You can hate the player *and* the game.
March 10, 2018 4:03 PM Subscribe
What is an applicant tracking system? There are hundreds of ATS options available. Applicants tend to hate most of them. Employers may slowly be twigging on to the idea that poorly-configured ATSs (and a lot of them are poorly-configured) may be "killing recruiting efforts" and "scaring away top talent."
Some try to convince jobseekers that their complaints stem from "misconceptions and erroneous beliefs," but arguments that both recruiters and applicants benefit from the use of an ATS seldom focus on what, if any, benefits the applicants experience. Even people who use them hate them. Still, use of the systems remains on the rise, even at smaller companies. Candidates, of course, are forced to fight back.
At times, the personality assessment portions of these systems stray into the frankly bizarre. (This particular example hails from WizeHire -- which spams applicants with 'free eBook' offers once it gets hold of their email addresses, in case you were thinking of taking the quiz out of morbid curiosity. Whether that counts as a 'benefit to the applicant' is left as an exercise to the reader.)
[This thread inspired by a side-discussion in a recent FPP.]
Some try to convince jobseekers that their complaints stem from "misconceptions and erroneous beliefs," but arguments that both recruiters and applicants benefit from the use of an ATS seldom focus on what, if any, benefits the applicants experience. Even people who use them hate them. Still, use of the systems remains on the rise, even at smaller companies. Candidates, of course, are forced to fight back.
At times, the personality assessment portions of these systems stray into the frankly bizarre. (This particular example hails from WizeHire -- which spams applicants with 'free eBook' offers once it gets hold of their email addresses, in case you were thinking of taking the quiz out of morbid curiosity. Whether that counts as a 'benefit to the applicant' is left as an exercise to the reader.)
[This thread inspired by a side-discussion in a recent FPP.]
One way video interviews are absolutely not a replacement for phone screens unless you are a robotic phone screener.
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:38 PM on March 10, 2018
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:38 PM on March 10, 2018
Worse is the “intelligent” resume parsing system that reads 10+ years master widget making experience as “hates widget making”! I’m looking at you Hewlett-Packard.
posted by monotreme at 5:03 PM on March 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by monotreme at 5:03 PM on March 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
If I look for a job at your company and you try to make me take a Myers-Briggs test to apply, you can go straight to hell without passing Go or collecting $200.
posted by delfin at 5:06 PM on March 10, 2018 [12 favorites]
posted by delfin at 5:06 PM on March 10, 2018 [12 favorites]
If I look for a job at your company and you try to make me take a Myers-Briggs test to apply, you can go straight to hell without passing Go or collecting $200.
I recently applied for a job where they had you take not one, but two personality tests, indexed them and asked you a bunch more questions about the tests. They didn't even ask me about my work history. And this was for a $35k a year job. I mean, I'll throw down for some stupid hurdles for some coin, but sweet jesus, if you basically just need to make sure I'm not a potato, just interview me.
Job hunting is fucking stupid in the future.
posted by furnace.heart at 5:11 PM on March 10, 2018 [24 favorites]
I recently applied for a job where they had you take not one, but two personality tests, indexed them and asked you a bunch more questions about the tests. They didn't even ask me about my work history. And this was for a $35k a year job. I mean, I'll throw down for some stupid hurdles for some coin, but sweet jesus, if you basically just need to make sure I'm not a potato, just interview me.
Job hunting is fucking stupid in the future.
posted by furnace.heart at 5:11 PM on March 10, 2018 [24 favorites]
A big manila folder full of meaningless data about your applicant pool makes it easier to hire your friends and keep all your favorite unspoken prejudices.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 5:13 PM on March 10, 2018 [59 favorites]
posted by lefty lucky cat at 5:13 PM on March 10, 2018 [59 favorites]
Honestly, if I can't just plug in my name, email, and resume, you're doing it wrong.
posted by mikelieman at 5:14 PM on March 10, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by mikelieman at 5:14 PM on March 10, 2018 [10 favorites]
If I had a dollar for every email I got from a recruiter offering me a Java developer job in Texas or Connecticut I'd be wealthy.
However, I ran my old resume through a service that processes your resume through the type of software that employees and recruiters use to find candidates and it totally made me look like a Java developer with no known address. I rewrote my resume and offers have been getting better but my old resume is still out in the cloud somewhere and I have no way to delete it.
posted by bendy at 5:14 PM on March 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
However, I ran my old resume through a service that processes your resume through the type of software that employees and recruiters use to find candidates and it totally made me look like a Java developer with no known address. I rewrote my resume and offers have been getting better but my old resume is still out in the cloud somewhere and I have no way to delete it.
posted by bendy at 5:14 PM on March 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
My favourite tweak, which I read about this week (I don't think on MeFi, but who knows) is for applicants in the UK to include the word 'Oxford' or 'Cambridge' in their resume, in white-on-white. I suspect this is a generally applicable hack, and will be for a while until the arms race between applicants and the machines clicks forward a notch.
