[salomon812]

I'm a software manager that has been doing some form of interviewing/hiring for 13 years.

I did two rounds of hiring software engineers last year, one in spring that seemed normal, and one in the fall that was was brutal. The fall hiring had a flood of applicants, and in retrospect, most seemed like AI was used in some way.

For the fall round, I suddenly had a higher percentage of applicants that qualified after resume screening and initial phone screen, but they all collapsed when I did a technical round. And failure rate on the technical was much much worse than usual.

We have a full-time recruiter working with us, and I'm not 100% sure what tools he used, but I switched to manually reviewing each resume, and given that it was 100s, it took a long time, but I still had my problem of great initial screen, terrible technical interview.

Then, I decided to throw out anyone who heavily mentioned AI, LLM, or data science. After all, with almost a thousand applicants, I needed to sort some how. (To be fair, our use case is more esoteric, we're not writing Javascript or parsers, so it's not as much of a time-saver.) Large chunks of applicants dropped and the process felt more normal.

I also switched to only on-site interviews. My initial technical screenings are still done remotely. Before COVID we were 100% on-site interviews, but did hybrid after COVID. Now, I'm back to enforcing on-site for my group.

[cj]

> I also switched to only on-site interviews. My initial technical screenings are still done remotely.

Pro tip for anyone hiring engineers for remote positions:

Tell the applicant that there “might be” an in person technical assessment, even if you know the process will be 100% remote.

The amount of fake candidates at the moment is insane. The only thing that makes fake candidates self-select out is knowing there’s the possibility that they will be required to be somewhere in person.

Another trick I’ve used is saying “Oh, you live in Flint Michigan?? We happen to have an employee 20 minutes away, would you be open to meeting them?” And then suddenly they drop out of the interview process.

There are a lot of foreign scammers exploiting the WFH trend in the US to the point where it drowns out real candidates. It’s really bad.

[bovermyer]

I agree with this approach.

In this field, unless you're hiring a junior engineer, you can have a reasonable expectation that a potential candidate will fly out for an interview even if it's a 100% remote job.

If they refuse, well, there's a chance it's just because they can't afford to. The chance is far greater, though, that you dodged a bullet.

[biztos]

What do you mean by "can't afford to?"

Because you can't possibly mean you think candidates are going to fly out for an interview at their own expense.

Traditionally (i.e. pre-Covid) flying out a senior candidate was the standard signal that both sides were taking the process seriously. And for competitive hires, the quality of the hotel and the restaurants they were taken to and the seniority of the people who joined for dinner were all very important indicators.

I've been working remote since 2009 but I kinda miss the old ways.

[neilv]

> the quality of the hotel and the restaurants they were taken to and the seniority of the people who joined for dinner were all very important indicators.

I maybe once misinterpreted this. I was flattered to be having dinner with the well-regarded co-founder and two other highly-ranked people, but I thought the nice hotel and the fancy restaurant was just their everyday extravagant lifestyle.

Despite being obviously unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the affluent lifestyle conventions, I did get the offer. Had I known that the nice restaurant and VIPs might be specifically to say that they valued me, I would've been more likely to accept the offer.

[rahkiin]

Positive reading: cannot afford the time (off from their current employer, away from family, …)

[bovermyer]

Speaking from the point of view of an interviewee rather than an interviewer... I would pay for flying out to someplace for an in-person interview on my own dime, if I thought I would get a reasonable return on investment.

If the interviewer _expected_ that I would pay for a cross-country (or cross-border) flight myself, that would cast a shadow on the opportunity for me.

[codetrotter]

I live in Europe and work for a company based in the USA.

I probably wouldn’t have had this job if the job listing had said that in-person interviews might be required, because if I read that back then I probably would have thought:

1. Flying all the way to the USA is expensive.

2. It takes a lot of time.

3. I’ll be exhausted from the flight when I arrive.

4. There’s probably a bunch of other people applying for this job. What’s the point in flying all that way for a job I don’t even know if I’ll get hired for.

In reality of course, there are other people working for that same company that live in Europe, including people in managerial roles, so if they had been the type of company to ask for an in-person interview they probably would have asked that I meet in a neighboring country. Not that I fly all the way to the USA for an interview.

Luckily for me, the job listing never said anything about any in-person interviews so I never started thinking about what it would mean to maybe have to fly to the USA and therefore I happily proceeded to apply for the job and after a take-home assignment and a few remote interviews I got hired :)

And now in present day, if I were to apply to a job in the current market I would probably apply even if the company was far away and mentioned that in-person interviews might be required. After all, it might not necessarily mean that long of a flight even. They could also have people working in countries near to you. And if the in-person interview does turn out to be too far away well you can always say no at that point. And in order to not waste too much of your own time you can keep applying and interviewing for other jobs in the meantime also, all the way up to when you finally get hired and have a contract for work signed.

