, which looked impressive. As soon as the boss stopped watching me, I'd start studying the thing and by lunchtime I'd be competent. Mostly I just covered a day or two at a time, but if I worked a full week I probably knew the system as well as the regular secretary. (No, I'm not really that smart and yes, I admit I was cheating. Once you know what a lion is, the tiger is almost the same. I already knew about the lions and tigers and bears.)
Back to the discrimination topic. Sometimes the temp agency called me in for meta-work, to work for the temp agency itself. Sometimes they wanted me to help screen applicants for other jobs. Usually not secretarial, but manufacturing. In the course of that work, I had to understand the cards. Each temp had a card that summarized their important characteristics and they selected candidates by looking through the cards. Discrimination was illegal, but lots of employers still wanted to discriminate, and the customer is always right, so they worked out systems to do so. There were keywords that were included on the cards to indicate the characteristics that could not be legally considered.
I'm sure this system will implement the same "feature", though per my longer comment about the lottery aspects, I still think finding docile employees is the main selling point of this system.
Re: (Score:3)
"A bit off the topic, but as background, they actually used me as a pinch hitter "word processing specialist" when they didn't have anyone else. It didn't matter that I'd never seen the system. I could always figure out how to turn it on and start typing, which looked impressive. As soon as the boss stopped watching me, I'd start studying the thing and by lunchtime I'd be competent. Mostly I just covered a day or two at a time, but if I worked a full week I probably knew the system as well as the regular se
Re: (Score:3)
You are hiding your viewpoint, but I smell a Libertarian. Quickest test is to ask for an explanation of the first part of my sig. Have yet to meet a Libertarian who has any deep notion of what it means.
If my hypothesis is correct, then I have three basic responses. One: Ceteris is never paribus (AKA history counts). Two: Information disparities. Three: What is freedom? Not a primary response, but Kant's Categorical Imperative almost always intrudes into any discussion involving Libertarians, and especially
Re: (Score:3)
I can't tell how much of your position is sincere and how much might be clever trolling, notwithstanding its length. There are areas of possible agreement, but that too can be a hook-baiting strategy of the more cunning trolls. Several of the things you say do not appear to make sense, but at least you deny the Libertarian distortions. Perhaps it all makes sense from your perspective and I simply don't understand the cohesive viewpoint yet (or ever?).
I'm going to focus on the most concrete point of confusio
Re: (Score:3)
In theory, that leaves an opportunity for someone to look only at merit (actual merit, not code for wealth) and scoop up all the missed talent.
I agree strongly with this in many contexts, but you are generalizing it beyond it goes logically.
1. Merit depends a lot on opportunity. If in early life / career - you get the company of successful people to work with, or are raised by successful people : you are likely to be truly more meritorious as far as practical aspects of merit goes. You will be able to code better, for example, just based on exposure to opportunity that others didn't get.
There is a theoretical, inherent merit of a person - but afte
Re:I'd like to see (Score:4, Interesting)
Where everyone was interviewed it likely would but an AI would eliminate most if not all candidates and leave only paper credentials. It is rare to non-existent for anyone to actually match a job requirements these days. They are so specific, long, and contradictory that in most cases there is literally nobody alive who meets them.
Currently, if you read between the lines you know what they are really looking for and when you interview they'll toss the reqs out the window or adjust the req to fit you. Otherwise they toss the req out the window and use the failure to justify an H1B. This thing will be H1B auto-pilot, they'll even point to the extreme efforts they used, that even with a HAL9000 they couldn't find anyone. Shebang, zero experience papermill diploma H1B coming right up!
Re:I'd like to see (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How much would you be willing to pay to hire such AI?
Re:I'd like to see (Score:5, Funny)
My bet is on the people that can game the system the best.
Here is how you game the system:
1. Spell-check and grammar-check your resume
2. Include keywords relevant to the requirements of the job
3. Leave out unrelated crap, like the garage band you play with on weekends.
Do you really want to hire someone too dumb to follow these simple rules?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I'd like to see (Score:5, Interesting)
Eh, my game is to include the full job description/add in 2 point white on white text in the resume margin.
Which is different to how I would game an actual human or HR drone.
Re: (Score:3)
Or just add a section like this, tailored to the job "requirements"
Lacking
Experience
8 years tensorflow
15 years nodejs
Qualifications
PhD in AI Research
Re:Sounds just like a normal interview (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are skilled and competent you can normally social engineer your way past the screening droids and recruiters who are supposed to be screening you out will help you get past the red tape. A computer isn't going to respond to either so only the best paper credentials will get through instead of the best candidates.