To some extent, this is the automation of the stupid which any system designed to make processing messy humans more efficiently is prone. In the 80s, a true-genius coder friend was spotted by Apple, which desperately wanted him and he desperately wanted to work there. But (if I remember correctly), the particular HR hiring path he had to go down, which would have involved UK->US work visa, had a 'no applicant considered without a degree', which he had not got. Being a true-genius coder, he had gone straight from writing mind-blowingly clever and useful code at school into one of the high-profile Cambridge computer companies of the time, where he painted masterpieces in 68k while writing ballets in lambda calculus as a hobby. Senior Apple bod saw this and correctly made him a splendid offer, supercoder correctly saw Cupertino as the place to be - but HR said no degree, no job, and refused even to start the process. Nothing could shift them.
The trouble now is that these systems hard-code the stupid and industrialise it; what was a special case becomes the accepted norm. To some extent this will self-correct over time, but it will be a very long time and many companies and good applicants will suffer. Mediocrity embeds itself ever deeper.
(And I owe Halation a drink. Damn.)
posted by Devonian at 5:53 PM on March 10, 2018 [19 favorites]
To some extent, this is the automation of the stupid which any system designed to make processing messy humans more efficiently is prone. In the 80s, a true-genius coder friend was spotted by Apple, which desperately wanted him and he desperately wanted to work there. But (if I remember correctly), the particular HR hiring path he had to go down, which would have involved UK->US work visa, had a 'no applicant considered without a degree', which he had not got. Being a true-genius coder, he had gone straight from writing mind-blowingly clever and useful code at school into one of the high-profile Cambridge computer companies of the time, where he painted masterpieces in 68k while writing ballets in lambda calculus as a hobby. Senior Apple bod saw this and correctly made him a splendid offer, supercoder correctly saw Cupertino as the place to be - but HR said no degree, no job, and refused even to start the process. Nothing could shift them.
The trouble now is that these systems hard-code the stupid and industrialise it; what was a special case becomes the accepted norm. To some extent this will self-correct over time, but it will be a very long time and many companies and good applicants will suffer. Mediocrity embeds itself ever deeper.
(And I owe Halation a drink. Damn.)
posted by Devonian at 5:53 PM on March 10, 2018 [19 favorites]
It's funny how the $35kish per year jobs (and also the Target and Walmart jobs of the world) are the ones with the most Orwellian stupid personality tests. They are so easily gamed too. Just show enough task-orientednesss and obedience to authority and you're doing pretty well.
It's time to end the whole "upload resume and also manually enter all the info" too. There should be some standardized template liked LinkedIn but open, where you just upload your machine-readable format to the hirer and the work is done.
posted by hexaflexagon at 5:57 PM on March 10, 2018 [15 favorites]
It's time to end the whole "upload resume and also manually enter all the info" too. There should be some standardized template liked LinkedIn but open, where you just upload your machine-readable format to the hirer and the work is done.
posted by hexaflexagon at 5:57 PM on March 10, 2018 [15 favorites]
There should be some standardized template liked LinkedIn but open, where you just upload your machine-readable format to the hirer and the work is done.
For the past almost 15 years, my resume is written in XML and I use xlst to produce pdf, txt, and html versions using the schema from http://xmlresume.sourceforge.net/
Theoretical usefulness: 100%
Actual usefulness: 0%
posted by mikelieman at 6:04 PM on March 10, 2018 [13 favorites]
For the past almost 15 years, my resume is written in XML and I use xlst to produce pdf, txt, and html versions using the schema from http://xmlresume.sourceforge.net/
Theoretical usefulness: 100%
Actual usefulness: 0%
posted by mikelieman at 6:04 PM on March 10, 2018 [13 favorites]
I once had a job application that wanted me to do one of those personality tests, which also included potentially ADA-noncompliant questions like "I never get depressed". The results they gave me were so wrong that I actually emailed the company (a small non-profit) telling them how wrong it was. I got a couple of interviews spaced months apart, but then never heard from them again.
