[HN Gopher] I applied to 250 jobs and timed how long each one took
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I applied to 250 jobs and timed how long each one took
Hey HN - I timed how long it took me to go through the application
process of 250 jobs. Some of my key findings: - On average, it
took a bit over two and a half minutes (162 seconds) to apply to a
job. - If company size doubles, the application time increases by
5%. If company size increases by a factor of 10, then the app time
increases by 20%. - Being a government company is the single
largest determinant of a long application, followed closely by
aerospace and consulting firms. - The longest application time
went to the United States Postal Service (10 minutes and 12
seconds). - On the other hand, It took me just 17 seconds to apply
to Renaissance Technologies. - Older ATS like Workday and Taleo
make job applications as much as 128% longer.
Author : shsachdev
Score : 217 points
Date : 2023-10-03 15:36 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.careerfair.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.careerfair.io)
| sebbul wrote:
| When I was involved in hiring at a major enterprise, our HR
| recruiting lead advised against reviewing candidates directly
| from the ATS. The reason? Due to our company's reputation as a
| top workplace, many applicants indiscriminately applied to every
| role available. Our HR lead essentially served as a human spam
| filter.
| thdc wrote:
| Will you follow up with stats and analysis on response rate and
| further steps in the application/evaluation process? I'd be
| interested in that.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Very likely going to be zero. The only way I can get a chance
| at a phone screen is to spend at least an hour crafting my
| resume and cover letter for each position.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Can you describe in more detail what this actually means? I
| can't imagine what I would spend an hour doing to my resume
| that would somehow make it more attractive to a specific
| employer without outright lying.
| remus wrote:
| Answering as someone who's done a little hiring recently,
| but for me it's obvious when someone has put some time and
| effort in to their application via the cover letter. A good
| application will demonstrate some understanding of what the
| role is likely to entail, a bit about the company as a
| whole and a bit of understanding of the wider market the
| company works in.
|
| Granted this is for a relatively small company in a niche
| area. Maybe it is different when applying for jobs at big
| companies.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| It's the thought that counts...
| notsurenymore wrote:
| I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I started to play with
| jobscan to test my resume against ATS scanning. It was
| getting knocked for not having uselessly vague keywords
| like "business solutions" in the resume when they were in
| the job app, or not listing every single data format I've
| worked with. So now, I've just started keyword dumping my
| resume with everything in a job listing even though it
| feels stupid.
|
| I doubt it matters much though. Even when I get passed the
| initial resume screen these days, it's usually followed up
| with a "we've decided to pursue someone else" from the
| recruiter/hiring manager/etc. before I can even get to an
| interview. And that's for jobs where my resume seems a
| perfect fit.
| obmelvin wrote:
| Hey, I've actually been wondering about this the last few
| days given linkedin shows high numbers of applicants for
| recently posted jobs. I have one main question - are you
| submitting multi-page resumes? I've been wondering if I
| should basically be submitting a CV for cold applications
| with a focus on resume scanning, and have a 1 page resume
| that I can send when communicating with real people
| bluGill wrote:
| Your goal is to have enough keywords that the automated
| tools pass you onto the hiring manager. You can find
| these in the job description, so make sure all keywords
| that even somewhat fit are there (don't claim something
| you don't have! - that might get you an interview but
| will kill your chance even if otherwise you were fine).
|
| The real goal is when a human reads your resume they
| decide to call you in for an interview. That human
| doesn't have time for your whole CV, so even though it
| might get you to that person, it won't get you an
| interview: forget about the cold applications to a
| program, you are just wasting the other person's time if
| you get past the machine. If you have a job only apply to
| jobs you have looked into enough to know they are worth
| accepting an offer if you get one. If you don't have a
| job you can't be as picky - but you have a lot more time
| to investigate potential companies and design a resume to
| get their attention.
|
| So my advice as someone who might read your resume: read
| the job ad and then modify your resume to make it fit.
| Don't remove unrelated jobs, but make them a couple
| lines, while jobs where you did things more inline with
| what they want get more attention. I only glance at cover
| letters so I wouldn't recommend you spend much time on
| them. Note that the above is focused on me - others are
| different but I can only advise how to get my attention:
| you get to figure out how/if it generalizes.
|
| Honestly, finding someone worth hiring is hard. I want to
| know if you can do the job and nothing about the process
| is very good there.
| notsurenymore wrote:
| I try to keep my resume to one page, it's just old advice
| I love heard since I was a kid. I'm not sure if it's
| still good advice though, I've seen suggestions that it's
| a hold over from before online ATS systems were common.
|
| I also try to keep the formatting simple in hopes that
| the parser has an easier time. I had a previous resume
| that had a slightly more complex layout that I thing
| compiled down to tables, but recently I've been using one
| with a simpler linear/hierarchical format.
|
| I've also removed some stuff I used to have on there,
| such as contributions to open source projects. No one
| I've ever talked to has cared about that stuff, even when
| the market was easier, but I suspect that's partly
| because the OSS stuff I've done is in a different domain
| from my professional career.
|
| Right now, most rejections I get at the ATS stage don't
| come till 2-3 weeks after the application.
| bluGill wrote:
| For starters it means reading the job ad and understanding
| if you are even a fit for it. You can then take the various
| keywords in the job description and make sure those are the
| ones you use and not some variant that HR won't realizes is
| the same thing. Generally you can tell they are looking for
| someone to do something in particular so you can add a line
| or two about doing something like that, while taking away
| some other line they don't care about. (In the US we use
| resume not CV, resumes are support to be short: once you
| have been around for a few years there will be things you
| can do that just don't fit on the page)
|
| If you are just finishing college [or worse looking for an
| internship] you will have trouble putting enough on a page
| to attract attention. Once you have been around for a few
| years though you should be cutting things - and that means
| there are things potentially relevant you can put back on.
|
| It also depends on how focused you are. If you are only
| interested in OpenGL 1.1 jobs you would cut anything not
| related that and just have a single resume that you don't
| need to focus. I used openGl 1.1 to make a point: it is
| obsolete so normally you wouldn't put anything about it on
| a resume - but there is a small chance you would encounter
| it as a nice to have in an otherwise interesting job (If
| the job wants someone who knows Vulkan but is 10%
| maintaining old products: openGl 1.1 might catch their
| attention even though you have no Vulkan experience)
| barryrandall wrote:
| Back when I thought companies put any thought into their
| ads, I'd take each ad, make a list of things the job is
| looking for, and update my base resume with any relevant
| experience, making sure that things on the "looking for"
| list were at the top of their respective category.