Social engineering your way in typically is a skill that correlates to experience. If you know what experienced people close to the job want to hear, it is probably because you are one of them so they are happy if you've bypassed a hurdle they put in place that would have otherwise stopped you. Some people are so socially awkward that even with the right experience they can't figure out how to do this but those people will normally have followed some standard path and have decent paper credentials, also getting them through. Unfortunately, the highest number of false flags are good paper credentials without skills/experience and that is what this kind of system will flood companies with and their management will eat it up. Once you've staffed entirely this sort of candidate everyone there has a bias toward paper credentials and therefore against those without them.
This might be the beginning of the end of merit and not plea to the authority of paper credentials and their issuers running the world of technology.
Re: (Score:3)
You just have to be smarter than a keyword filter/HR idiot.
Always include the job posting (white on white, 2pt text) in the margin of your resume. Sure you will waste the time of HR people reading your resume. But better to waste their time then for them to waste yours.
Re: (Score:2)
People game everything. Being experienced and intelligent gives them an advantage in gaming hiring... but then the result is getting candidates who are experienced and intelligent which is what you (should want). The more crap like this you put out there the less it is about that and the more it is about paper credentials which really tell you nothing useful.
Re: (Score:3)
Small companies can't normally afford to pay six figure tech people.
Re: (Score:3)
Find better small/medium companies.
Select one that earns money in tech, not where you are overhead.
Location, location, location... (Score:2)
Frequently, when you take local cost of living and quality of life into account, the "middle-of-nowhere Missouri or Kentucky" gig turns out to pay better than the Silicon Valley job.
Many years ago, I talked with a guy who was trying to hire programmers in San Francisco. The job sounded interesting, and he was looking for someone with a background a lot like mine. He was moaning about how he couldn't hire anyone, couldn't even get anyone to interview. When I asked him what he was looking to pay, and he an
Re: (Score:2)
"Frequently, when you take local cost of living and quality of life into account, the "middle-of-nowhere Missouri or Kentucky" gig turns out to pay better than the Silicon Valley job."
Maybe but that is just the Valley. If you work out of say Dallas you have a cost of living not much higher than Missouri with CA level salaries. There is colorado as well but the costs in that market are skyrocketing and will be on par soon.
The thing is with the extra cost of living you'll often come out spending 80% of your s
Re: (Score:2)
lol I read your first line and missed that your example was Dallas before giving my own Dallas example and I see another saying the same thing. We should probably all shut our traps before Dallas gets swarmed.
Re: (Score:2)
"The reason is that those places suck in ways that most people will take a pay cut to avoid."
If you mean the economic policies they speak for themselves. Lower cost of living, higher wages, dramatically lower and on track to be 100% renewable by 2020 electricity costs. If you mean the other politics there are areas for everyone in a major city but Dallas/Houston/Austin are overwhelmingly blue. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum there is no getting around the morons they elect governor th
Re: (Score:2)
psychopaths will be the only people who can get jobs. Then everything will crash and we'll get to rebuild from the rubble.
Can I help burn it to the ground? I think this world, or at least "Western Society" has reached the point of basket case: The only sane move is to take it apart, all the way apart, then put it back together properly. Car analogy: Frame-off restoration, every bolt, every nut, every rivet, every part has to come off, be cleaned or replaced to as-built, then put it back together.
Right now we're a basket case whose wipers go off when you blow the horn, and the lights go out when you step on the brake. She's
Re: (Score:2)
Can I help burn it to the ground? I think this world, or at least "Western Society" has reached the point of basket case: The only sane move is to take it apart, all the way apart, then put it back together properly.
Put it back together as what?
Re: (Score:2)
Put it back together as what?
OK, Serviscope, I'll nibble at your trollbait because this is something I will fight for in the ballots every election.
The "ship" or "Car" in this analogy is almost perfect as design, it's obvious the designers (the Founders) were wise. But over the years some things have gone wrong, as they are wont to do in any old boat.
I'd put it back together exactly as it is now, with a few minor, but effective changes:
1. Get rid of SuperPACs and PACs in general. Reverse Citizens United. This bullshit that Corporat
Re: (Score:2)
and their property cannot be searched or taken without due process
Erf... *facepalm* WHat I meant is that in those places I mentioned, private property is not protected in other places as it is here.
Re: (Score:2)
psychopaths will be the only people who can get jobs. Then everything will crash and we'll get to rebuild from the rubble.
Can I help burn it to the ground?
There. Now you're thinking. If you want to get a job where only psychopaths get jobs, you have to become one.
Re: (Score:2)
There. Now you're thinking. If you want to get a job where only psychopaths get jobs, you have to become one.
In a sense, yes. If you're hunting rats, study the rat, to include thikning like one, then with that knowledge, strike the rat.
If you have a system to game to gain employment, study that system, learn all you can about it, think like it, and then strike.
It's a shit sandwich, isn't it. It's funny but this job I got now, I got it via human contacts, not some faceless recruiting algo. I answered an ad someone tipped me about, and forgot about it, thinking the automated system wouldn't pick me. Well, 2 week