I am not a fan of video interviews (and hell that entire SparkHire article is alarming). Given multiple studies about ethnic names being disadvantaged in the job process, I don't want to give people an immediate reason to reject me even if they won't consciously acknowledge it. As it is, I initialise my last name, and have been thinking long and hard about a White-sounding last name just to get by.
posted by divabat at 6:05 PM on March 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
I am not a fan of video interviews (and hell that entire SparkHire article is alarming). Given multiple studies about ethnic names being disadvantaged in the job process, I don't want to give people an immediate reason to reject me even if they won't consciously acknowledge it. As it is, I initialise my last name, and have been thinking long and hard about a White-sounding last name just to get by.
posted by divabat at 6:05 PM on March 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
also massive pet peeve: employers that post job ads on LinkedIn and enable the Quick Apply button but in the job ad REQUIRE YOU TO SEND A REGULAR APPLICATION BY EMAIL. Which, in Australia, involves not just a cover letter and resume but also a selection criteria document where you have to write a paragraph for every requirement, including oddball ones like "has a sense of humour". WHY ENABLE QUICK APPLY IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO USE IT
posted by divabat at 6:06 PM on March 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by divabat at 6:06 PM on March 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
I don't think anyone actually wants to hire "the best and the brightest." They want the cheapest and the most disposable.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:18 PM on March 10, 2018 [23 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:18 PM on March 10, 2018 [23 favorites]
Eh, these are all the prices you must pay for not being a disruptive go-getting CEO when you were 18.
What, you thought there wouldn't be consequences for your failure to engage meaningfully with the global idea market?
posted by aramaic at 6:18 PM on March 10, 2018 [9 favorites]
What, you thought there wouldn't be consequences for your failure to engage meaningfully with the global idea market?
posted by aramaic at 6:18 PM on March 10, 2018 [9 favorites]
→ … applicants in the UK to include the word 'Oxford' or 'Cambridge' in their resume, in white-on-white
While very lightly employed a couple of years back, I went to one of those “Get a Job!” charities and did their whole course of seminars. They were mostly okay (apart from a faint whiff of something off, like a hidden cult/religion link that I could never quite fathom), but they recommended copypasta the whole damn job ad in 3 pt white-on-white on the last page of your resume. We had the free run of a couple of demo ATSs and this trick gave you a job match in the high 90%s every time.
posted by scruss at 6:26 PM on March 10, 2018 [20 favorites]
While very lightly employed a couple of years back, I went to one of those “Get a Job!” charities and did their whole course of seminars. They were mostly okay (apart from a faint whiff of something off, like a hidden cult/religion link that I could never quite fathom), but they recommended copypasta the whole damn job ad in 3 pt white-on-white on the last page of your resume. We had the free run of a couple of demo ATSs and this trick gave you a job match in the high 90%s every time.
posted by scruss at 6:26 PM on March 10, 2018 [20 favorites]
Ordinarily I'd think this is irrelevent to me because I've got a freelance career going, but today I was asked to fill out a recommendation for a former colleague using one of these systems. First, I was told, very apologetically by the applicant, that once she did her application, she had only 24 hours to have her recommenders login to provide information. That seems...awfully restrictive. But also as soon as I'd finished the recommendation, I got a spammy email asking *me* if I wanted to apply for a job via the system. Because I'd...filled out a recommendation form? What total bunk. I hate that they have my email address now.
posted by BlahLaLa at 6:33 PM on March 10, 2018
posted by BlahLaLa at 6:33 PM on March 10, 2018
the particular HR hiring path he had to go down, which would have involved UK->US work visa, had a 'no applicant considered without a degree', which he had not got.
That's probably not HR, but government immigration rules. People see lots of immigrants and think it must be easy, but having been through the process (though not with the US) I can assure you it is not. It makes filing taxes look easy.
If the US requirements are comparable to other countries, the process probably includes showing financial details including income and savings, work history over however many years, residence history over however many years, every single border crossing over however many years (yes really*). If the immigration route you're applying for requires a degree and don't have one, then congratulations! There's no point in even bothering with all of that other shit because you're already disqualified.
* Pro tip: If you have successfully obtained a visa, keep all of your airline boarding passes as "souvenirs". It'll help when you need to fill out the forms later. And then the other forms a few years after that. And then the other ones if you are using one of the few routes that can lead to citizenship.
** Also, have some savings because they charge through the nose for this stuff.
*** And put any travel plans on hold because they may keep your passport for months while they process your application.
posted by swr at 7:03 PM on March 10, 2018
That's probably not HR, but government immigration rules. People see lots of immigrants and think it must be easy, but having been through the process (though not with the US) I can assure you it is not. It makes filing taxes look easy.
If the US requirements are comparable to other countries, the process probably includes showing financial details including income and savings, work history over however many years, residence history over however many years, every single border crossing over however many years (yes really*). If the immigration route you're applying for requires a degree and don't have one, then congratulations! There's no point in even bothering with all of that other shit because you're already disqualified.