|
| I scaled back a bit once I saw how people actually write
| job descriptions (search Google until they find something
| "close enough" and post that verbatim).
| jborden13 wrote:
| Maybe my side project will be accreditive to your process,
| apologies for the clunky UI - working on it:
|
| https://www.kindbuds.ai/ght/spence
| mikeyan320 wrote:
| 2.5 minutes seems short for every application but it's literally
| mindlessly re-entering information that's literally already on
| your resume. It's definitely the frustration more than the time
| IMO...
|
| PSA: I built a browser extension that autofills your job
| application so you don't have to manually re-type your resume on
| every job -> https://simplify.jobs/copilot (we're also YC
| backed!)
| newfonewhodis wrote:
| > - The longest application time went to the United States Postal
| Service (10 minutes and 12 seconds).
|
| My spouse is not in tech but in comms. The quickest I know she's
| done an application has been O(hours) primarily due to writing
| cover letters, personalizing resume and often sending in clips.
|
| Having seen that, I find it amusing that we techies (yes me too)
| get annoyed when we have to provide our Linkedin AND all the
| information on that page.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Yes . . . I don't think I have spent less than 1 hour on any
| serious job application I have done. It usually takes multiple
| hours. My spouse is in Academia, and her job applications take
| days!
| super256 wrote:
| I only apply to companies I really, really want to work for.
| Might sound a bit kitsch, but I work a lot on my cover letter to
| show how eager I am to work with them.
|
| Of course it could be luck, but so far I wrote only two
| applications in my life and got both got accepted + for job offer
| from both (after interviewing).
|
| When I tell people about my cover letters some say that HR don't
| even read cover letters, but I want to believe otherwise :D
| postcynical wrote:
| I do read them. It's the easiest way to stand out for
| candidates. A paragraph about what interests u in this role
| usually is enough.
| remus wrote:
| Same here. In my experience a cover letter is the fastest way
| to tell if someone actually cares about the role enough to do
| a little research and understand what is involved.
| kevmarsden wrote:
| Most job application flows are suboptimal, but job seekers need
| to stop maximizing the number of applications they submit and
| instead create a few really great applications.
|
| I typically spend two or three hours writing a cover letter and
| customizing my resume for each job application.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| depends on your career level.
| gear54rus wrote:
| My god.. 3 hours for a cover letter, mind sharing an example of
| one?
| bluGill wrote:
| Cover letter and resume. Which is more reasonable. You should
| be reading the job ad closely to make sure you match that.
| Then do some research on the company to make sure you
| understand what they do - often you can think of some other
| relevant experience that isn't in the ad.
|
| Don't forget that this isn't a hackernews comment. You should
| take an hour (day is better!) break and then reread and
| revise everything. Don't send the rough draft or even the
| second draft in - follow the whole writing process they told
| you in school. Some people will spot a spelling error at the
| bottom of the page in one second and reject you, so make sure
| everything is perfect.
| tennisflyi wrote:
| Ok. Update us on the average time to get a reply from ghosting to
| months.
| blitzar wrote:
| Average time to get a reply = infinity.
| amDonezo wrote:
| Yeh; am done with "professional careers".
|
| De-urbanizing and moving to a more rural location. Will get a job
| at a grocery store to avoid all the future dead people in office
| jobs whose toxic positivity psychosis is leading them to believe
| they're leaving behind the most important outputs for the future.
|
| Such jobs are not meaningful. They're just _a_ form of social
| organization, like religion before us.
|
| Signal attenuation due to generational churn comes with loss of
| experience and an obligation on the future to re-discover and
| encode that knowledge. We only propagate the species, social
| norms are not fractal and immutable; nothing we're doing is
| preserved. We're just jumping through elites hoops for bigger
| paychecks.
|
| Been there, done that. It gets just as banal and repetitive as
| everything else. It's drug addiction, chasing dopamine highs.
| Physics will end the species and all this effort will be for
| naught.
|
| Given that there's little point to being a court jester and
| dancing for the high court.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| Must be nice to have enough money to simply buy a house.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Now we just need a resource about which companies will ghost you
| at some point in the process.
|
| I can take being rejected. Disappearing into the night is so
| disrespectful.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I guess this is interesting research, but for me not personally
| useful.
|
| I've had a lot of jobs in my long career, and I have spent a
| considerable amount of time researching and applying for the few
| ones I am interested in. I have a pretty good hit rate.
|
| Do people really apply for hundreds of jobs?
| notsurenymore wrote:
| > Do people really apply for hundreds of jobs?
|
| I've done it twice. The first time was when I was 18 or 19
| trying to get my first job in the industry. I put in a ton of
| applications, and while it felt tedious, it only took around
| three months at the end of the day.
|
| The second time was this time. I've probably put at least 100
| applications in over the past year, and it's been very hit or
| miss on whether I get interviews. I don't bother researching
| and applying for the few jobs in interested in, because I'm
| usually not qualified for them. Most of my recent job
| applications have been exclusively ones that looks like they're
| relevant compared to my resume, and some that are different
| from the work I've done in the past, but utilize tangential
| skills.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yes, I can see that working early in a career. Now that I
| think of it, my best friend did exactly that too when he was
| 19, and he managed to get his foot in the door.
|
| For what it's worth I think your current strategy of applying
| for relevant jobs is the right one, particularly if it's a
| difficult market where you are. Tangential skills are also
| good possibilities. I hope you find something that works for
| you.
| bluGill wrote:
| When you are fresh out of college you don't stand out. A
| few months ago we had 100 applicants for an entry level
| programming position. Every applicant was finishing their
| bachelors (a couple in CS, the rest in computer
| engineering) in June. They all had done some internship (in
| a not very relevant area but that is expected) and a class
| project. Almost all of them were Eagle scouts (until
| recently scouts only allowed boys so this is indirectly an
| assessment of boy/girl ratio of applicants and thus illegal
| for me to care about). It was really hard to filter down
| who to interview because they all look the same and we only
| had one position. As such spaming your resume is the best
| bet when fresh from school.
|
| When you have been our of school for a while we get a few
| resumes with interesting experience that can make a few
| people stand out. Most probably have standout experience,
| but it doesn't come out in the resume.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Most people are terrible at writing resumes. We used to
| joke that we would throw half the resumes in the bin
| immediately on the grounds that we didn't want to employ
| unlucky people!
|
| The biggest mistake I see for people with experience is
| that they describe their role and responsibilities but
| not what they specifically contributed and why they are
| awesome.
|
| The best advice I was ever given is that your resume is a
| marketing document. It should contain things you would
| like to be asked about in an interview. Cut out
| everything else.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > It was really hard to filter down who to interview
| because they all look the same and we only had one
| position
|
| Did you make up some BS metrics, or did you do the honest
| thing and draw resumes from a hat?
