User Power
Value/Post Ratio
81%
- Dec 28, 2021
- 27
- 22
The AI that scans resumes to see if a candidate is good enough to move forward all sucks a lot and is prone to missing what would be great candidates for ones that are not so great. This happens because the software doesn't make the best determinations of ones qualifications. As well as trying to fit everyone into a bucket so to speak.
For example a company might be looking for someone who can manage servers and work towards automating them, they usually use python and/or ansible for the work. The automating management of these systems usually involves working with a lot of not very well documented APIs that are really cumbersome to work with. Now if someone applies for this job and listed they have say 10 years of python but been doing something like web development. They are probably not going to do well in the job unless they are comfortable learning this stuff as they go. The other person though that maybe has 6 months python but years of java experience doing this exact work and is wanting to shift into python. They will have a much higher chance of being passed over by the AI. So what to do then, well in a lot of cases the smarter people will make sure that their resume hits every requirement of a job description. Even if it means lying or stretching the truth a *lot*.
Then you start getting into other aspects of the process. For instance go look at the problem that the interview guys are solving. Their idea of making a candidate better is to focus the candidate on the job and do tons of research about a company. Also to build a branding around the person themselves and the field that they are in. Like blogging and social media that revolves around the field that the person wants to or is working in. Essentially working a second job most of the time to stay relevant. The deep investigation on a company and being able to talk about it works really well in practice and maybe that highlights a few other deeper issues.
The entire interview process is a huge clown show and circus. Companies that require all day interviews, including lunch, is a huge amount of time to vette someone. They usually are with multiple people in the company in like pairs and from the company side they are looking at the person through a microscope essentially. There was another job that wanted a full myers briggs assessment as part of the interview, as in they made you take the test while interviewing. Or some other waste everyones time back and forth just because a company feels like they are doing a candidate a favor by interviewing them.
The coding during interviews is seriously lame most of the time. It rarely resembles the type of coding a person is going to be doing on the job. Lot of times it is to solve this "simple" puzzle that any programmer should be able to do off the cuff when they haven't been doing that type of programming. There are entire websites dedicated to this as well, some even to gamify the code testing. The problem is that unless someone spends a serious amount of time on these things they really don't show if that person is going to be good within the job. One of the better interview systems I seen was where the company setup a machine that was broken and had the candidate fix it.
The above is just my personal experience with the process. There was a point where I went on like 30-40 different interviews at one point looking for a better job at the time. Granted on reddit there is the recruitinghell sub, it is reddit so it probably isn't much more representative than quora. I do think there are some pain points that a lot of people are experiencing as part of the process that could be made better. There is the other side of this too where the candidates could be more interested in the company and show a little bit of effort themselves, like the interview guys point out. I was at one company where a candidate made the interviewers sit around as he pulled out a portable dvd player with a dvd of himself and made them watch it. There has been other equally cringey things that people do.
The ultimate of this where a lot of people fail to understand on both sides. The company is trying to find someone that can reasonably do the job that they need. Without being a total nutcase. While a candidate is looking for a company that isn't totally crazy as well. Or maybe crazy that matches their own personality.
For example a company might be looking for someone who can manage servers and work towards automating them, they usually use python and/or ansible for the work. The automating management of these systems usually involves working with a lot of not very well documented APIs that are really cumbersome to work with. Now if someone applies for this job and listed they have say 10 years of python but been doing something like web development. They are probably not going to do well in the job unless they are comfortable learning this stuff as they go. The other person though that maybe has 6 months python but years of java experience doing this exact work and is wanting to shift into python. They will have a much higher chance of being passed over by the AI. So what to do then, well in a lot of cases the smarter people will make sure that their resume hits every requirement of a job description. Even if it means lying or stretching the truth a *lot*.
Then you start getting into other aspects of the process. For instance go look at the problem that the interview guys are solving. Their idea of making a candidate better is to focus the candidate on the job and do tons of research about a company. Also to build a branding around the person themselves and the field that they are in. Like blogging and social media that revolves around the field that the person wants to or is working in. Essentially working a second job most of the time to stay relevant. The deep investigation on a company and being able to talk about it works really well in practice and maybe that highlights a few other deeper issues.
The entire interview process is a huge clown show and circus. Companies that require all day interviews, including lunch, is a huge amount of time to vette someone. They usually are with multiple people in the company in like pairs and from the company side they are looking at the person through a microscope essentially. There was another job that wanted a full myers briggs assessment as part of the interview, as in they made you take the test while interviewing. Or some other waste everyones time back and forth just because a company feels like they are doing a candidate a favor by interviewing them.
The coding during interviews is seriously lame most of the time. It rarely resembles the type of coding a person is going to be doing on the job. Lot of times it is to solve this "simple" puzzle that any programmer should be able to do off the cuff when they haven't been doing that type of programming. There are entire websites dedicated to this as well, some even to gamify the code testing. The problem is that unless someone spends a serious amount of time on these things they really don't show if that person is going to be good within the job. One of the better interview systems I seen was where the company setup a machine that was broken and had the candidate fix it.
The above is just my personal experience with the process. There was a point where I went on like 30-40 different interviews at one point looking for a better job at the time. Granted on reddit there is the recruitinghell sub, it is reddit so it probably isn't much more representative than quora. I do think there are some pain points that a lot of people are experiencing as part of the process that could be made better. There is the other side of this too where the candidates could be more interested in the company and show a little bit of effort themselves, like the interview guys point out. I was at one company where a candidate made the interviewers sit around as he pulled out a portable dvd player with a dvd of himself and made them watch it. There has been other equally cringey things that people do.
The ultimate of this where a lot of people fail to understand on both sides. The company is trying to find someone that can reasonably do the job that they need. Without being a total nutcase. While a candidate is looking for a company that isn't totally crazy as well. Or maybe crazy that matches their own personality.