* Pro tip: If you have successfully obtained a visa, keep all of your airline boarding passes as "souvenirs". It'll help when you need to fill out the forms later. And then the other forms a few years after that. And then the other ones if you are using one of the few routes that can lead to citizenship.
** Also, have some savings because they charge through the nose for this stuff.
*** And put any travel plans on hold because they may keep your passport for months while they process your application.
posted by swr at 7:03 PM on March 10, 2018
I once had a job application that wanted me to do one of those personality tests, which also included potentially ADA-noncompliant questions like "I never get depressed".
In my current job search I'm coming across a shit ton of 'voluntary disclosure of disability' because of an apparent push for companies to compliant to 'section 503' employ some 7% disabled folks. It's bananas, and I've declined so far to answer so far, but I don't know if that in of itself is a red flag to employers. I mean, I qualify technically for some mental health disability diagnoses based on their criteria, but fuck right off am I going to tell them that. It is seriously fucking bananas, because I don't know if the 'voluntary' is just legalease, or they're actually expecting me to fill it out honestly. There's always the "Yes: enlighten us to your disability [mrburns_excelllllent.gif]" "No, you are fully abled" and the "You've declined to answer, huh?" buttons.
Just GATTACA us already and let me be a janitor.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:22 PM on March 10, 2018 [8 favorites]
In my current job search I'm coming across a shit ton of 'voluntary disclosure of disability' because of an apparent push for companies to compliant to 'section 503' employ some 7% disabled folks. It's bananas, and I've declined so far to answer so far, but I don't know if that in of itself is a red flag to employers. I mean, I qualify technically for some mental health disability diagnoses based on their criteria, but fuck right off am I going to tell them that. It is seriously fucking bananas, because I don't know if the 'voluntary' is just legalease, or they're actually expecting me to fill it out honestly. There's always the "Yes: enlighten us to your disability [mrburns_excelllllent.gif]" "No, you are fully abled" and the "You've declined to answer, huh?" buttons.
Just GATTACA us already and let me be a janitor.
posted by furnace.heart at 7:22 PM on March 10, 2018 [8 favorites]
I am very thankful I’ve never had to deal with this stuff. Worst so far was my current employer made me do a background check with some rando third party. The last three startups I worked for? Out of business. Because that’s what startups do. Luckily I had all my W2s going back to the 90s...
posted by jeffamaphone at 7:41 PM on March 10, 2018
posted by jeffamaphone at 7:41 PM on March 10, 2018
As someone who's been searching for a job for the better part of a year, I feel like I've at least been through enough of them that I can say I've quite possibly found the worst of these things out there. I'd rather take a thousand personality tests than endure it again, and I've already skipped applying for another decent job at that company because the first experience was so remarkably unpleasant.
Not only did it make me re-enter my resume data in the awkward not-quite-right-for-my-industry form these things are famous for, it insisted on having me pick skills from a dreadful list pulled from some database somewhere. That wouldn't be too bad in theory, but there were thousands of skills from every conceivable industry in the list, no way to search, and each skill was arranged in no predictable order or grouping—baking and Microsoft Word were next to each other, as I recall.
Worse, most skills were duplicated at least once at different points in the list, and each had a code that was a string of unintelligible gibberish before it that would follow and abandon patterns as if there had once been twelve tables-worth of this nonsense that someone had just haphazardly Frankensteined together one day. Maybe I think I'm at an expert level at "RC_SKILL:10485 -- Microsoft Word", but how do I choose between that and "SKL_384748562_1737_3 -- MICROSOFT WORD"? Those were but two of the eleven or so generic Microsoft Word skills peppered throughout.
The capper was that each skill had to be selected in its own individual pop-up window from a non-standard drop-down menu, and were re-populated each time the menu was opened. This meant each skill entry took at least a solid five or so minutes to load, locate, and save back into the main application. It was agonizing.
I invested a few hours on it and finished a pretty respectable (but ultimately flawed) attempt at an skill list—of course the holes in this monumental attempt at cataloging all human ability in one lazy-loaded menu were specific to my industry— but never heard back from the company. I can only wonder how there were ever able to find someone to endure the Sisyphean task of figuring out how to complete the form to their satisfaction, if they were at all.
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'm better off having not gotten it. That thing could've eventually been mine to support.
posted by caliche at 7:48 PM on March 10, 2018 [15 favorites]
Not only did it make me re-enter my resume data in the awkward not-quite-right-for-my-industry form these things are famous for, it insisted on having me pick skills from a dreadful list pulled from some database somewhere. That wouldn't be too bad in theory, but there were thousands of skills from every conceivable industry in the list, no way to search, and each skill was arranged in no predictable order or grouping—baking and Microsoft Word were next to each other, as I recall.