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| From my experience, when you have too many similar
| resumes there are no useful metrics you can define. You
| just have to choose some to interview and bin the rest.
| donretag wrote:
| Great article. Well done. Have you considered adding an RSS feed
| for your content?
| shsachdev wrote:
| thanks! I have not but will def consider it
| Ilasky wrote:
| These are some really interesting results that I have felt
| empirically, but is great to put some data to. One thing this
| doesn't take into account is the best practice of tailoring
| resumes to job descriptions. This is a time-intensive task that
| does actually improve call back rates. A bit of a self-plug, but
| I've made Resgen[0] to help do this for you.
|
| [0] https://resgen.app
| cushychicken wrote:
| Oh goodness, someone else who shares my irrational antipathy for
| Workday!
|
| Workday is such junk from a user facing perspective. It's a huge
| pain to index content from. I have to omit a bunch of big
| semiconductor companies from my job site because it's fucking
| impossible to get job data out of Workday.
|
| If you work in talent at either NXP or Qualcomm, please God read
| this essay. You are actively harming your own recruiting
| prospects by using Workday!
|
| I don't have this problem at all with the more modern ATS'es -
| Lever, Greenhouse, and Workable all provide nice, easy to consume
| APIs for this.
| rdedev wrote:
| Workday is weird. It's a chore to apply but things like
| simplify jobs browser addon makes ituch better. That being said
| I have more luck getting a response from a workday application
| than greenhouse or lever. Maybe the harder pathway discourages
| spam applications
| datavirtue wrote:
| I've gone through several workday apps in the last few days
| and found them all to be easy.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the problems with Workday?
|
| I hear lots of antipathy about it, but the only problem I've
| personally noticed is (IIRC) it consistently mis-parses my PDF
| resume.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| One of the biggest issues I've had, and I don't know how
| workday looks from their end, when it comes to entering in
| education and specifically degree. My degree says "Software
| Engineering," which I never see given in a list. So I usually
| just pick whatever is closest like "Computer Science," and I
| always wonder if there is a system that does some correlation
| between what it put in the box and on the resume.
| notsurenymore wrote:
| I applied to company using workday recently. The job was a
| referral and the JD made it explicitly clear I didn't
| _need_ a degree. Yet it was a required field.
|
| And of course, it wasn't a free form text field that would
| allow me to just enter N/A or my high school. It was a
| drop-down/search box that had a predefined list of colleges
| and universities. I ended up just entering some college I
| attended for two months before dropping out.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I've also seen that too. The no-free-form entry sucks. I
| went to a pretty big public school, but for some reason
| it wasn't included in the pre-populated list on one job I
| was applying to. No clue what the company using it's
| controls look like, but I even checked over big name
| public universities to see if they were on the pre-
| populated list and it was surprising how many were
| missing. Like UNC (University of North Carolina) wasn't
| listed.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, they get what they get from the parser. The good resume
| is uploaded anyway.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| For me, I refuse to create accounts when applying for jobs.
| Too much of a pain in the ass.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Also, anyone know a way to automate undoing the all-capsing
| Workday does with resume data? Sometimes the data makes it to
| the correct field but it might as well not since I need to
| retype the whole thing anyway.
| callalex wrote:
| Running a scraping aggregator and being an end user are not the
| same thing.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| Workday is not great for applicants either. Maybe the back-
| end is nice?
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Workday is awful from every angle.
| dmoy wrote:
| Yea, but companies will keep using it because offloading
| all HRMS to workday (or similar competitors) is cheaper
| than doing it all in house. (For companies of a
| sufficient size. Small enough and it's probably not worth
| it)
| artiscode wrote:
| It's just aa convoluted. I work for Workday. Having to re-
| enter your data each and every time is part of the
| enterprise tenant isolation model. There is no information
| sharing between tenants, especially PII. The UX suffers
| because of data privacy.
| cushychicken wrote:
| _Maybe the back-end is nice?_
|
| Lol I'm definitely swiping this next time I throw shade on
| a website XD
| chias wrote:
| Workday: At Least It's Not Oracle
| generic92034 wrote:
| I am looking forward for the days when my AI is negotiating with
| several corporate HR AI wherever I will finally end up. ;)
| alpb wrote:
| Would you consider opening the spreadsheet to anyone without
| requiring them to sign up to your mailing list?
| benterix wrote:
| Why would they make the trouble of doing this experiment and
| posting it to HN then?
| suriyaG wrote:
| It'll be much more interesting to know how long the "behavior
| assessment" that you get sent immediately after applying. Having
| just attended one mind numbing assessment from Citibank, which
| took more than an hour
| shsachdev wrote:
| my next article is likely about that :)
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| I remember doing these at Blackrock and JP Morgan. Talk about
| tedious...
| Inviz wrote:
| I always tell my friends that i apply to 100 jobs, go through
| interviews with 15 companies, get 5 offers. In my experience as a
| generalist it's possible to find _something_ interesting about
| the position once you get an interview, there's no reason to pre-
| filter self to a very specific tech stack. As long as they pay!
| xnorswap wrote:
| The tldr seems to be that it's exceptionally quick and easy to
| apply for jobs, perhaps too quick and too easy, there's
| essentially no barrier to applying to any and every job advert
| seen given it apparently takes less than 10 minutes in the
| "worst" case.
| benmo_atx wrote:
| Which makes the overall experience worse for hiring managers
| and qualified applicants.
| bluGill wrote:
| And in turn we turn more to automated tools to filter even
| though we know they are rejecting good people who just didn't
| write some keyword. In turn applicants are writing worse
| resumes just to ensure they have the right keywords even if
| they honestly barely have it (NEVER say you have a keyword
| you don't have, but if you just barely have it put it on and
| prepare to explain how little you know if that really is
| important)
| billy99k wrote:
| I have found that tailoring my resume to a specific job listing
| increased my response time significantly. I've seen so many
| articles about people answering 50+ job ads and getting no
| response.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| What kind of tailoring do you do?