[theonething]

You're reasoning doesn't make sense.

You're saying that if an employer expected you to pay for the flight for an interview, that would be a red flag.

But then you say that as an interviewer, you would be willing to pay for the flight for an interview (if you thought it would be reasonable ROI).

The situation where you would be willing to pay for the flight implies that the employer would not pay for the flight (or else why would you pay for the flight?). So according to your own logic, that would raise a red flag (because the employer won't pay for the flight and expects you to). Then why would you be willing to pay for the flight to interview at an employer that is raising a red flag for you? Makes no sense at all.

[hansvm]

I have no idea _why_ they wrote that up, but the points do separately make sense. They're willing to pay for a flight in the abstract, just not in the current timeline where employers know they're supposed to pay for it.

[nosioptar]

> What do you mean by "can't afford to?"

Cat boarding is pricey. I couldn't afford it right now, even for a very short trip. I doubt any job would offer to pick up the tab.

[dgfitz]

I presume your cat is like all other cats and shits inside the house.

Get an automated food/water dispenser, save yourself some money.

[benhurmarcel]

For seniors maybe but for juniors it’s not rare to have to fly out in your own dime unfortunately.

For finding my first job I had to pay for a few trips myself (flights and hotel).

[semiquaver]

Just to counter your anecdote with another of equal value, the only time I’ve ever traveled for an interview was for my first software dev job when I had zero experience. Flight and hotel was paid for by the company. I’ve never heard of anyone other than an employer paying for interview travel expenses.

[BehindBlueEyes]

Same, I was always either able to interview fully remotely or had my trip and hotel paid for even for junior roles.

[ghaff]

Yeah, flying someplace for interviews used to be pretty much the necessary stage for interviews after (maybe) a phone interview.

[brewdad]

On the employer's dime though.

[ghaff]

Correct.

[jland10]

I have 15 YOE and I am a very qualified senior candidate, at least IMO.

There is no world where I would take an interview that I had to fly out and stay at a hotel on my own dime. That would 100% sound like some sort of scam job to me.

[casenmgreen]

Seconded.

Fly out and hotel yes, on own dime, no.

[deepsquirrelnet]

I’ve seen the movie Dead Man. No way am I paying my own flight and lodging costs for a potential employer that has no accountability to me.

[gbear605]

I agree, though you should pay. The scammers aren’t going to take you up, because they know that the in person will catch them out.

Obviously that’s a financial burden to the company, but minimal compared to the long term costs to the company of an employee.

[kevinventullo]

To be clear, you expect candidates to fly out on their own dime just for the interview?

[roland35]

I think the expectation is that any travel is paid for by the company. I've even had a per diem given to me to pay for meals as well.

[ghaff]

That was always the norm for me.

[bovermyer]

Not candidates for a position I'm hiring for, no.

But positions that I'm applying to? I'm senior enough now that if I can't negotiate a paid-travel interview, clearly I either don't care enough and should cross that opportunity off my list, or it's tempting enough that I don't care.

[throwawayq3423]

It's more about the reaction by obvious scammers.

[Teever]

You're talking about the entity trying to make people spend a nontrivial sum of money, time, and effort to get a job, right?

[dallasg3]

What’s the scam? Get a job they can’t do…continue to get paid?

[cj]

1 paycheck of just a few thousand dollars USD is a lot of money in other countries.

The scam is hold on to the job for at least 1 paycheck. It’s a expensive for companies to (legally) fire people, so if you get hired you typically can get at least a few grand even if you do zero work.

[michaelt]

Due to the wealth disparities involved, a month’s Silicon Valley money is a years income for a scammer in a poor country.

So just produce LLM-level code, make excuses, say you’re learning the code base, get lots of help from colleagues, turn in mediocre work, and if you can hang on for three months before they fire you - that’s decent money!

[kortilla]

I can’t imagine you actually work in the US in software and expect candidates to pay to fly out for an interview.

I would withdraw from the process immediately if I encountered a company so cheap

[paradox460]

Not only withdraw, but post publicly about said company. That's so beyond the pale it's gotta be a joke

[edmundsauto]

I’ve flown myself out for interviews at companies that were dream jobs. Think: sports industries, not insurance companies. They tended to be small and didn’t have the resources to put together reservations (and would have taken months to figure out budgeting situations)

Yes, I wanted to work for them so badly it was well worth the risk. Sometimes you see opportunities and want to pay for them.

[the_snooze]

>They tended to be small and didn’t have the resources to put together reservations (and would have taken months to figure out budgeting situations)

This makes no sense. If they can't afford a one-off line item like travel arrangements, how can they possibly make payroll reliably? You're describing either a company with no financial buffer, or one that's asking prospective applicants to subsidize them.

[runako]

> it's just because they can't afford to

Wait, is this another norm that corporate America broke in the last couple of decades? Do people now expect to pay to fly to interviews? When did this happen?