Worse, most skills were duplicated at least once at different points in the list, and each had a code that was a string of unintelligible gibberish before it that would follow and abandon patterns as if there had once been twelve tables-worth of this nonsense that someone had just haphazardly Frankensteined together one day. Maybe I think I'm at an expert level at "RC_SKILL:10485 -- Microsoft Word", but how do I choose between that and "SKL_384748562_1737_3 -- MICROSOFT WORD"? Those were but two of the eleven or so generic Microsoft Word skills peppered throughout.
The capper was that each skill had to be selected in its own individual pop-up window from a non-standard drop-down menu, and were re-populated each time the menu was opened. This meant each skill entry took at least a solid five or so minutes to load, locate, and save back into the main application. It was agonizing.
I invested a few hours on it and finished a pretty respectable (but ultimately flawed) attempt at an skill list—of course the holes in this monumental attempt at cataloging all human ability in one lazy-loaded menu were specific to my industry— but never heard back from the company. I can only wonder how there were ever able to find someone to endure the Sisyphean task of figuring out how to complete the form to their satisfaction, if they were at all.
Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I'm better off having not gotten it. That thing could've eventually been mine to support.
posted by caliche at 7:48 PM on March 10, 2018 [15 favorites]
Finding a husband was easier and faster than job hunting. It's just absolutely soul sucking being reduced to an ID number and repeatedly rejected for inscrutable reasons. It makes me wish I knew how to hunt and gather so I could go live in the mountains away from all this.
posted by AFABulous at 7:59 PM on March 10, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by AFABulous at 7:59 PM on March 10, 2018 [7 favorites]
The company I work for has been through two of these in the past 5.5 years, and I’ve been a hiring manager there for about as long. One of them claimed to do some scoring, but it was so wrong the first time I ran a req with it that I learned to ignore the score and just reviewed resumes by hand. Given I never got over 150 applicants for my roles, it wasn’t so bad. Once you address the unconscious bias that tells you under-qualified men are “probably a smart guy who’ll figure it out,” while scrupulously qualified women “probably want something more senior and won’t be happy,” you can throw out a lot of bad resumes and end up thrilled with the diverse, super qualified candidate selection, making you wonder why anyone thought you needed a scoring system.
posted by mph at 8:18 PM on March 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by mph at 8:18 PM on March 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
During a desperate bout of unemployment in 2003 San Francisco I applied for a job with the TSA. There were two computerized tests they gave us, one was an English test and the other was a “personality” test. The personality test included questions like “is it ever OK to steal from an employer?” worded in multiple ways. There were about 300 questions on the test.
When I didn’t get the job they told me it was because I failed one of the tests but they couldn’t tell me which test I failed until six months later. I never bothered to follow up. Since I assume that I failed the personality screen it just proves the fact that I don’t have the personality to work for the TSA.
posted by bendy at 9:19 PM on March 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
When I didn’t get the job they told me it was because I failed one of the tests but they couldn’t tell me which test I failed until six months later. I never bothered to follow up. Since I assume that I failed the personality screen it just proves the fact that I don’t have the personality to work for the TSA.
posted by bendy at 9:19 PM on March 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
Well, thank god for that.
posted by AFABulous at 9:39 PM on March 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by AFABulous at 9:39 PM on March 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
Finding a husband was easier and faster than job hunting.
OH GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWD IF THAT'S TRUE I'LL NEVER FIND EITHER.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:44 PM on March 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
OH GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWD IF THAT'S TRUE I'LL NEVER FIND EITHER.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:44 PM on March 10, 2018 [1 favorite]
You get what you pay for with an ATS. Unfortunately a lot of them are procured/configured by some unholy combination of a technophobic HR person and the accountant/part-time IT manager. The main thing an ATS is really good for is predicting how shitty the HR will be at a company you're applying to.
posted by benzenedream at 10:43 PM on March 10, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 10:43 PM on March 10, 2018 [6 favorites]
Senior Apple bod saw this and correctly made him a splendid offer, supercoder correctly saw Cupertino as the place to be - but HR said no degree, no job, and refused even to start the process.
It's possible we know the same person. The issue isn't HR (if senior people at Apple want you, HR can go fuck themselves). The issue is the work visa. The guy I knew at Apple from the UK without a degree got in on an O-1 visa, which is not a trivial thing to get.
posted by ryanrs at 1:06 AM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's possible we know the same person. The issue isn't HR (if senior people at Apple want you, HR can go fuck themselves). The issue is the work visa. The guy I knew at Apple from the UK without a degree got in on an O-1 visa, which is not a trivial thing to get.
posted by ryanrs at 1:06 AM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
(and then once he got bored at Apple, he started a company so he could sponsor his own greencard)
posted by ryanrs at 1:19 AM on March 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 1:19 AM on March 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
I recently ended an interview process when I was asked to fill out an application duplicating the info on my resume AND agree to a background check that included my credit history, which is obviously none of their business.