| billy99k wrote:
| I re-write all of my job descriptions. Usually because I
| touch so many different technologies, libraries, etc in each
| job, I can't put them all there. I try to tailor it toward
| the job description.
| fckgw wrote:
| Not the OP but generally you want to re-write your prior job
| history or anything in your resume to align with and
| highlight anything in their job description. Match the
| keywords to make it clear you're the perfect candidate.
| MikeTheRocker wrote:
| I love seeing this kind of detailed analysis of everyday things
| like this. It always seems to reveal intriguing correlations and
| insights.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Absolutely love this post. Thank you for your hard efforts.
| Great!!!
| mr_o47 wrote:
| I remember applying to RenTech and getting a rejection email in 3
| hours and let me tell you it was quick.
|
| Most companies I have applied to would probably take a week or
| more than a week
| ipaddr wrote:
| They are quick. From applying to getting an offer to getting
| laid off 1.5 seconds. The lawsuit is taking years
| notsurenymore wrote:
| Some years ago I remember applying to a job at a well known US
| bank. It got to a series of checklist questions, one of which
| asked if I had a degree, I checked no, and it kicked me out
| before I could even finish the application.
|
| Honestly, I wish more applications were like that. Just let me
| know sooner rather than later what your filters are.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Disney's rejection for a front end position came a full year
| after I applied
| mr_o47 wrote:
| that's insane
|
| I remember applying for a position getting a phone call and
| then getting rejected afterwards but the funny thing was I
| got another email from the same company asking about my
| availability for the interview and I was like Woahh, are you
| sure you sent the email to the right person because I
| remember you already rejected me
| ndiddy wrote:
| The candidate(s) they wanted probably rejected their offer.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| My record was 2.5 years later for a different company. At
| that point why bother?
| brightball wrote:
| The only time I reject an application that quickly is if it was
| completely outside the realm of the job.
|
| At least for programmers, I always cast a wide net unless there
| is some very specific item that has a very steep learning
| curve.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Not including things like any custom cover letters, coding take-
| home, phone screens, resume tweaks, etc.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| It would be nice to see the expected salary for each role vs
| application time too.
| m1117 wrote:
| That is job stacking fo' real!
| rconti wrote:
| Everything about the Workday UX is an absolute freaking dumpster
| fire.
|
| Just as an example, but one that trips me up a lot, every action
| seems to be controlled by an orange button (Submit?) way down in
| the lower right corner of your browser, even if the information
| you're working on is way up in the upper right corner.
| jddj wrote:
| I overheard a guy at the gym a couple of weeks back saying that
| he's automated (gpt4) the keyword-optimised CV/cover letter
| process to the point where he was able to apply to - I'm a bit
| suspect on this bit, but the generation at least is believable -
| 75 jobs in an hour and a half.
|
| We've raised the noise floor significantly.
|
| Ps. If you're here mate I hope it worked out for you.
| tamimio wrote:
| > If you're here mate I hope it worked out for you
|
| I hope it didn't, contaminating the applications like this and
| automating it will only hurt the ones who's applying, because
| now authentic resumes and legit knowledge will be overlooked by
| other fake auto generated resumes. This try hard wannabe
| attitude is always going to ruin the experience for everyone
| else, either in jobs, blog writings, dating, gaming, and
| basically everywhere.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| People aren't as smart as they think.
|
| I also automate part of the process, and I think everyone
| should be or soon will be, but having received many CVS/cover
| letters as well, the ones with too much LLM are glaringly
| obvious and an easy rejection.
|
| These days with companies receiving hundreds of CVs, you only
| need 1 reason to reject an application. Don't make your
| application so LLMy that you give the hiring manager an easy
| reason
| timmaxw wrote:
| I think there's a dynamic where:
|
| - Desirable job applicants get hired quickly, but people who
| can't get hired stay on the market
|
| - People who can't get hired will keep applying to more and
| more jobs
|
| - So every new job opening gets flooded with applications from
| people who couldn't get hired elsewhere
|
| - Employers don't have time to read the flood of applications
| in detail, so they rely on cheap filters (keywords on resume,
| where they went to college, did they work at FANG, etc.)
|
| - Which makes the process worse for everyone
|
| What if there was some way to limit job seekers to e.g. 10 job
| applications per month, industrywide? Feels like that could cut
| down the noise and allow employers to consider each individual
| applicant more carefully.
|
| (It would be hard to implement this limit, though. You could do
| it via data-sharing between Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, etc.,
| but there are huge privacy concerns and it would run into the
| same sorts of issues as credit reports do.)
| ufmace wrote:
| This, and a few more dynamics, including:
|
| - The better applicants usually have several warm leads and
| often don't bother with high-effort application processes,
| since they have a pretty decent chance of getting hired
| wherever they apply, and they're also not bothering to apply
| for things they're wildly unqualified for
|
| - The worse and more desperate applicants have the time and
| motivation to stick through the most bizarre and convoluted
| application process until they get kicked out, with no regard
| to how well they actually match the requirements
|
| So thus, the more hoops you put into your process to try and
| stem the tide of the hoards of desperate unqualified
| applicants, the more you disproportionately screen out the
| highly qualified applicants who have better things to do and
| better opportunities to pursue.
| avidiax wrote:
| > So thus, the more hoops you put into your process to try
| and stem the tide of the hoards of desperate unqualified
| applicants, the more you disproportionately screen out the
| highly qualified applicants who have better things to do
| and better opportunities to pursue.
|
| Exactly. Asking me to upload a resume, and then data entry
| all the facts from my resume into form fields, just so that
| a company can not even reject me, basically tells me that I
| will be expendable drone #88238875 if I get a job there.
|
| I feel a little bad that sometimes the recruiter probably
| fills the form out for me if their process requires is, but
| at least they actually intend to follow up on me as a lead.
| bumby wrote:
| The shortcut around this problem is for companies to rely on
| networking/recommendations rather than a large net, but that
| comes with its own downsides.