[ponector]

I have a better idea: pay to get through every step of the recruiting process, with steep increase for each stage. Who paid the most - get the job!

[BehindBlueEyes]

There's already industries that think you should pay them for the honor to work for them. (at least companies within said industries i worked for, in gaming, luxury, sports... it's not uncommon). I'm surprised they didn't charge for applications but they'll definitely pay lower wages because the rest is paid for by having their name on your resume.

[cj]

Can’t edit the comment anymore.

But it’s implied that the company would pay for all travel.

The “gotcha” is that the company would also see the departing airport, which exposes foreign candidates posing as US citizens.

[swang]

i saw a tiktok where the guy had his phone propped up but not in view of his webcam, and basically the interviewer's mic was going through his phone on some llm and the llm was spitting out responses for him to reply to the soft questions his interviewer was asking. the interviewer also made him "quickly" turn on his screen sharing so he could see that his computer didn't have anything assisting him.

i haven't done an interview in a while, it's kinda crazy all the things people are pulling now for interviews on both sides. the process feels really broken.

[jakewins]

But like.. what happens after this supposed trick? I don’t understand how they wouldn’t just be fired after the first week if they can’t actually do the job?

Is it that they are applying to places where you don’t pair program?

[paxys]

Get hired. Go through onboarding. Collect your hiring bonus. Get a few weeks for your first project and fail at it. It gets written off as "they're just new here". Use some "unlimited" vacation time. Get more projects and keep failing at them. Get put on a new team because the eng director wants to give you another chance, and repeat the whole process. Eventually get put on a PIP. Show no improvement at the end of it. Accept a severance in exchange for "resigning" and signing an NDA/liability waiver.

At a large company it is possible for this entire process to draw out for 3-6 months, and you collecting >$100K in in that period.

[the_snooze]

Signing bonuses almost always have clawback provisions, and I've never heard of someone getting severance from being fired for cause (performance). The only way I can see your scenario playing out is if the employee has some kind of real leverage over the company (e.g., family connections, political backing, etc.).

[paxys]

> Signing bonuses almost always have clawback provisions

Written on a piece of paper, yes, but no company is actually going to sue you in court to recover it. It will cost them more than the value of the bonus to do so. And they know you have already spent the money.

> I've never heard of someone getting severance from being fired for cause (performance)

At large tech companies it is standard for people going through the PIP process to get the option of taking a severance and walking away (and waiving their right to sue the company) instead of waiting for their manager and HR to draw up the paperwork to fire them.

[neilv]

The reality is that most developers are bad at their jobs.

Also, there's the "fake it till you make it" thinking.

[edmundsauto]

Most places have such chaotic onboarding that it would take a few months to truly get signal that the employee knew nothing.

[wryoak]

In my ten years I’ve never worked at a place where pairing was the norm. I would love to experience that kind of culture

[rr808]

Agreed, I've worked in a dozen firms now in many different teams and never seen anyone pairing.

[Mawr]

That's assuming the interview process tests for job performance with any sort of accuracy.

[ponector]

In most cases in corporations you are not interviewed by people you will be working with. Interview stage is a generic assessment by random people. Yo simply need to pass them. Also they are usually asking questions not related to the real job.

[Chirael]

If it’s remote, sometimes they’ll pay someone else to do the work and pocket the difference. And/or the job may just be a ruse to get credentials in the org because it’s an espionage target or to use as a launch point to go after an espionage target.

[1231232131231]

You're making the (large) assumption that the interviews are actually relevant to the position.

[etimberg]

Generally that's why the soft skills questions generally want a response in a STAR (situation, task, action, result) format. It's a lot harder to lie about a story and keep yourself consistent through a back and forth.

[koliber]

I do technical hiring for remote senior Java roles. I have not noticed a fake applicant problem. Can you share more about it?

I see plenty of people with poor technical skills claiming to be senior. They seem to be real enough though.

[ikiris]

In fairness, its probably a lot harder to tell llm java code from human made java code.

[generalizations]

As someone looking for remote work atm, can confirm this sounds fair to me: if the employer looks legit and would fly me out (like my current employer did), I'd be totally willing to do an onsite interview.

Right now my approach has been focused less on proving my skills, and more on proving I'm a real person. Hah.

[evantbyrne]

People who are serious about doing remote work are going to pass on anything that indicates hybrid. The simplest screening technique is to give instructions within the job post to submit via email rather than the job board form. Even before LLM slop became the norm people were spamming their resumes with Easy Apply.

[apitman]

What do you do when a real person says they'd be happy to meet your fake employee?

[cj]

were honest with the candidate about why we asked the question.

[casenmgreen]

Speaking as a contractor since 2017, I have given up using recruitment agencies in the UK to find work.