Something in my industry I’ve grown to hate is the technical test. Basically it means writing code with one or more people observing you as you work. I feel like as soon as I agree to work for free I’ve devalued myself, and nobody writes code with critical observers watching. I’ve met some junior programmers who memorized the right sorting algorithms but can’t tell the webpage they produced looks nothing like the design comp. Technical tests are why.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:08 AM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Something in my industry I’ve grown to hate is the technical test. Basically it means writing code with one or more people observing you as you work. I feel like as soon as I agree to work for free I’ve devalued myself, and nobody writes code with critical observers watching. I’ve met some junior programmers who memorized the right sorting algorithms but can’t tell the webpage they produced looks nothing like the design comp. Technical tests are why.
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:08 AM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Stuff like this is yet another illustration that quality of results matter not, so long as a penny can be saved, or a position eliminated.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:27 AM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 7:27 AM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Well, by the time he and I lost contact wth each other, the Apple job had gone away and I was told that the 'HR can fuck itself' route had not worked, rather than it being a severe visa problem. But perhaps I misremember, and perhaps things were not as I understood them.
For a truly Orwellian view on how automated job filtering may go, check out the Chinese Social Credit Score project. You can unpack the manifold dystopias as well as I can.
posted by Devonian at 7:27 AM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
For a truly Orwellian view on how automated job filtering may go, check out the Chinese Social Credit Score project. You can unpack the manifold dystopias as well as I can.
posted by Devonian at 7:27 AM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
we must regulate or destroy capitalism before it does the same to us
posted by entropicamericana at 8:16 AM on March 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by entropicamericana at 8:16 AM on March 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
So, I spent the latter half of 2017 interacting with seemingly every recruiting system made to man. I ended up making a sort of Application Tracking System myself in Google docs. A combination of a master Sheet, and application Doc per application tracking the cover letter. This setup lets me easily cater applications to the job description, and track stuff like who I contacted when, which is useful when recruiters fall off the face of the earth.
The data is a bit messy, as not every company follows the same flow, and there's judgment calls about things like how to account for apps in flight when an offer is accepted, apps made chiefly to hit UI requirements etc. But for perspective, in five months:
42 applications
25 callbacks
28 phone screens (some companies do 2)
9 onsites
2 offers
As for the other side, while one article here suggests theres hundreds of ATS, there seems to be like 3 recruiting systems: Taleo, Greenhouse, and Jobvite. IIRC, Greenhouse was the only one that I recall actually importing some data from my resume, despite being a shallow clone of a Google Doc template. And I guess LinkedIn, which essentially rents your data out to employers. And you still call it a win if it means not typing in that bullshit again in fractally different formats.
Next, a few notes about the tech recruiting game.
1. The top companies represent probably 50 percent of the hiring done, so ignore them at your peril. They also tend to pay better, both at a base salary level, and at the 'your equity grants are actually worth something' level. Levels.fyi is fairly informative on that count.
2. Sites like leetcode and firecode exist to help you get practice at white boarding. The number of people complaining about whiteboard interviews boggles me; it's akin to a cellist complaining about having to audition, or an academic instructor complaining about having to give a mock lecture. Work samples are a strong indicator of skill, and if your company's tests are easily gamed by having remembered CS 101, this is an easy fix. That said, I've encountered some pretty dumb ones like 'write a script to benchmark our API' that seem to test more the candidates familiarity with the company API and your language's timing libs.
3. Reputation and referrals matter. In the hiring funnel I described above, try as I might, both offers came from teams where at least one person used to work with my former employer. Some of this is natural -- a candidate hired away from X to work for Y suggests a promotion path -- but one of them was a former direct report reaching out asking me to apply when they discovered I was available.
4. Location matters. Show me a hiring manager complaining about how hard it is to find candidates, and I'll show you a recruiter who only seeks local candidates. I get way more direct contacts now that my location is Silicon Valley. It's not quite 'Mayor of Popcornopolis' level, but still far better than the university town where the HP research office we were lucky to have in the first place was continually laying off engineers.
posted by pwnguin at 1:30 PM on March 11, 2018 [5 favorites]
The data is a bit messy, as not every company follows the same flow, and there's judgment calls about things like how to account for apps in flight when an offer is accepted, apps made chiefly to hit UI requirements etc. But for perspective, in five months:
42 applications
25 callbacks
28 phone screens (some companies do 2)
9 onsites
2 offers
As for the other side, while one article here suggests theres hundreds of ATS, there seems to be like 3 recruiting systems: Taleo, Greenhouse, and Jobvite. IIRC, Greenhouse was the only one that I recall actually importing some data from my resume, despite being a shallow clone of a Google Doc template. And I guess LinkedIn, which essentially rents your data out to employers. And you still call it a win if it means not typing in that bullshit again in fractally different formats.