| milesvp wrote:
| A video came across my feed recently talking about this in
| tech. Was talking about how the advice for getting into
| tech that worked really well 1+ years ago isn't as
| effective today. Basically, the idea was that tech was
| hiring so voraciously, that they couldn't keep up with
| hiring by relying on networking bringing in enough
| candidates, so they needed a lot more recruiting efforts to
| fill the pipeline. This meant, that just grinding leet code
| and applying was enough to significantly increase the odds
| of getting hired. Basically the proportion of random
| application hires to referral hires was high. Today, not so
| much. I'd expect to need to jump though a lot more hoops
| today (not that leet code studying isn't it's own major
| hoop) to get hired. And of course, this proportion will
| shift again with the next major tech hiring boom.
| ar_lan wrote:
| > What if there was some way to limit job seekers to e.g. 10
| job applications per month, industrywide? Feels like that
| could cut down the noise and allow employers to consider each
| individual applicant more carefully.
|
| Beyond the actual difficulty in doing this without a
| completely centralized hiring process, this feels incredibly
| immoral. People have families to feed.
| tuatoru wrote:
| repeat of my comment above: -
|
| I sometimes think requiring people to telephone and
| navigate a voice system to get an application ID before
| they can apply might help.
|
| Tiny barriers can have disproportionate effects.
| sokoloff wrote:
| This is also how 80% of companies can believe they're hiring
| mostly top-1% programmers.
|
| No, you're hiring top-1% of _applicants_ , not top-1% of
| _employees_!
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| All companies share a common pool of bottom 99% applicants.
| kiltedpanda wrote:
| We hire on Freelancer sites quite a bit and have noticed that
| about 50%-80% of applicants now very obviously use ChatGPT or
| equivalent to apply. Now suddenly every person magically has 8
| years experience in a weird esoteric requirement that we're
| looking for.
|
| They are currently very easy to spot and the applications go
| directly into the trash, so the freelancers aren't doing
| themselves any favors using them.
|
| It is increasing the noise floor a lot though.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| have you thought of adding a trap that a LLM might trip on
| but a human wouldn't.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| Okay, but I have a resume that is a good fit for a lot of
| different roles but isn't seen by any human ever because it
| doesn't include the specific combination of keywords
| mentioned in the job posting.
|
| I am in the process right now of embedding keywords and a
| "shadow resume" invisibly in my resume to get past the stupid
| filtering software.
|
| Employers are doing this to themselves.
| kiltedpanda wrote:
| Sure, tailoring your resume for a specific job is pretty
| standard. Perhaps an LLM that has access to your resume,
| along with loads of documentation on what you have
| previously done would provide for a much better automation
| process.
|
| It could read the job spec, then tailor your application
| with information that is actually true. Starting off with a
| company with information that is false is not a great way
| to start a (hopefully) long relationship.
|
| FWIW, we review every application we receive on the
| freelancer sites and do not use automated filters.
| tuatoru wrote:
| I sometimes think requiring people to telephone and
| navigate a voice system to get an application ID before
| they can apply might help.
|
| Tiny barriers can have disproportionate effects.
| tarek_computer wrote:
| What are the most common freelancing sites you use for job
| postings?
| kiltedpanda wrote:
| Freelancer.com and Upwork. Although after the torrent of AI
| powered garbage we received after our latest posting on
| Freelancer, I'm not sure we will use that again.
| tarek_computer wrote:
| Thank you. I have side question for you. Sorry, all this
| thread coincides with another thread about LinkedIn and
| me getting banned without knowing why
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37748263). As a job
| recruiter looking for freelancers, do you expect to find
| the person on LinkedIn as part of the fact checking
| process? Would you seriously consider alternating sites
| such as a person's website or GitHub and would you find
| the person a suspect if their LinkedIn profile does not
| exist ?
| kiltedpanda wrote:
| Sorry to hear about your Linkedin profile. Yes, we do
| look at Linkedin profiles for shortlisted candidates. It
| helps to establish credibility and for us to get an idea
| of whether the claimed previous experience is legitimate.
|
| We do also ask for Github, but many folks use other
| repositories. Linkedin is one of the best sources of
| credibility for us, so I would recommend continuing to
| try to get it unbanned, or start a new one.
| [deleted]
| jddj wrote:
| Suppose you could have some fun putting made up technology
| honeypots in there to weed them out.
| kiltedpanda wrote:
| That's a great idea, we will do that.
| tornato7 wrote:
| I once applied to a job that had recommended experience in
| applied sitting algorithms. I asked the recruiter WTF
| sitting algorithms are and she told me it was just a test,
| and it's surprising how many candidates will say that
| they've studied sitting algorithms. It works!
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I mean, big corpos for years have been automating the hiring
| process to the detriment of their own results. Is it really
| that surprising applicants are ready to do the same? Now
| suddenly automation is bad? Hiring managers being butt-hurt
| that their automated factory farm application process is
| being inundated with spam generated by other automation is so
| hilarious to me, this just made my day.
|
| You get what you fuckin deserve. If you can't be arsed to
| review applications with people, why should people be arsed
| to apply in person?
| jddj wrote:
| I wasn't making a value judgement, for what it's worth. I'm
| not sure the commenter that you're replying to was either.
| kiltedpanda wrote:
| It isn't the use of automation that is the problem. It's
| that in the automated applications we're receiving, there
| is very obviously fraudulent information in there. The
| applicants are LYING about their experience, in order to
| match the job specification.
|
| ChatGPT just consumes each of the job requirements, and
| then makes a story about how the applicant has had
| significant experience in all of those areas. I would
| prefer not to hire people who lie about their experience to
| get a job.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > It isn't the use of automation that is the problem.
| It's that in the automated applications we're receiving,
| there is very obviously fraudulent information in there.
| The applicants are LYING about their experience, in order
| to match the job specification.
|
| Who cares? The specifications half the time include
| experience that's impossible to achieve because the
| people writing them either are also in turn using
| automated software and/or because they have no idea what
| they're hiring for.
| tuatoru wrote:
| ... just like in dating!
| roamerz wrote:
| > Now suddenly every person magically has 8 years experience
| in a weird esoteric requirement that we're looking for.
|
| That's crazy to me. Why would someone put ANYTHING on their
| resume that is not factually correct? That in the end is a
| disservice to yourself and to your potential employer, not to
| mention the pressure it puts on job seekers to push the
| envelope on embellishment.
|
| What I am on the fence about in my own resume is including a
| skillset that yes I have done but maybe a couple years in the
| past. Right or wrong I have decided to keep them on their
| knowing full well that it might create a bit of a challenge
| for me during the interview process.
| outworlder wrote:
| > That's crazy to me. Why would someone put ANYTHING on
| their resume that is not factually correct?