I am likely the number one expert, in my field, globally. I apply for roles which specifically ask for an SME in my field. There is no question here of skills, and it is as certain as it can be without actually knowing that I am a light year ahead of all other applicants (because there is practically no one else actually qualified in my field). I'm not flapping my ego, this is how things look to actually be.

I find now I never get even contacted by agencies.

I think they are not reading my CV/application, and I think this is happening because they are flooded - hundreds of applications in the first hour. They take the first person who looks good enough (and they're not good - there are practically no people in this field who actually have skills and experience, as opposed to just "I've worked with") and run with that, and then turn to filling the next contract.

The upshot of this is that it doesn't matter how good you are, because your CV isn't going to be seen, not unless you apply in the first ten minutes or so.

You have to play that game, and automate your applications, to be seen.

So the question is, if you don't want to play that game, how now do you find companies who need skills?

[lordnacho]

For something super niche, wouldn't you already know all the likely interested people? Why not just write to them directly?

[hbbvgn]

Obviously your field is in no demand at all. Otherwise, why would you be searching for employment if you are #1 in it?

[casenmgreen]

It's a type of work where companies normally want permanent employees.

Also, it tends to be concentrated in the USA.

However, I see one absolutely perfect contract about every month or two.

[ben_w]

They gave a plausible reason why.

Marketing is a skill all in itself.

I know this because it is one which I lack, which in turn is one of two reasons I didn't go down the contracting path.

AI is better at selling itself than at doing the thing.

[jorts]

They’re a contractor.

[iamacyborg]

The UK job market is pretty screwy.

I got made redundant back in March, applied for a bunch of stuff I matched profile for and maybe got 5-6 interviews off the back of it.

The worst was the agency that lined me up for a contract role, got me to fill out all the paperwork only for the job to fall through because the client apparently never got budget signed off for the position.

[casenmgreen]

> The worst was the agency that lined me up for a contract role, got me to fill out all the paperwork only for the job to fall through because the client apparently never got budget signed off for the position.

I could be wrong, but I think that might have been a lie.

I've heard it before, too, and I've come to doubt it; I think it too unlikely to be heard with such frequency as I do hear it.

I've also had on three occasions agents call up after a day or two and tell "something about the budget, so the rate is now less than expected".

In two cases I came to know the agency was simply lying, and was keeping the difference for itself, and I expect it to be true also in the third.

[iamacyborg]

> I could be wrong, but I think that might have been a lie.

> I've heard it before, too, and I've come to doubt it; I think it too unlikely to be heard with such frequency as I do hear it.

Maybe but it sounded plausible, this would have been a 3 month contract with Moodys in Canary Wharf so not some rinkydink outfit. I could just be gullible but they gained nothing from stringing me along

[ttyprintk]

I saw this on contract jobs which require a US security clearance. Maybe its frequent with single-customer projects.

[pknomad]

I am a Platform Engineer and it feels like your experience mirrors mine. Like you, our challenge is filtering out large volume but also filtering out LLM abusers. We're not opposed to people using LLMs, when appropriate. I find that candidates inappropriately use it to circumvent the process and that is a big deal for me (and our team). We try to do the right thing(TM) by the candidates by creating minimal interview workloads, asking highly relevant questions that aren't "gotchas", and updating their candidacy as soon as possible. It doesn't feel like many candidates are interested in returning the same courtesy. This kind of behavior means we have to lean harder into tapping our existing networks for sourcing "trust-worthy" candidates. That puts us at risk for creating additional blinders and also unfairly filters out "un-networked" candidates. For whatever it's worth, we are remote-first org so all of our interviews are done remotely.

One of the things I'm thinking about doing in the future is sharing the screen with diagrams and adding irrelevant annotations to it (while clearly indicating to the candidates that those are irrelevant) as a primitive adversarial AI technique. Perhaps on-site interviews is part of the solution.

[mlloyd]

When folks are engaging in mass circumventing of pervasive processes, it's because the process has broken 'typical' attempts to interact with it.

You're being penalized for doing right by candidates but it's likely that a lot of those candidates were penalized previously when they tried to interact the 'right' way with other folks hiring and adapted workarounds as a result.

It's a quintessential arms race. For what it's worth, I appreciate that you're trying hard to keep your hiring process broad and to mitigate your potential blind spots. That's refreshing to hear from a hiring manager.

[photonthug]

Yep. Hiring managers are flooded with thousands of bullshit applications because job seekers are flooded with thousands of bullshit jobs, and/or unfairly filtered out of the funnel for real jobs. So now it’s a matter of sheer application volume for candidate employees more than ever, who after all are in a rather more desperate position than potential employers will ever be.

Besides the arms race with AI on both sides to filter/escape being filtered, the other problem is that it’s completely normal these days to use so called “hiring” more as cheap version of advertisement or a growth signal to investors rather than to indicate you are actually hiring.