Next, a few notes about the tech recruiting game.
1. The top companies represent probably 50 percent of the hiring done, so ignore them at your peril. They also tend to pay better, both at a base salary level, and at the 'your equity grants are actually worth something' level. Levels.fyi is fairly informative on that count.
2. Sites like leetcode and firecode exist to help you get practice at white boarding. The number of people complaining about whiteboard interviews boggles me; it's akin to a cellist complaining about having to audition, or an academic instructor complaining about having to give a mock lecture. Work samples are a strong indicator of skill, and if your company's tests are easily gamed by having remembered CS 101, this is an easy fix. That said, I've encountered some pretty dumb ones like 'write a script to benchmark our API' that seem to test more the candidates familiarity with the company API and your language's timing libs.
3. Reputation and referrals matter. In the hiring funnel I described above, try as I might, both offers came from teams where at least one person used to work with my former employer. Some of this is natural -- a candidate hired away from X to work for Y suggests a promotion path -- but one of them was a former direct report reaching out asking me to apply when they discovered I was available.
4. Location matters. Show me a hiring manager complaining about how hard it is to find candidates, and I'll show you a recruiter who only seeks local candidates. I get way more direct contacts now that my location is Silicon Valley. It's not quite 'Mayor of Popcornopolis' level, but still far better than the university town where the HP research office we were lucky to have in the first place was continually laying off engineers.
posted by pwnguin at 1:30 PM on March 11, 2018 [5 favorites]
It's funny how the $35kish per year jobs (and also the Target and Walmart jobs of the world) are the ones with the most Orwellian stupid personality tests.
When I was looking for work in 2008, nearly every single job I applied to required that you fill out multiple MBTI type tests. I mean, retail jobs, grocery stores, movie theaters, you name it. I was desperate for money, and NO ONE would even get back to me because of something I was doing wrong when I answered those tests.
The one exception was Whole Foods, who did interview me (the lower-level managers all loved me, but the general manager just stared past me the whole time at the very pretty woman he had just interviewed — one of the underlings called me a few days later to let me know I hadn’t gotten the job, but encouraged me to “keep applying to Whole Foods”).
Anyway, I ran out of money and had to leave behind my life in that city (friends, a lover, etc) to move back in with my mother. Depending on my mood, it was either because I was too dumb to lie effectively on their personality tests, or because the capitalist future is a soul-destroying nightmare.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:22 PM on March 11, 2018
When I was looking for work in 2008, nearly every single job I applied to required that you fill out multiple MBTI type tests. I mean, retail jobs, grocery stores, movie theaters, you name it. I was desperate for money, and NO ONE would even get back to me because of something I was doing wrong when I answered those tests.
The one exception was Whole Foods, who did interview me (the lower-level managers all loved me, but the general manager just stared past me the whole time at the very pretty woman he had just interviewed — one of the underlings called me a few days later to let me know I hadn’t gotten the job, but encouraged me to “keep applying to Whole Foods”).
Anyway, I ran out of money and had to leave behind my life in that city (friends, a lover, etc) to move back in with my mother. Depending on my mood, it was either because I was too dumb to lie effectively on their personality tests, or because the capitalist future is a soul-destroying nightmare.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:22 PM on March 11, 2018
I wrote one of these in PHP in 2003 and was explicitly told by the recruiter that it was for that it was all about agents being able to bulk reject people quickly. Didn't even have the abiliy to mark applicants as successful for a year or two.
posted by xiw at 4:58 PM on March 11, 2018
posted by xiw at 4:58 PM on March 11, 2018
One of my happier skills, it turns out, is being able to Good Soldier Švejk my way through company attempts to introduce Myers-Briggs and the like, to the point that they're dropped.
It can be done. The stars have to align, but they aligned more than once for me. The secret, I think, is that almost nobody actually wants them or believes in them, and this pretty much goes all the way up, but that nobody thinks they can actually object. Taking an enthusiastic interest and circulating your research findings in the right way is... oddly productive.
If your company already has them, then bide your time - they will be replaced one day as fashion dictates, and the new stupid will be vulnerable when it first tries to hatch out of its egg.
Be the saboteur you want to see in your life, I guess.
posted by Devonian at 6:04 PM on March 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
It can be done. The stars have to align, but they aligned more than once for me. The secret, I think, is that almost nobody actually wants them or believes in them, and this pretty much goes all the way up, but that nobody thinks they can actually object. Taking an enthusiastic interest and circulating your research findings in the right way is... oddly productive.