|
| I have dealt with my fair share of resume embellishments. I
| _will ask_ questions about anything that you put in your
| resume. Anything at all. It's fair game. That's part of my
| sanity check. Better have a pretty decent answer as to why
| something is in the resume relatively recently and you
| can't even give me an overview of what it was (I assume
| people forget details and it's fine).
|
| However, have you ever seen 'proxy interviews'? In those
| cases, it's not just a case of 'embellishments', the
| candidate interviewing has zero experience and the resume
| is not even his. Had this experience a few months ago.
|
| People go as far as lip syncing. It's horrendous.
| blitzar wrote:
| > That's crazy to me. Why would s ...
|
| Because it works... They get the job and the person who
| wasnt captain of the football, tennis, rowing, lacrose,
| bowling, sailing, cheerleading, chess and debate teams all
| at the same time is just some unemployable loser.
|
| The real question is why managers and recruiters fall for
| it - the obvious answer is that they got where they got by
| inflating their CV and simply assume everyone does it too.
| roamerz wrote:
| I really hope your obvious answer is not a widespread
| truth. Seems like a horribly vicious circle.
| lazide wrote:
| I bet you're surprised that people lie _all the time_ to
| women at bars too!
| roamerz wrote:
| Haha.. wait have we met? :D
|
| It would be a fun experiment to have a few shots, update
| my resume and then read it the next day.
| lazide wrote:
| Haha, unlikely. I just know the feeling.
|
| Another experiment - have a friend update your resume
| while you take those shots, and then see if you can
| really object to the results the next day. ;)
| tuatoru wrote:
| .. and women have totally unrealistic criteria, too, just
| like employers.
|
| The internet has caused mass insanity.
| lazide wrote:
| It's definitely helped spread it. But honestly, these
| situations are nothing new. Back in the dot-com crash I
| remember it all being the same. Even entry level school
| computer labs were requiring CS PhD's! And women, well,
| same.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Er, we had the internet during the dot-com crash. And
| before it, even.
|
| As I recall, things were not quite so bad in the 1980s. I
| vaguely recall seeing the odd newspaper article about the
| intense interest in a job, because it attracted maybe 500
| applications. That was newsworthy.
| lazide wrote:
| It used to be you had to physically show up, or mail in a
| form to apply. That tends to put the brakes on mass
| applications pretty effectively.
|
| It's less the internet, and more folks using the
| internet/apps for processes that used to require in
| person physical presence. Which has been getting more and
| more common.
| fouric wrote:
| > Why would someone put ANYTHING on their resume that is
| not factually correct?
|
| Tragedy of the commons and negative externalities. If
| you're applying for a ton of jobs, then lying on your
| resume comes with potential upsides (you could get a job
| that you normally wouldn't) with very little personal
| downside (employers don't really have a way to share which
| applicants falsified resume data).
|
| Sure, doing this raises the noise level and makes it harder
| for people who _don 't_ lie on their resumes (tragedy of
| the commons), but from an individual perspective, that's a
| negative externality that they don't have to care about.
| fastback wrote:
| I think it depends a bit on where you are in life.
|
| I remember exaggerating a bit when applying for my first
| job. I was fresh out of university and really needed that
| job. I spent the following 2 years miserable, I just didn't
| fit in that well.
|
| Nowadays I'm brutally honest with my application and the
| following interviews. I see it as me choosing where to work
| rather than the other way around. If they pick my
| application then I more or less know that I will fit in
| rather well. It has served me well over the years.
|
| I can understand people being desperate and in need of that
| first job or having to start over due to different reasons
| though...
| jstarfish wrote:
| > I can understand people being desperate and in need of
| that first job
|
| Desperate people do desperate and unpredictable things
| though. Case in point:
|
| > I remember exaggerating a bit when applying for my
| first job. [...] I spent the following 2 years miserable,
| I just didn't fit in that well.
|
| Every now and then I have to investigate employees who
| seem to spontaneously lose their shit-- aside from one
| with an alcoholic spouse, so far every single one of them
| were just in over their head. They don't return calls,
| cozy up to security and ask questions about monitoring
| tools, check into mental hospitals, suddenly have
| internet connection issues all the time, lose or destroy
| their equipment repeatedly, etc. One would hop onto the
| IT support Slack channel and see what widespread issue
| was currently impacting others, then claim it was
| happening to her (and do the same with general/social, to
| see when people were getting sick and with what).
|
| I wouldn't say it rises to the level of malingering, but
| it's clear they're desperately stalling, and it just
| creates a vortex that sucks them and everyone around them
| into. Contractual obligations stop being met because they
| become an entire sideshow and won't surrender. My fear is
| that one might eventually resort to sabotage; the closest
| we've come was a nonperformer trying to leverage
| workplace violence allegations against an executive.
|
| > Nowadays I'm brutally honest with my application and
| the following interviews.
|
| This is the way to do it. When you weave a web of lies,
| you have to maintain all those threads. Pathological
| liars are always anxious. Honesty makes for a much easier
| life.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Why would someone put ANYTHING on their resume that is
| not factually correct?
|
| If their current income is $0 and the income from a
| successful ruse is minimum several weeks of several
| thousands of dollars, and the cost per throw is around a
| dime...
|
| It's not hard to see how the algebra works out.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| you need algebra to figure that out?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Algebra that you can do in your head is still algebra.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Seems like even though multiple industries were tried these are
| all for tech positions, right? I wonder how long it would take
| for non-tech positions. I remember applying online for a minimum
| wage job at Burger King around 2010 and the application took
| about 45 minutes. Not only did you need to upload your resume,
| you need to enter every detail again in a long web form, and then
| there was a "personality test".
|
| Funny sidenote, my manager told me I was the first application he
| received that got a perfect score on the personality test. The
| next best applicant in the queue at the time was 85%. The
| questions were all things like "If a customer is complaining do
| you: Smile and listen to their complaint? Or Tell them it's fast
| food and to deal with it?" or "A customer accidentally included
| an extra 5 dollar bill when giving you their payment. You could
| keep this $5 without anyone knowing, do you keep it?" Just all
| very obvious answers and I don't understand why you wouldn't at
| least lie.
| mongol wrote:
| The worst is is you have to enter all your skills in some CV-
| builder, and select your choices in tons of select boxes.
| minitoar wrote:
| I just never do this and it's never been a problem.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I skip all those - any company willing to begin a relationship
| with potential future coworkers by putting them through such a
| tedious, time-wasting exercise is not a place I would want to
| work.