I would hazard a guess that the average job-seeking application count for individuals has gone up not 2x, not 10x, but like 100x in many fields the last few years, and similarly for the time involved. And this happens without the economy as a whole even being in serious troubles. The only people that win here are the staffing platforms like indeed and linked-in, and the options in that space and in recruitment/staffing generally are decreasing as the industry consolidates with M&A. Brutal

[Seattle3503]

I think there is a sort of just world fallacy employed here. It seems more like that there opportunists everywhere, and always have been. LLMs have amplified their destructive potential.

[mvanbaak]

Fellow Platform Engineer here, and I can relate 100% with your comment. We decided to stop announcing our engineering jobs and go back to mouth to mouth for sourcing candidates for now. It's a move I didn't want to make as, like you said, it means a lot of less networked engineers will not know about it and all. but for now this was the only way we got rid of the constant stream of letters from AI.

[selimthegrim]

>mouth to mouth for sourcing candidates for now

Well, I certainly hope your revival rate is better than your hiring success rate.

[teitoklien]

hahaha, i was thinking the same when i read it, such an odd way to phrase it.

“Mouth to mouth” lol

[throwaway48476]

The English phrase for this is 'word of mouth'

[throwaway2037]

What is a "Platform Engineer"? I never heard that term before today.

[hipadev23]

Latest rebranding of “sysadmin”, which became “devops engineer” or SRE a decade ago. It’s the people who shove kubernetes, datadog, and CI/CD tools into every corner.

[pknomad]

Platform Engineers are operationally focused software engineers who focus on enablement of other software engineering groups through building self-service tooling and create unified platform for app deployment.

The cultural focus is placed on enablement of teams through self service, whereas DevOps is more about reducing silos and SRE is more about doing infra through the software engineering lens with metrics (SLO/SLA/SLI).

[throwaway2037]

TL;DR: Internal tool builder

[beardedwizard]

Elitism is alive and well in this little nook. Equating platform engineering, SRE and sysadmin to the same thing.

Platforms are often large scale distributed systems, dealing with problems like ensuring 100000s of compute nodes are in a deployed and in consistent state. Millions of lines of code are written, peer reviewed and committed to solve this problem.

This mirrors an attitude I have frequently encountered from "traditional" or "mainstream" software engineers who devalue any work that isn't features, and don't want to have to work on problems like "make my feature appear on all deployments and work well" - it's just something sysadmins do amirite?

[jcutrell]

Remember - the vast majority of candidates who take the time to do right by your process get zero reward for their effort. You get a reward in the end, so it feels imbalanced. This is true for VERY good candidates, as well.

[cellu]

Precisely my problem. I only apply if I know I’m a good fit and have the required experience. I spent countless hours manually adjusting my resume and writing cover letter out of my heart. Just got the usual cold rejection from a no-reply address. I know do the same with ChatGPT. I also get rejections, but at least I waste little time and can therefore submit many more applications - so my odds are higher

[stackskipton]

In our remote interviews, I've started pasting the question into meeting chat that I've already fed into ChatGPT. Mainly because some candidates do actually do better with reading and thinking but it's also just pure bait to paste into their open ChatGPT window. Since I've already got input on my side, if they start reading off ChatGPT output, they get a strike, two strikes and interview is ended.

However, I do believe onsite interviews is best solution but finance obviously screams about cost.

[bitzun]

I discovered a new tactic where you ask a vaguely worded question on a niche subject, such that any seemingly off the cuff comprehensive answer must be ChatGPT. Asking something outside the candidate’s declared experience or following up on experience with tech they spoke well to will also reveal discrepancies.

[elashri]

I'm pretty sure the temperature of even GPT4o-mini is not 0 so how would you know it is the something like you have. It would be hard to be reading an answer, it would feel awkward and probably obvious it itself. But I'm just saying that some people would have memorized answers to some standard questions (they apply to many places as you might know).

[stackskipton]

Yea, the newer models wouldn't catch this but there is enough candidates going to chatgpt.com and just pasting in the question.

As always, it's arms race and one I wish I'd didn't have to participate in.

[XenophileJKO]

Alternatively they might also use a different model that has different response traits.

[bdangubic]

it is surprising there isn’t some SaaS bullshit company that solves this problem. we have shit like Pearsons and whatnots when taking exams, I took few certification exams and it was like

- install this thing that takes over my machine

- 360 camera around to show my surroundings

- no phone/watch/…

One would think by now there’d be two Stanford grads with a SaaS shit taking care of this for $899/hr

Last interview I did it was obvious candidate was cheating. Gave him my cell and told him to call me, no speakerphone or bluetooth and hung up Teams meeting - never got a call :)

[Terr_]

Even as we speak, scams are going on where pretend-employers are backdooring the computers of applicants that way.

I fear the only applicants who would agree are also the ones who can't be trusted with any employee access to your corporate resources.