If your company already has them, then bide your time - they will be replaced one day as fashion dictates, and the new stupid will be vulnerable when it first tries to hatch out of its egg.
Be the saboteur you want to see in your life, I guess.
posted by Devonian at 6:04 PM on March 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm simultaneously jaw dropping and forehead slapping at the suggestions to post the contents of the ad invisibly into one's CV or whatever. The bleak part of me imagines that it would ultimately lead to completely spurious hacking charges further down the line though.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:27 PM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 7:27 PM on March 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Invisible text is JV level resume hacking. Try inserting tracking pixels into your PDF resume, or if you're feeling cheeky, Google Analytics.
posted by pwnguin at 8:50 PM on March 11, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by pwnguin at 8:50 PM on March 11, 2018 [3 favorites]
When I was looking for a new librarian job (something I eventually gave up on because the job search was so dispiriting), I ran into a million local government job applications. A million badly-coded local government job applications.
Job applications that, for instance, require you to input the zip code and state where you went to college. (I went to college in Quebec, and made an unsuccessful attempt to put in the postal code and province abbreviation for my college.)
There was also the time I had to email a library to tell them that their ATS wasn't allowing new people to register, so you literally couldn't apply for a job unless you already had an account registered. I went to all that effort to apply, they could at least have bothered to interview me, but maybe they found some YA librarian who knew Drupal and Mandarin who was already registered in the system...
posted by Jeanne at 10:32 PM on March 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
Job applications that, for instance, require you to input the zip code and state where you went to college. (I went to college in Quebec, and made an unsuccessful attempt to put in the postal code and province abbreviation for my college.)
There was also the time I had to email a library to tell them that their ATS wasn't allowing new people to register, so you literally couldn't apply for a job unless you already had an account registered. I went to all that effort to apply, they could at least have bothered to interview me, but maybe they found some YA librarian who knew Drupal and Mandarin who was already registered in the system...
posted by Jeanne at 10:32 PM on March 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
The number of people complaining about whiteboard interviews boggles me; it's akin to a cellist complaining about having to audition, or an academic instructor complaining about having to give a mock lecture.
The cellist and the lecturer are at least being asked to do something in line with the jobs they're trying out for--i.e., performing or teaching in front of an audience. I've been doing software development for quite a while now (and general IT even longer than that), and not once in any of my jobs have I been asked to create or fix something while someone stood over my shoulder and watched me the entire time.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I suspect I'm not the only one who finds the experience of standing in front of several people who hold your career in their hands and who expect you to produce something brilliant right now and stop wasting their time, damn it to be more than a little disruptive to their whole process.
I'll happily do (and have done) some kind of short take-away task representative of the work done in the prospective job...something that lets me sit and think about the problem and all its angles without people staring at me. I've also been completely fine with doing a short presentation on something I've done in a previous position that highlights my skills.
Whiteboarding--and its lesser bastard cousin, timed online coding tests--can die in the hottest of fires, though.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:59 AM on March 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
The cellist and the lecturer are at least being asked to do something in line with the jobs they're trying out for--i.e., performing or teaching in front of an audience. I've been doing software development for quite a while now (and general IT even longer than that), and not once in any of my jobs have I been asked to create or fix something while someone stood over my shoulder and watched me the entire time.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I suspect I'm not the only one who finds the experience of standing in front of several people who hold your career in their hands and who expect you to produce something brilliant right now and stop wasting their time, damn it to be more than a little disruptive to their whole process.
I'll happily do (and have done) some kind of short take-away task representative of the work done in the prospective job...something that lets me sit and think about the problem and all its angles without people staring at me. I've also been completely fine with doing a short presentation on something I've done in a previous position that highlights my skills.
Whiteboarding--and its lesser bastard cousin, timed online coding tests--can die in the hottest of fires, though.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:59 AM on March 12, 2018 [4 favorites]
Whiteboarding--and its lesser bastard cousin, timed online coding tests--can die in the hottest of fires, though.
For this quiz, I'm supposed to write Java without an IDE? Are you insane?
posted by mikelieman at 4:15 AM on March 12, 2018 [5 favorites]
For this quiz, I'm supposed to write Java without an IDE? Are you insane?
posted by mikelieman at 4:15 AM on March 12, 2018 [5 favorites]
Why would you whiteboard Java in the first place? Best case scenario, you're now writing more Java for a living. Or worst case, now that I think about it.
posted by pwnguin at 10:45 PM on March 25, 2018
posted by pwnguin at 10:45 PM on March 25, 2018
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