| EarthAmbassador wrote:
| Why do HR people demand the duplication of efforts including
| manual entry of the very same information on a resume or LinkedIn
| profile, two resources that many HR people request. This is
| abusive, lazy, and easily solvable issue. I don't bother applying
| with any company that feels entitled to ware my time.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It's not their time or their budget, so it works out to $0 cost
| on their spreadsheet.
| Peroni wrote:
| >This is abusive, lazy, and easily solvable issue
|
| Agree with the first two but not the last point. The types of
| companies you're referring to are almost always large and not
| particularly fast moving. Swapping out their archaic applicant
| tracking system is often a non-starter as it's usually embedded
| in their HRIS and swapping out a HRIS in a large company is a
| monster task.
| euroderf wrote:
| A.I., anyone ?
| transcriptase wrote:
| Apply to Procter & Gamble, and _as part of the application
| itself_ enjoy being put through 1-2 hours of ambiguous
| personality /morality testing and Mensa-style math, memorization,
| and logic puzzles! With adaptive difficulty!
|
| It's the most surreal and absurd experience. There are actually
| prep courses you can pay for just to improve your odds on the P&G
| testing process just to get someone to actually see your resume.
| Be warned though: if you don't score sufficiently high for the
| position you've applied to, you're banned from applying for any
| job at the company for a year!
| joe5150 wrote:
| Many years ago, I had to complete a long personality inventory
| AND about 45 minutes of "what would you do"-type scenario
| simulations to apply for a job at...Kmart!
|
| Then the manager no-showed when I came in for the interview.
| [deleted]
| notsurenymore wrote:
| Retail applications have gotten lazy recently. I put one in,
| and they wanted a recorded interview. No one on the other
| side, I was expected to just awkwardly record myself
| answering some questions and send it in.
| joe5150 wrote:
| I was asked to do that for a state government job that paid
| above market, so it's not just retail. It was awkward and I
| would probably decline to do it again unless for some
| reason I still really wanted the job.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Is P&G a particularly great employer that justifies such a
| bizarre job application?
| lazide wrote:
| The worse the job, usually the worse the application process.
| In my experience anyway.
| [deleted]
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If you want to work in advertising and marketing, yes. If I
| recall correctly it's reputation in those circles is
| equivalent to FAANG in tech.
| itronitron wrote:
| I recall seeing a presentation in school by a young brand
| manager at P&G where they were talking about their
| excitement of being in charge of sales and marketing of a
| particular body wash in the southwest region.
| bythreads wrote:
| What?, no - not really. Perhaps in fmcg specialty shops
| you'd get some creds - but as in tech you're primariaey
| judged on past projects not past x
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's pretty regionally highly regarded, to the point that my
| brother-in-law voluntarily resigned to form his own business
| and people would disbelieve him that he wasn't fired from P&G
| (even after knowing that his business is successful). They
| just assume "no one around here quits P&G so he must have
| been fired."
| ingoaf wrote:
| And then, if you're feeling lucky apply to Canonical for a 10
| step recruiting fun.
| O_nlogn wrote:
| Canonical sent me a 30 question "written interview" which
| asked all sorts of personal and irrelevant questions as the
| first step in their interview process. I ghosted them.
| ddgflorida wrote:
| It's been a decade ago, but I remember the nightmare of using
| Taleo to apply for a job. I always thought I could write
| something better in about a week.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I remain confused by the absense of a sizeable reverse headhunter
| industry.
|
| Headhunters are trying to find a best fit for a company. Why is
| there no one trying to find a best fit for a candidate? The
| inherent problem in hiring, on both sides, is search costs.
|
| I'm probably going to be searching for a new job sometime next
| year. I think that, to avoid the time spent on these appliations,
| and to ensure a relatively good fit, I'd be willing to pay quite
| a bit, or to try and align incentives pay a percentage of the pay
| increase from my current job for a period of time or something
| like that.
|
| But essentially, it seems like free money on the ground to be
| able to pay people to solve these search frictions.
|
| I realize headhunters exist on the company side, but it really
| seems like A) there should be more of that and B) there should be
| a reciprocal industry representing the applicants.
| ignite2 wrote:
| There used to be many of these, but they became mostly scams
| that preyed on desperate job seekers. By the time I started job
| hunting, many years back, this industry was viewed about like
| nigerian princes. No sensible person would deal with them.
|
| There are career coaches to be found these days, I'm not
| intending to include them in this rant. I've had a few friends
| use them, and I've talked to one and he was reasonable.
|
| As an individual, I'd avoid anyone that wants a percentage.
| Specified fee for helping with resume, linkedin profile, etc.,
| fine.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| Isn't that just a recruiter at an independent agency? Reply to
| LinkedIn messages and even if you don't like the role they have
| at that time, those people are your headhunters.
| Spoom wrote:
| Companies are both more solvent and pay quicker than your
| typical job seeker (who is usually unemployed). Basically, less
| risk.
| lbarrow wrote:
| I appreciate this guy taking the time to test this stuff out,
| but... 2.5 minutes per application seems really reasonable and
| short? Even the Post Office application that took 10 minutes
| seems fine. I get that you might have to apply to a lot of
| different jobs, but at that rate in 2-3 hours of focused work,
| you could apply to nearly a hundred different jobs.
|
| The fact that it's that _easy_ to apply belies the tone the
| article takes, which generally bemoans how hard job applications
| are. But they didn 't demonstrate that it's hard at all!
| Moreover, the author even says in the beginning that they didn't
| use any of the products that help you, like LinkedIn Easy Apply.
|
| Anyway seems interesting but this mostly just confirmed my
| perception that applying to jobs is pretty easy. Interviews, on
| the other hand...
