Reminds me of the rise in job application bots. People are applying to thousands of jobs using automated tools. It’s probably one of the inevitable use cases of this technology.
It makes me think. Perhaps the act of applying to jobs will go extinct. Maybe the endgame is that as soon as you join a website like Monster or LinkedIn, you immediately “apply” to every open position, and are simply ranked against every other candidate.
> People are applying to thousands of jobs using automated tools
Employers were already screening thousands of applications using automated tools for years. Candidates are catching up to the automation cat-and-mouse game.
The `Hiring Process` in America is definitely BADLY broken. Maybe worldwide afaik. It's a far too difficult, time-consuming, and painful process for everyone involved.
I have a feeling AI can fix this, although I'd never allow an AI bot to interview me. I just mean other ways of using AI to help the process.
Also people are hired for all kinds of reasons having little to do with their qualifications lots of the time, and often due to demographics (race, color, age, etc), and this is another way maybe AI can help by hiding those aspects of a candidate somehow.
AI and new tools have broken the system. The tools send you email saying things like "X corp is interested in you!" and you send a resume, and you don't hear back. Nothing, not even a rejection.
Eventually you stop believing them, understanding it for the marketing spam that it is. Direct submissions are better, but only slightly. Recruiters are much better, in general, since they have a relationship with a real person at the company and can actually get your resume in front of eyes. But yeah, tools like ziprecruiter, careerboutique, jobot, etc are worse than useless: by lying to you about interest they actively discourage you from looking. There are no good alternatives (I'd love to learn I'm wrong), so you have to keep using those bad tools anyway.
All that's true, and sadly it also often doesn't even matter how good you even are either. I have decades of experience and I still get "evaluated" based on how fast I can do silly brain-teaser IQ-test coding challenges.
I've gotten where any company that wants me to do a coding challenge on my own time is an immediate "no thanks" reply from me. Everyone should refuse that. But so many people are so desperate they allow hiring companies to abuse them in that way. I consider it a kind of abuse of power to demand people do like 4 to 6hrs of nonsensical coding just to buy an opportunity for an actual interview.
That error mode (and it is one) doesn't seem so bad, relatively speaking. Personally I find puzzles interesting and while the value is deeply questionable (I mean, how often do you implement binary search or a novel hashing algo at your job?) I actually rather enjoy jumping through those hoops. Far, far worse is just getting ignored entirely. When rejections start looking good, simply because there is some evidence that they actually saw your application, you know things are bad.
For me I would absolutely never want to work for a company (or boss) who asks people to do a coding challenge before the interview, because that's indicative of a kind of leadership and people I simply don't like. So it's a great filter for me. Once they mention a coding challenge, I end it right then and there, and take them off my list of people wasting my time.
I've found that doing some research and finding the phone number of the hiring person and calling them directly is very powerful.
Companies still have phone numbers you can call?
I haven't had a phone at work for over 5 years. Nobody can "call" me.
maybe the boomer advice of "just go walk in with a resume and a firm handshake" will finally start being worth something