[mdip]

There were several good points in the post and one really bad one ("traps" which has been pointed out a few times).

There are a few issues with "traps" that should be avoided (any kind, not just the one mentioned): (1) Taking a failure to pay attention to a minor detail in a job application and assuming that applies more broadly is a nice idea, but not practical. People make mistakes, people overlook things and they prioritize how much they'll pay attention based on the task, not desire -- i.e. if I'm applying for 30 jobs, 2 of which I'm really excited about, I'll spend more time on the two I'm excited about but I'm probably going to spend as much time reading the description and instructions as I did for the previous 30 because the task is repetitive and similar. (2) It's likely to turn people off -- when I see very specific, very odd instructions in a job application, it's a signal that the company is doing things ... oddly. Are all of their internal processes this rigid? Especially for remote hiring, where your staff usually places a high value on flexibility, it's the wrong message to send.

But it makes you feel good, as the person doing hiring. It looks like a "quick way to eliminate a large number of resumes" and works about as well as all of those other quick ways.

The flip side of this sort of trap is that it can back-fire. Assuming that it truly does weed out candidates who lack an attention to detail, it could also skew toward perfectionist types who get everything perfect ... once it eventually, maybe gets completed at all.

[hayksaakian]

To play devil's advocate:

If I'm the hiring manager, then I probably don't want to hire you for the 28 out of 30 jobs you're not interested in.

Sure, you're selecting for perfectionists, but arguably that's better than hiring people who don't really care about your company.

[noirbot]

But at the same time, I only have so many hours in the day to research companies. If you asked me what companies I was interested in working at, you'd mostly get big-name stuff, even though right now I work somewhere you've likely never heard of.

If you're not a FAANG company, you almost have to be hiring folks who are applying to you because "why not", and then pitching them on your company. I've gone to plenty of interviews and been sold on a company that I previously had almost no knowledge of, especially in B2B industries. Massive portions of the jobs in tech are for teams, companies and industries that your average developer has no exposure to, and no real reason to care about, but it doesn't mean people can't become passionate about working there if given more information.

[mdip]

    > even though right now I work somewhere you've likely never heard of.

I'm with you on that. I'm working at a place that, prior to the interview, I had never heard of. It turned out I and much of my family had DTE Energy Bridges, which they were responsible for, had watched a cable news network who featured their Surface Table app for the 2008 elections and a number of other things that I'm not actually sure I'm allowed to mention.

Some of the best companies are hidden gems like this and almost all of the people I've interviewed have started out not knowing who we were before the interview and being very excited to work for us by the end (the others were already excited). Even though we tend to attract great talent -- it's difficult. Frankly, lately, I'd like it if my thinking was "I need fewer people who are ~qualified~ somewhere-in-the-same-time-zone-as-qualified for this position[0]" that would require a trap to weed some out.

[0] And we've paired down our job requirements -- these are also common positions: C# Backend Web / JS Front-end React (with TypeScript as a bonus!)

edit: the year was 2008, President Obama, not 2018 mid-terms (the network was MSNBC)

[jgtrosh]

> If I'm the hiring manager, then I probably don't want to hire you for the 28 out of 30 jobs you're not interested in.

OP meant that even for the 2 interesting jobs, attention to detail might be lost to the information overload of job searching in general.

> Sure, you're selecting for perfectionists, but arguably that's better than hiring people who don't really care about your company.

OP presented a probable negative bias towards “eventual” workers (I believe I'm somewhat in that category), which you contrast with careless people. These two characteristics are only partially linked and you might want to optimize both, at the cost of effort and time during hiring.

[hayksaakian]

Fair enough, thanks for taking a closer look at the OP's post and my analysis. I appreciate the insight.

[mdip]

I appreciate the devil's advocate and they're good points. The fact is, I was operating under an assumption that the "trap" wouldn't result in catching my two jobs; you are thinking the opposite. I can't argue with that :)

I know for myself, I don't even have a good frame of reference: I have applied mostly for jobs that I have wanted but had a mental ranking in mind before-hand. Regardless, I have generally obsessed over the details. I am far from a perfectionist, I just hear the sound of my dad's voice in the back of my head directing me in exactly how these things are done.

That said, you're completely right about not hiring me if you weren't in my top 3. However, in my case, the company I work for was on the very bottom of my list before I had my first phone screen. My resume got there in a strange manner -- passed to their hiring manager for the purpose of passing to other hiring managers, he gave me a phone call and asked if I'd be interested in interviewing there. I hadn't heard of the place, but went to their site.

The site sold the values of the company in a manner that triggered the skeptic in me[1]; I assumed they were a code-mill at worst, but nothing near what I've found at best. I was also working at home for 12 years and was about to join a company that lacked desk phones/any voice communication outside of conference rooms -- and an open-office environment.

The phone interview put them back toward the top; I liked the two guys I talked to a lot. I arrived and saw the amazing office, which was -- unfortunately -- an open-office floor, and they fell out of my top 3, again. After the interview, they were top on the list. I've been there two years and found the company to be everything they claim to be. It's not that things don't go wrong or that I haven't had a 90 hour week (thrice, however, rarely break 42), it's the people. I'm past 2 years there, now.

[0] Which is kind of what this is: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/

[1] I'm accused more of being naive than cynical, but I worked 17 years at a large company and this place appeared to be bigger than it was. Identifying the company as a mid-large enterprise vs. an SMB is necessary context that was missing when I was reading their site.