[bdangubic]

a company would run this… Not your company taking over candidate’s computer, an intermediary that candidate and potential employer are using.

candidates are already using Slack/Teams/Zoom/… now they get to use Pouixy or whatever BS name someone in SF comes up with. guarantee you this will be a thing in 2025, some stanfords are on the case

[gray_-_wolf]

If you (the company) send me a company laptop to use for that shit, sure, we can interview that way. It is the same deal with Teams and Zoom. None of that shit is touching my personal devices, it is strictly limited to the work machine.

[Gigachad]

There's a much simpler solution. You do the interview in your office and watch them answer without typing the question in to chatgpt.

[bdangubic]

too expensive - no one is doing that anymore

[Gigachad]

How is it too expensive? It takes the same amount of time for the interview, and you presumably have a room available in the office to book for the occasional interview.

And it instantly filters out all the spam applicants and chat GPT cheaters.

[pempem]

is it more expensive than what we're dealing with now? have we even tallied the human talent cost?

[jarsin]

Startup idea to truly solve this would be large network of onsite test / interview centers.

I had to do all my certs onsite in test centers in early 2000's. For one I had to drive 2 hours to take the exam.

Seems like those test centers used to be in every mid size city in the country.

[bdangubic]

too expensive mate… we live in year our Lord 2024 - no one is building 2000 buildings that will be vacant as everyone is working from home (or India…) :)

this requires a simple saas solution - someone’s working on this for sure already as it is already a big issue

[jarsin]

I hear you, and yes old school solution sounds absurd, but I suspect interview cheating will be on par with game cheating. Even if you install kernel level cheat protection systems the game cheater's still find ways around them.

These guys already developed an invisible desktop app to help everyone cheat on remote interviews.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42348147

[mdaniel]

I don't believe one needs a startup to solve that problem - there are already a bazillion certification paths for a bazillion tech stacks. The(?) problem is one of trust from the hiring org that the certs mean anything, and that's where the whole discussion devolves into one of (gatekeeping|but muh leetcode|our business problem is special|$other)

[jarsin]

I meant a startup that provides onsite screening / verification of candidates for companies. Only pre-verifed candidates can apply to company jobs. If the candidate is not local, the company can use the test center to do a remote screen in an environment where candidate cannot cheat. Etc.

I just brought up certs because back in the day you could not take those test online due to cheating.

Now in the age of AI you can't do any type of testing remote, imo.

[la64710]

What exactly you can do as a HM to make the life of a job seeker easy? I dare say nothing except to just make the quality of response better. Even after six rounds of interviews candidates who are not selected get not a single positive feedback and is treated like scrap with a soulless rejection. Beleive me as a job applicant I have zero sympathy for the corporates that hire me and I will use every thing at my disposal including AI to be more efficient in any way I deem fit. The job is just a business transaction to me and I don’t care about your high and mighty lecture as a HM. GTFO.

[throwaway2037]

I agree with your sentiment. I am curious how this person will fare when they return to the job hunt. Then, they will see how adversarial the process has become, even for highly qualified candidates. Suddenly, AI looks like a good idea to game some of the process.

[salomon812]

Since I think I'm the person you're referencing, I really do want to give good feedback, but experience has shown it's really perilous (discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42533899)

And I know how adversarial the process has become. I have friends looking for jobs plus I try to get to know my candidates. And I have my recent hires and their stories.

I want to make it a better process but I'm so burnt out figuring out how to make it better. Some people talk about professional 3rd party recruiters but I've been burned by those as well. When it comes to dating and hiring, both can be pretty brutal.

[Aurornis]

Over Christmas I met up with a friend who teaches part-time at a local college. He said he’s failed more people this year than the cumulative total of his entire past teaching career due to LLM abuse.

He doesn’t use LLM detection tools, but he says it’s easy to identify papers with warning signs of LLM use. For some reason, using ChatGPT for his specific niche topic overuses a few obscure, rarely-used words that most people wouldn’t even recognize. The ChatGPT abusers some times have these words appearing multiple times through their essays.

He’s also caught people who cited a lot of different works and books in their reports that were outside of the assigned reading, or in some cases books that don’t exist at all. Catching them is as simple as asking them about their sources or where they acquired a copy of the text.

I see a lot of parallels in hiring and talking to junior software engineers right now. We had a take-home problem that was well liked that we used for many years, but now it’s obvious that a majority of young applicants are just using LLMs to get an answer. When we want to talk about their solution in the interview, they “can’t remember” how it works or why they picked their method.

It’s really sad to me as a long time remote worker because I see far more blatant abuse from remote candidates. Like you, bringing people on site for interviews seems to instantly scare away the LLM cheaters, but it’s expensive and time consuming for everyone involved.

