[HN Gopher] Most people don't finish online job applications
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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.
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