[lolinder]

I'm actively involved in hiring at my company for open roles right now, so I've got pretty good visibility into the other end of this market, and I have some thoughts:

1) We are completely overrun by automated applications right now. We have hundreds of them. When you have hundreds of them, you can start to see the patterns, and we have very high confidence that we will weed out automated applications before the technical interviews.

2) Unfortunately, we don't have as high confidence that we won't eliminate false positives. To work effectively with hundreds of applications we have to use very broad heuristics, and we know some good engineers who would otherwise be worth a shot will likely get caught up in them. But it's better for us to not hire at all than to hire someone who applied while they were sleeping.

Because of (2), I frankly consider tools like this unethical. Yes, the market sucks right now. But it sucks in part because of tools like this. You're getting ghosted because employers can't keep up with the spam any more without using extremely aggressive filters—ours are all still manual (yes, we read every resume) but I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of behavior is turning more and more employers to the dreaded automatic filters.

Automated applications will not get you a job at a place that values its employees, because places like mine won't allow our hiring process to bring in someone who doesn't really want to be here. And what you are doing is making it harder for the people who really did look at our listing and think our company would be a good place to work to get hired at the company of their choice.

[PointedResponse]

The way I see it, most companies already use modern ATS to stack rank every application based on their resume using AI and then just go down the list. If you aren't already using a system like this at your company then you're playing at the same disadvantage most applicants are playing at.

Applicants are already having to send hundreds of applications to get a response and it's not because of tools like this. It's because they spend hours every day sifting through job postings and having to apply to as many as they can, and there are tens of thousand of engineers doing it every day. It's a tough market.

The plea of the recruiter and hiring manager that their job is too tough to sort through "too many" applications from people desperate to put food on their table and pay their rent is hard to empathize with. Especially when you are getting paid to do it and aren't at risk of homelessness like the annoying bugs flying around your prized job postings.

It's also hubris to think you can sit there and easily sort people into passionate and dispassionate buckets with a 100% accuracy like a god. And what? People who don't love whatever random service you work on don't deserve to have a job and rent money? The truth is most of the people you work with every day are only there for the paycheck. If they can get a bigger pay check or better work life balance somewhere else, they'll leave.

[lolinder]

> The way I see it, most companies already use modern ATS to stack rank every application based on their resume using AI and then just go down the list. If you aren't already using a system like this at your company then you're playing at the same disadvantage most applicants are playing at.

I already said, as have many others: I don't work at a company like this and never have. I haven't heard this said by anyone on the inside, it's always frustrated applicants. We review every application by hand.

> Applicants are already having to send hundreds of applications to get a response and it's not because of tools like this.

How do you know it's not? The timing is very suspicious.

> It's also hubris to think you can sit there and easily sort people into passionate and dispassionate buckets with a 100% accuracy like a god.

I didn't say that, I said we have high confidence we can eliminate automated applications at the expense of filtering out many sincere ones.

There's a very good algorithm that will do this with 100% accuracy: reject everyone. We're not doing that, but it's a spectrum of how much automation you're willing to let slip in, and the answer for us is "not much".

[tomwphillips]

> The way I see it, most companies already use modern ATS to stack rank every application based on their resume using AI and then just go down the list.

I have never worked anywhere that has done this. Humans have always reviewed every application.

[lolinder]

Yeah, the only people I ever see saying this are people who are frustrated that they're getting ghosted.

[dennis_jeeves2]

>The truth is most of the people you work with every day are only there for the paycheck.

Thank you, I need to hear this more.

[abhpro]

I don't understand why automated applications is unethical. If most companies won't spend the time to manually look at each application, why expect applicants to manually apply to every company. I don't even use services like those but I think the current system is flawed for today's job market so it's hard to even say what is ethical right now.

[lolinder]

I already said: we review every application manually, as do most people who have spoken up on threads like this. All you're accomplishing is burning out those of us in hiring, which makes the market worse for everyone.

It's unethical by Kant's universalizability principle: if everyone did it the hiring market would turn into a complete craps shoot.

[antisthenes]

> All you're accomplishing is burning out those of us in hiring, which makes the market worse for everyone.

The fundamental difference of course being that the applicant might need the job to eat and put a roof over their head, while the hiring people are employed and doing their job.

I get it, it sucks to be burnt out. But the often forgotten nuance of the job market is that there is a huge power asymmetry in hiring.

[lolinder]

And I'm emphasizing that this kind of behavior is not going to get you a job, it's only making everyone's life worse. It's counterproductive in the extreme.

Give me one testimonial of someone who credibly demonstrates that these applications work.

[dennis_jeeves2]

>I already said: we review every application manually,

I would say your company is a rarity.

[lolinder]

On what basis? The only people I've seen claiming this is prevalent are frustrated applicants, but I'd love to hear from someone who actually has seen the inside of one of these companies that uses AI filters in bulk.

[umvi]

It's a chicken and egg problem. Companies would likely look at every application if there were only a few. But if there are 1000 for every position and most are automated then companies have to automate filtering on their end too.

[urhired]

I too am a hiring manager and I don't even have a gag reflex, watch this:

[senordevnyc]

When you have hundreds of them, you can start to see the patterns, and we have very high confidence that we will weed out automated applications before the technical interviews.

Plastic surgery isn't easy to spot—bad plastic surgery is easy to spot.

[lolinder]

You're not in a position to judge quality unless you're looking at hundreds of applications. If you don't trust those of us who do, that's on you, but I'm telling you: we can tell.

[scarface_74]

> Automated applications will not get you a job at a place that values its employees, because places like mine won't allow our hiring process to bring in someone who doesn't really want to be here

No one to a first approximation “wants to be” at your company anymore than they want to be at any other company that will allow them to exchange labor for money.

Any experienced employee knows how to look up what you do on your website and say they have a “passion for $x”.

I’ve had 10 jobs in almost 30 years ranging from a 30 person Startup to BigTech, they’ve all just been a means to support my addiction to food and shelter.

[anarticle]

Laying off 150k people and claiming there are no prospects in the market is also unethical. Sounds bad!

Might be that you'll have to build relationships with actual people.

See you on the battlefield.

[lolinder]

We haven't laid off any engineers in years.

[dennis_jeeves2]

>because places like mine won't allow our hiring process to bring in someone who doesn't really want to be here.

Tell me what's special about your company?

Will one exception, nearly all companies I worked for were run of the mill, yet they thought they were special in a self deluded way.