I wonder where does the drop happen in the funnel. Probably the most troublesome part is writing cover letter? I remember that I have to create a template in LaTex for my cover letter which i can just change the company name and responsibilities.
At this point I’m not even sure if big companies read cover letters at all.
That's probably a big one though I'd guess the biggest would be the double data entry, where you're asked to provide a resume (usually in Microsoft Word format) and then enter all of that information again, broken up into dozens and dozens of poorly designed textboxes. It really is a huge middle finger to applicants and makes clear that the company believes your time does not have value.
Conversely, after 27 years as a hiring manager, the vast majority of people I've hired didn't even send one. I think a good cover letter certainly can make a difference, if it helps highlight why you're a good fit for this specific role if it's not obvious from your CV, but I rarely send any myself, and not for any of the jobs I've actually gotten over the years.
As an employer I always read the cover letters. You had better have a slight clue of what job you are applying for or your application ends up in the garbage.
The measurement is % of people who click apply. But similar to “buy” I often click “apply” to find out more. After all I know that button isn’t committing me to the job or the purchase until I complete, and many sites gate information after clicking that button.
That seems to be done on purpose but I am not sure why. Do people really buy more stuff because they clicked "buy" to get the info? Or is it just some arbitrary metric that is being improved without having real impact on the business?
Maybe to have a separate "get more info" is worse for business. At least for me, the opposite it is true. It makes me hesitate to click in the "buy" button just to find more about the product.
That's exactly it, hitting "apply" is taken as a performance metric, so (and I'm sure there's a 'law' for this) everything is optimized to meet that metric.
I think part of it is to separate information to better know that a user was interested in a product and read the information further and perhaps it was price or purchasing conditions that turned them off.
When you advertise traditionally you don't get a lot of information back from consumers other than those who start or make a purchase. The more actions you put between discovery and purchase, the more you can refine parts of the process.
There are probably other psychological elements at play as well about gradually introducing information so you can strategically present the better aspects of something before you talk about say an ugly cost.
It's not uncommon for me to 70% of the way through a checkout process because that's the only way to figure out how much shipping is. I'm not trying to buy the product, just get a single number - but pretending to buy it is often the only way to get that number!
I had the same reaction while reading it. It would be interesting to know what the abandonment rate is lower in the funnel, maybe after someone creates an account. Because I have also clicked apply on jobs where I have no real interest but am curious about the position or company.
Also, the article is spot on about the tediousness of the online applications.
I applied to a position at my kids’ school last year. School websites are awful enough but then they bounce you into a separate portal for the application. And the flow is built around the most complicated job that they might need to hire for. So, to get a job as, say, a p/t middle school soccer coach or night custodian, you have to go through all these steps that really don’t apply. And of course then they moan about how hard it is to fill positions.
What I have noticed is that the more menial, low paid and generally low desirable a job is, the higher that initial barrier is. I suspect it is to at least some extend intentional, though I struggle to understand why that is.
On the other hand the initial step in software development job application (my current profession) typically seems a lot smoother, though of course then they are followed up by more technical steps (which generally makes sense).
I do see start ups here in London who try to make the process smoother. I do not know how successful they are.
> I suspect it is to at least some extend intentional, though I struggle to understand why that is.
To limit the number of applicants; like you said, menial and low paid, so having people go through hurdles to apply makes them more motivated than shotgun applicants - and reduces the amount of applications HR has to sift through.
> What I have noticed is that the more menial, low paid and generally low desirable a job is, the higher that initial barrier is. I suspect it is to at least some extend intentional, though I struggle to understand why that is.
One suspicion I have is perhaps the people in hiring whether consciously or not believe making the process more difficult improves the signal to noise ratio of applicants. Makes sense when there are 10+ applicants for each open position I think. They don't care about the people they are turning away.
Optimising for desperation is great if you're building a criminal gang
in which most of the day-to-day activities go against a normal
person's good moral judgement.
To some extent a State is a gang, but at a larger and more sophisticated scale. So is any sufficiently large company. The 'criminal' aspect is always a relative measure.
One should generally prefer criminal gangs elected according to social
contract, since they are basically "our* criminal gang.
As for moral relativism - not so much. There's enough consensus for
judiciaries and criminologists to define objective criminal
behaviours. I think you mean that we exercise more or less tolerance
of the criminal behaviour of certain groups.