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| 2.5 is fine, but 10 feels incredibly long when half the time
| companies don't even both emailing back a rejection. Gives the
| thought "since they probably won't even see it, why don't I
| skip the 10 and apply to 4 2.5s?".
| 1270018080 wrote:
| 2.5 is extremely long if you just filled out the exact same
| information 2.5 minutes ago and 2.5 minutes before that and...
| whatamidoingyo wrote:
| > 2.5 minutes per application seems really reasonable and
| short?
|
| That's what I thought as well. I suppose 2.5 minutes feels
| incredibly long if you're spending your day watching 10 second
| reels on TikTok and Instagram.
| arccy wrote:
| it's long if you don't have the connections to get a job
| through your network and need to sort of spray and pray to
| even get to a recruiter screen
| 1323portloo wrote:
| Something you don't want to learn post-graduation: if you
| don't have the connections to get a job, you simply don't
| have a prayer.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| i've been hired through online applications. current gig,
| actually.
|
| but of all of my jobs, to include bartending and FedGov,
| that's the only one. the rest came through personal
| contacts.
|
| i guess the military applies, but that's not really the
| same thing.
| chambored wrote:
| This doesn't seem to account for finding meaningful
| opportunities, and in my experience, that has been the more
| time consuming aspect of the process.
| cluoma wrote:
| I also don't think 2.5 minutes is unreasonably long or much of
| a barrier. After spending an hour looking for relevant postings
| at companies I'm interested in, another few minutes to actually
| apply is not a big deal.
|
| What is truly annoying though is creating new accounts for each
| company's application portal.
| xormapmap wrote:
| The actual application step might take that long, assuming you
| have all your supporting documents ready. The trouble is you
| often need to adapt your CV to the job & write a cover letter
| at a minimum. Depending how much you care about the job, this
| might include studying the job description carefully, reading
| the company website, and maybe even contacting the company to
| request more information. Then proof-reading and editing
| everything. It probably takes me at least an hour for most
| jobs, even if the actual submission of files only took 1 minute
| in the end.
| hollander wrote:
| When I apply for a job it takes me at least an hour if not
| more. I adopt my resume, write the motivation letter. If I
| spend less then 15 minutes it means I'm doing it as a
| requirement from the social benefits agency, for a job that I
| don't want.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I adopt my resume, write the motivation letter.
|
| Only to find out that the other side didn't read that letter,
| and most didn't read the resume.
|
| I know, because I asked.
| Mystrl wrote:
| Funny story. When I was going the coop workshops in uni
| they invited in some people from microsoft to talk about
| what they look for in a cover letter and they straight up
| said they don't read them.
| polalavik wrote:
| great now time how many hours HR phone screening, hiring manager
| phone screening, take home tests, (multiple) all day onsite
| interviews take if you want to follow through on like 3
| employers.
| kraftman wrote:
| Is how long it takes to submit your generic CV a valuable
| statistic? Is there a benefit for companies to make it easy for
| you to apply to them?
|
| I don't think anyone is sitting around going 'We just have _no_
| good candidates, if only people could apply in 71 seconds instead
| of 160, _then_ we 'd finally see the applicant quality increase'
| Peroni wrote:
| >Is how long it takes to submit your generic CV a valuable
| statistic?
|
| Not at all. If anything, you want people to take their time
| when applying. In almost every A/B test I've ever run, the more
| questions I introduce into the application process, the quality
| of applications increases exponentially, the time to filter
| applications decreases, and the decrease in the total number of
| applications was barely noticeable.
| wierd-eye-loser wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| ambicapter wrote:
| Two and a half minutes to apply to a job doesn't seem like a lot
| of time at all. Do people really think that's too much time?
| antisthenes wrote:
| The answer to that depends entirely on the success rate.
|
| Over 11 years in the workforce, my success rate with applying
| to ATS-like platforms on company websites is 0%. And even just
| getting a rejection is in the neighborhood of 5-10%.
|
| So with those numbers do you still think 2.5 minutes is a lot
| of time? 2.5x500 applications is ~21 hours of applying to jobs.
|
| With recruiters on LinkedIn, my success rate is roughly 80% to
| 1st interview, 60% to second and 20% to getting an offer.
| mkatx wrote:
| I've reached out to recruiters on LinkedIn, but maybe I'm not
| an easy candidate, because they never seem to do much for me.
| Do I need to do something specific or hit up the right
| recruiter?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| You have to keep rotating them. If they do not happen to
| have something that matches their current clients they
| basically dont help you but string you along.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Just for clarity, I have not reached out to any recruiters.
|
| My success rate was entirely for recruiters that reached
| out to me first.
|
| (I also paid $400 for an HR consultant to update my resume
| and LinkedIn profile as a one-time fee, so maybe that
| helped, but I didn't really A/B test it before and after)
| miscaccount wrote:
| you generally apply to several jobs across several companies
| even with referral.
|
| based on my experience its > 5 mins most of the time.
| timmaxw wrote:
| That still doesn't seem like very much time to me. Job
| hunting involves hours and hours of interviews; five minutes
| of paperwork is negligible by comparison, right? Are people
| mass-spamming applications or something?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| If I was getting hours and hours of interviews, an hour of
| paperwork would be trivial.
|
| When 2/3 companies don't even bother sending a rejection
| email, I tend to not bother doing the 20 minute job
| applications.
| kraftman wrote:
| When you see a job and it says '3000 applicants so far' or
| something, this is why
| pizzaknife wrote:
| "Are people mass-spamming applications or something?"
|
| since the dawn of time (1970, jan1)
| tuatoru wrote:
| Well, in 1970 you could only do about 10 a day, because
| you needed to type a cover letter with the hiring
| manager's name in it. Job search (newspaper "help wanted"
| ads), envelope stuffing, trips to the post office and so
| on took time too.
|
| Photocopies were low quality and looked obvious and got
| you into the trash straight away.
|
| So mass, but compared to population not very mass.
|
| The real start date was Eternal September.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| If a person only spends that much time applying, it's likely
| those applications are going in the trash, unless they have
| highly relevant signals. I change my resume for every company I
| apply, which is likely not happening.
| jldugger wrote:
| I assume career page quality is related to how important
| immigrant visas are to staffing, where "unable to find qualified
| local labor" is a criteria. No idea how to quantify that though.
| hcks wrote:
| Probs took less than 17 seconds to be rejected by rentech too lol
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Rentech wouldn't be fulfilling their brand promise if they
| didn't have an SLA to reject 90% of job seekers in less than 17
| milliseconds.
|
| There was that time I was at a conference put on by Sun
| Microsystems in NYC and asked a question about main memory
| databases which got me jumped on by somebody from rentech. If I
| knew to the extent which hell was about to break loose at that
| job I was working at then, I should have applied for a job at
| rentech.
| pestatije wrote:
| cool...now time how long it takes for a signed contract offer
| tamimio wrote:
| Nice write up! If anything, this proves that the job application
| process is a total mess, and of course, when things are chaotic,
| it opens opportunities to data miners, scammers, and the likes.
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