[salomon812]

I know the on-site is time-consuming and expensive, but so is firing people (at least in United States it is.) I've had a few on-site interviews where having them on-site made us realize we could never work with them. Given how much time they will spend with you, it's totally worth it to spend your resources on hiring.

[sarchertech]

Firing people isn’t as expensive as people make it out to be. People vastly overestimate the chance of a lawsuit. And they overestimate the chance of a lawsuit that makes it far enough that it costs significant money even more.

Hiring fast and firing fast (for lying or misrepresentation) is almost always a better business decision than being ultra defensive in the hiring process.

[UncleMeat]

The fastest that I can possibly fire somebody is still months from the date I choose to hire them.

I decide they are the best candidate. A recruiter talks with them to negotiate compensation and they accept the offer. This takes a week at best, but can take weeks if they are choosing between multiple offers. Then they choose a start date. They've got a couple weeks at the old job, plus probably some time in between roles before they start. So 2-6 weeks waiting here. Then they join and go through the company-wide onboarding and training processes and set up their equipment. Another week.

The first time I actually get to have them do any work is 4-10 weeks from the date I chose to offer them a job. It now takes me some time to realize they are hopeless and misrepresented themself on their resume. Three weeks would be an extraordinary outcome here, but it more likely that this takes 8+ weeks. Even if the actual process of firing them is instant once I've decided that it was a bad hire, I'm still out 3-5 months from the date I chose to hire them. Any other strong candidates I had in the pipeline now have other jobs and I am starting from scratch.

That is incredibly expensive.

[salomon812]

This. 100% this.

I can't believe any company would look at this story (which I've heard variations on from multiple peers) and go: "we should save money by not flying candidates out for an on-site and use terrible AI tools to sort our candidates."

[charlie0]

Just hire them as contractors first. Give them a 2-3 month contract, if it doesn't work out, you just don't renew the contract.

[mattm]

That only works for desperate people. Sr people or people with other options would not take that risk.

[salomon812]

It's not the lawsuit, it's about the time wasted as a manager and salary to the person as you work out if it's actually time to fire. Performance Improvement Plans, a bunch of back-and-forths. I'm not going to be the kind of person that fires quickly, so there's a bunch of sunk cost we have to take. Plus, fast firing creates a cooling effect among everyone there.

And for what? To save money on hiring? Not worth it.

[floating-io]

The counter argument is that firing too slowly can be a serious drag on morale. Leaving your team to carry dead weight can really suck for the team.

Ask me how I know... :)

[salomon812]

Okay, so the original argument is about whether or not it's worth it to fly people out for an on-site. Hotel and airfare: $2000 absolute max. Salary at $100/hr for one month for me to figure out it's not going to work out, then pull the trigger to fire: $24,000.

I mean, being a manager is hard, but putting in the time and money to hire and then putting in the time to make sure your team doesn't have a morale drag, it's worth it.

[A1kmm]

Also imagine you are a company with a reputation for hiring people - inducing them to leave their current job - and then often dismissing them quickly afterwards.

That would give many great prospective employees pause before applying to work there, because you are asking them to give up a good thing and take a chance on your company, without commitment.

Far better to screen early.

[jjav]

> so is firing people (at least in United States it is.)

There's probably some country somewhere where it is easier to fire people than the US, but not sure where would that be.

There are zero requirements to fire people in the US. No reason needed, no notice, no compensation, nothing.

Most (if not all) other countries have varying levels of requirements, notice and compensation required to fire someone. In the US, nothing.

[salomon812]

There's a difference between layoffs and firing. To fire an individual, the company must have documentation to ensure it's not a wrongful termination. Ironically, it's easier to lay-off 100 people because all you need to do is demonstrate their division's project is cancelled.

And that documentation takes time as a manager, which costs money.

But I admit not knowing completely because I haven't had to fire anyone yet. I have talked to legal about the process regarding someone not on my team.

[ghusbands]

What jjav is referring to is "at will" employment - in almost all US states, employees can be fired for almost any reason, with no recourse. So the fact you're saying that firing people is expensive and time-consuming in the US flies in the face of the actual legal environment there compared with most other relevant countries.

[lotsofpulp]

>the company must have documentation to ensure it's not a wrongful termination.

Companies develop documentation processes as they get bigger for myriad reasons, but there is very little to worry about in the US in the way of terminating someone.

The only adverse effect most times is increase in unemployment insurance premiums, if you do not have enough documentation to show you terminated for cause.

Otherwise, 99.9% of the time, the terminated person can claim whatever kind of wrongful termination they want, they probably won’t get anywhere via the courts.

[jjav]

> To fire an individual, the company must have documentation to ensure it's not a wrongful termination.

Not in the US. All you must do is tell them they're gone, walk them out the door and that's that. You must pay them any worked days not yet paid but that's all.

Company HR departments sometimes establish more elaborate procedures for firing, but none of that is required by law, it's just internal company process.