It's a bit of both. We discriminate with regards to groups, but the measure of crime shifts quickly. Drugs or sexual orientations become legal or illegal. Killing is legal or illegal depending on whether it is performed in an approved way. Certain types of non-consensual genital mutilation are legal, others illegal. States tend to clash when their conception of justice differ too much. There are foundational concepts that most legal systems seem to share to provide stability, but for anything more complex there are always exceptions. The right to pollute, employment relationships, defamation etc. as soon as you move away from basic disorder removal it becomes more and more relative.
I once failed a quiz that would have granted me the privilege of frying chicken at KFC. There was no feedback on which of my answers made me an unsuitable fast food worker.
> What I have noticed is that the more menial, low paid and generally low desirable a job is, the higher that initial barrier is. I suspect it is to at least some extend intentional, though I struggle to understand why that is.
It's down to scale. Low paid work has historically had more applicants than positions. Poor conditions resulting in lots of turnover aid in that also.
It's fairly simple to find work in a small restaurant by walking in or knowing someone already there. Even if the owner/manager treats you poorly there's still a social connection.
Large companies have no social connection with their workers. They adopt language intended to dehumanise. Take "person/worker/employee" being replaced by "resource" as an example. Resources don't have feelings or families. That's then reflected in their recruitment process.
Software companies partially avoid this by have a smaller pool of candidates to draw from and lower turnover. They're - generally - incentivised to improve those processes because they don't want the right candidate to go somewhere else. Yet even then we see a lot of software companies with awful hiring processes.
> I do see start ups here in London who try to make the process smoother. I do not know how successful they are.
I don't think it's a problem that can be solved with automation. The solution is bottom up management. You need to trust the people you hire directly to hire wisely themselves. If you can't do that then maybe your company is too big.
My fave interview was when I was still in college I think the recruiter messed up and put me up for a sr role or maybe the company was a true unicorn: very few generic HR hoops, and heavy on the interesting problem solving with engineers.
Aside from that particular company I had weeks of HR screens, re-fill out your race/gender please(?) emails, and lots of time wasting that was a very very stark contrast for sure.
100% my experience. If it's too difficult or confusing I move on. The linkedin one click apply is pretty sweet, thats the way it should be, fill all the relevant info out once, not over and over. Also, this is what a resume is for.
The furthest I'll go is filling in 2-3 form fields or write a short cover "letter" in a form if I'm particularly interested and the job ad provided sufficient detail that I know there are particular parts of my experience worth calling out to them and explain how it relates to the job in ways that might not be obvious to the first line recruiter.
But yeah, if there isn't an "easy apply" button on a LinkedIn job ad it takes a lot before I'll click through and even more before I'll consider filling in yet another form.
I agree on the benefits of the LinkedIn one-click, but it's all about who receives it on the other end. I did the LinkedIn one-click apply once and received a questionnaire with 10-15 questions, the answers to which were all on my resume. One of the questions: Please provide a link to you LinkedIn profile.
I m one of these, i fill out the form, then i get the memories i had interacting with some of these companies, working at other companies. The Process-Dementia, the hostilitys, the relentless culture of using all things in human interaction as renegotiation ammonition. The relentless pressure, ignoring all social norms and employee health, to complete a task. The shallow friendliness, that ended as soon as your usefullness expired. The internal fights, silos and slightly drunk employees, who hated it there, but couldnt say it, cause big Brother Middle Management is everywhere.
Its considered the "good jobs" in my area, as in well paid enough to own a house, but every time im tempted to apply and see the logos, and the memories come back, i abort these applications.
Some companies are cesspools and its good to remember that and stay away from them. I also warn others to stay away from them. Some people hack these companies and get the easy life there, which is nice, but for people who actually want to work and not interact with such a culture.. not even as customers, if it can be avoided.
Toxic work culture is a very serious thing. It's both a cause and
symptom of a dysfunctional economy and we need to fix it with the same
urgency as problems of transport, environment and health (and it
relates to all).
Every small company starts out "like a family", full of good
intentions, and then ends up in a psychological race to the bottom of
naked exploitation, greed and systemetised ignorance.
Modern HR selects primarily for desperation and compliance. Management
is essentially an activity of self-preservation. Qualities like duty,
loyalty, initiative and industriousness are deemed weaknesses.
There is no way we can build globally competitive and innovative
business in this milieu. How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on
an entire culture?
>Modern HR selects primarily for desperation and compliance. Management is essentially an activity of self-preservation. Qualities like duty, loyalty, initiative and industriousness are deemed weaknesses.
