[Dallas_B]

For anyone currently stuck in the grind of endlessly applying for jobs, I completely understand your frustration. I’ve been job hunting for the past three months, and it’s been painfully repetitive and time-consuming. Applying via LinkedIn often feels like throwing your resume into a sea of 1,000+ other applicants, even with daily alerts turned on.

What worked better for me was following founders, recruiters, and other key connections. I’d wait for them to post about roles in their network and apply directly. This strategy landed me a few interviews.

To make this process less manual, I built a tracker that highlights posts from people sharing roles with their private networks. It’s free, so feel free to check it out if you’re in the job market.

I’m also testing video-based applications, which let you track who’s viewing your resume and profile. This feature is paid to help cover server cost. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and hopefully this helps you land a role!

[sunjieming]

We're seeing a flood of fake AI generated job applications basically DDOSing our hiring funnel. Not sure how widespread it is but it has become enormously frustrating to sift the complete garbage from the good resumes. I'm sure a lot of good people have been accidentally filtered out

It's rough out there right now. Also, not even sure what the benefit or angle is for spamming fake job applications. State actors trying to sabotage?

Edit: We can tell that some of the applications are fake because we have people fail background screenings and often the attached LinkedIn profile is using AI generated images and job histories that don't add up.

[jonathaneunice]

> I've been a Full Stack Machine Learning Data Scientist DevOps Engineer for 3 years. I've used every cloud platform, every provisioning tool, every major operating system release (Windows and Linux) going back to 2003. I write code in every major language and have used every major queueing system, web server, application server, networking stack, and database engine. I read in binary, ternary, octal, decimal, and hexadecimal and process information at 12.9 exaFLOPS.

[surfingdino]

The reason you are getting spammed is because a) agencies are trying to secure an interview before they have a candidate; b) they are trying to convince you to use their offshore teams. Ask around inside your company if any offers from offshore providers have been submitted/talks are being conducted. DDoS-ing hiring funnels is a way to convince you that "no good people are available".

[username135]

Intriguing... Any other info you can provide on this, sources, articles, etc?

[surfingdino]

This is based on my own experience and conversations with hiring managers and recruiter over the last two years. I have also been involved in screening CVs. It's impossible to keep up with the flood of fake CVs.

[username135]

Its perfectly nefarious! Was just wondering if there was anything written about it yet. Thanks!

[surfingdino]

When I see an ad for a hybrid role that pays £200 pd inside IR35 I know it is designed to "prove" that there are no suitable candidates interested in it in the UK.

[hyperadvanced]

Clever tactic, info overload them, then sell the solution

[__MatrixMan__]

> not even sure what the benefit or angle is for spamming fake job applications

Ok, tinfoil hat time. Suppose for a moment that the AI hype is true, and that two years from now everyone will have access to god-like coding ability on the cheap. Even if it's untrue, there are plenty who believe this is the case. Seems to me like there are two ways for that to go:

1. Coding jobs get scarcer and scarcer and the only remaining ones are populated people willing to work unreasonably hard to keep them.

2. Coders being the group with the most on-the-job experience re: driving an AI (acquired back in the days when coding was all it was good for) all quit their jobs to start their own companies--because why bother with the bureaucracy of a large company when you can now do the same work with four employees?

I'm not sure who exactly would want to influence the general vibe towards 1 and away from 2, I guess somebody who believed the hype enough to see 2. as a threat, but not enough to see it as an ideal outcome. Or maybe someone whose product is more valuable against a backdrop of an impossible-to-navigate job market. Whoever they are, DDOSing job applications would be a way to achieve that goal.

[Dallas_B]

Its crazy at the moment, you can use bots to just automatically apply. Also the ease of Quick Apply on LinkedIn makes it so simple to just apply and not really consider if your right for the role. I suppose it feels like your making progress but your right it is spamming, I was 100% guilty of this for the first few weeks thinking it would be easy and quick to land a few interviews and offers!

[hyperadvanced]

Anecdotally, one of these AI generated people made it THROUGH my company’s hiring funnel, apparently HR didn’t check references. Not the worst performer I’ve ever seen, clearly a fake and they got weeded out after a couple of weeks, but it seemed way more like a “get as many remote jobs as possible and if you get fired from one then just keep the process rolling”

[Dallas_B]

Thats sad and hilarious at the same time. Agree, I feel HR KPIs are based on number of applicants Vs quality or finding the right one

[sz4kerto]

Exactly. LLMs make it worse for both the employers and the job seekers. Receiving hundreds of applications per day is extremely difficult to handle for a small company, especially that it's extremely apparent that around 1% reads the job description at all.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> I’ve been job hunting for the past three months, and it’s been painfully repetitive and time-consuming.

With full recognition of the challenge you're having, I'll append that the difficulty level ratchets up from there.

The first thing my kids learned after high school is that ~100% of job portals silently discard applications from 1st-time job applicants.

And from that point, the difficultly levels ratchets upward further for the most minor of criminal records.

Past that there are any number of hidden, algorithmic blackmarks against applicants, from wrong zip codes to sub-stellar credit reports.

Finally, there's one nearly unhireable class, people who interview poorly (ex:freeze up).

[crtified]

If tech companies get systemically hostile toward socially awkward people then that's a horrific own-goal.

[Dallas_B]

Thanks for the heads up - Feels like I'm in for the long haul despite having some solid experience and half decent network behind me!

[upghost]

What kind of dystopian nightmare do we live in than LinkedIn is now basically required to get a job? We built this nightmare too. Darn it.

[verdverm]

Having a project you are trying to turn into a business is often a red flag. A company considering hiring you wonders if you will jump ship as soon as you have the opportunity to go full time on your own project

[Dallas_B]

Thanks, not really trying to do that, more built it out of frustration. I've heard this can be an advantage in an interview to essentially sell 'look what I built in my down time' etc - Who knows.

[verdverm]

Totally, it's good to have projects or a portfolio, it's not so much to have marketing & payment pages or look like it's an early startup

[rgbrgb]

it cuts both ways! it is hard to find engineers who are self-motivated to think about product, customers, and conversion. this project gives the candidate strong credibility there.

I have also been burnt with employees leaving to start their own thing, but that's more the exception compared to engineers who don't deliver much value because they're not actually interested in building stuff or only interested in the programming part of building stuff.

[verdverm]

We programmers certainly come in a lot of varieties!

[codalan]

Should this be under Show HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html