[BarryMilo]

I'm assuming you're talking about "at-will" states, coming from Canada I've heard there are also sane states. And even some at-will states have powerful unions no doubt.

[throwaway2037]

In most places, even with strong labour laws, you can layoff people for any reason in the first 30/60/90 days. And, the US has extremely weak labour laws. Usually, a month of severance for each year of service is customary, but probably not strictly required.

[throwaway2037]

    > When we want to talk about their solution in the interview, they “can’t remember” how it works or why they picked their method.

Sweet! That sounds like perfect signal for "used ChatGPT" to answer this question. So, you can send take home test, candidate sends reply (many from ChatGPT), then you do quick follow-up phone/video call to discuss the code. When you get the "signal" (should be quick!), then you immediately close the interview and move to the next candidate.

[the_snooze]

>It’s really sad to me as a long time remote worker because I see far more blatant abuse from remote candidates. Like you, bringing people on site for interviews seems to instantly scare away the LLM cheaters, but it’s expensive and time consuming for everyone involved.

Technology enables scale and reach, which solves some problems but also creates its own set of issues. I think you're right on with the solution: do things that are anti-scale. If you make things a bit more inconvenient, a bit more costly, and a bit more local, you create an environment where there's space for trust and humanity---values that don't scale.

[Shocka1]

Overly expressive words like "robust" and words that would appear in the thesaurus for "extremely" seem like tell tale signs in my experience. I've noticed personally that sometimes I have to tell ChatGPT to "sound more human and concise." I'd love to hear if anyone else has had the same experience as me.

Regardless, if ChatGPT is tailored enough, or a custom model is created, I can't think of any way to detect if an LLM has authored something generic. The lazy college student will probably get caught, but the cunning one not so much.

[umvi]

Same experience, we are getting absolutely flooded with hundreds, sometimes thousands of applicants who are presumably using some sort of automation/AI to adapt their resumes to the position yet they are very weak when it comes time for a job challenge or tech screening

[nitwit005]

I had a recruiter basically hold onto me after I passed more than one technical screen, even though I clearly did get all the way through the hiring process at either role. They were maintaining a pool of competent people.

[Seb-C]

That's why I don't answer LinkedIn recruiters anymore, unless they can show me a clear opportunity that matches my profile.

Every time I answered their bait and they "just wanted a quick phone call", it was clear that they only were interested in filling their database.

Then I get spammed by them with irrelevant automated offers forever, unless I block them completely.

[riwsky]

If only they could crowd source/gpg web of trust such a designation.

We solved this for email by aggregating spam/not spam ratings from tons of recipients. It’d be great if we could do that here.

[ttyprintk]

I’d be willing to sign someone’s (possibly incomplete) background check if I worked with them for six months.

[selimthegrim]

Did not get?

[charlie0]

On-site interviews. This is not ideal, but is the way. As long as you're willing to shell out on my flight and cover the expenses, I'll fly anywhere for an interview.

[johnnyanmac]

>We have a full-time recruiter working with us, and I'm not 100% sure what tools he used, but I switched to manually reviewing each resume, and given that it was 100s, it took a long time, but I still had my problem of great initial screen, terrible technical interview.

I think it's very scary when even manual review is still yielding you results with horrible technical screenings. I wonder at that point if your technical review is very hard or specific (specific makes sense, yo did you you are looking for esoteric), or if it's just truly that polarized a market. Many are laid off and I imagine those qualified with such specialized knowledge and anchoring themselves instead of searching.

>I also switched to only on-site interviews

Kind of crazy. Not that I mind on-sites, but I haven't even heard a mention of on-site in the interview process since COVID. And I'm basically applying to any relevant position, locally or remotely. Just another curiosity.

[salomon812]

> I think it's very scary when even manual review is still yielding you results with horrible technical screenings.

It was bad. It was starting to affect my life outside of work.

> I wonder at that point if your technical review is very hard

My technical review is very hard, but it is directly applicable to the work I'm doing. And I've seen some candidates just do outstanding based entirely on their natural curiosity to look a bit deeper. I've been using a form of it for five years, so it's well reviewed.

[paulluuk]

> Then, I decided to throw out anyone who heavily mentioned AI, LLM, or data science.

As someone who graduated in the field of AI (so it's on my resume), and is now working in the Data Science field, often with LLMs, this hurts. Although I'm not sure what role you're hiring for, so perhaps I wouldn't be in the list of candidates anyway.

[twelve40]

fwiw the article seems to describe a pretty mild type of automation to deal with tons of job ads and mundane stuff like cover letters that often get completely ignored by all sides, so why not try to automate that in good faith? didn't find anything about fake or cheating or misrepresenting one's skills in there.

[ttyprintk]

That’s what I see, too. I see someone who is easy to manage, as opposed to someone leaking AI slop into production.