This is true for the white collar world - the entire point of which is to put restraints on the actual skilled workers, so they don't start changing the world quicker than psychopaths can adapt. Otherwise the idiots will just drop off the gene pool, and then who's gonna start our wars for us, eh?
>How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire culture?
You ask this rhetorically, as if it's some sort of intractable question, but the 20th century is full of examples of the West "rebooting" the cultures and economies of non-aligned states, and it sure ain't pretty. Takes about a generation of chaotic violent struggle, give or take. Then, a new local optimum emerges as power inevitably consolidates into the same externality-blind primate hierarchy, "but different".
> You ask this rhetorically, as if it's some sort of intractable
question
Sorry if it came over that way. I certainly didn't mean it to sound
rhetorical. I'm all about actually changing things.
> 20th century is full of examples of the West "rebooting" the
cultures and economies of non-aligned states
And Britain long, long before that. All have been failures, since all
were looting presented as benvolent reform and aid. People help
themselves, which can generally happen only once the boot is romoved
from their faces. So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're
suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :)
Maybe de-booting is what we're after?
One cannot impose a culture. But there's no reason it need take "a
generation of chaotic violent struggle". That seems a little
pessimistic. Historically, "blind primate hierarchies" [1] have
civilised themselves rapidly under the right conditions. It would be
nice to think we could reason our way into a better place before it
comes to the point W. James's "Moral Equivalent of War", as climate
change, inevitably brings us to our senses.
[1] Do you think of Western culture as a blind primate hierarchy?
Is not that very perspective part of the problem?
Where I am from there is a lot of bullying. All the way.. from small kids and up to the political representatives.
What I am doing (and I do not recommend this btw) is to exit every norm, so I do everything superficial poorly. I never edit anything I write, I just post the first draft, I don't cut my hair, I don't wear shoes, my clothes I've just found, I can't remember when I last bought clothes, I don't own a phone, I don't use any social media. Basically I set myself up for being bullied.
However! I also work on the most important problem; the idea being that the absurdity may wake people up to the idea that maybe it's better to help me (by editing things or contributing things) than it is to bully me when what they are doing is nonsense and what I am doing is necessary... The point is that if you cannot use violence then you've got to use humor and poke fun at the holes in the opponents argument.
I thought our individualistic culture was based on the shared understanding that, the more value you provide to others' lives, the more your nonconformities are accepted.
Aint much you can do for your fellows when your hands are in handcuffs though, golden or otherwise, so we better keep up with 'em Joneses and don't dare imagine freedom, or else.
I'm not quite sure how to parse this or if this was even meant for me, but I do hope that this isn't some pretense to dispair or annihilation (the bad kind)
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but I'm basically responsding to the implications I perceived in the "are you a hermit" question, which I feel are quite disheartening in their own right: that meeting society on one's own terms is impossible without imposing on oneself the near-total isolation usually associated with hermitdom.
In another recent comment thread, the refusal to use the conveniences of Big Tech was compared to "self-flagellation" - another quaint association with the atrocities of Western religion - while the fact remains that entrusting contemporary connected technology with stewardship over one's social life is the actual self-harmful approach.
Yes I'm starting to understand a little more and I agree with you in broad strokes. But I guess to parley with 'society' requires some degree of compromise. Casting your own ego into the mix might be self correcting on societies part (maybe not formally); if you impose yourself without effacing anything, like a hapless lover in a one-sided relationship, you stand to lose all of it, if you're pushing and pulling without giving. That's how I see it, as a matter of practicality.
However the more nuanced point, something maybe deeper, about society, reminds me of Weil's 'Great Beast'. In a way I'm offering a redemptive hermitdom, and that's why I thought your response was hard to parse (blame me, because my question could either be seen as childishly naive or a handshake from one acolyte to another).
My conception of hermitdom isn't cursed or evil or self-destructive necessarily, and I was poking at the parent commentor a little to see if they might think the same way. Weil is probably hitting at the core of the issue with more resolution that I could ever hope to achieve:
> Relationship breaks its way out of the social. It is the monopoly of the individual. Society is the cave. The way out is solitude. ... To relate belongs to the solitary spirit. No crowd can conceive relationship: "This is good or bad in relation to..." "in so far as ..." That escapes the crowd. A crowd cannot add things together. One who is above social life returns to it when he wishes; not so one who is below. It is the same with everything.
>Do you think of Western culture as a blind primate hierarchy?
Honestly? I used to think of it as an edifice of enlightened human thought... HAHAHAHAHA.
>Is not that very perspective part of the problem?
Don't think so. I'm not even sure there is a problem.
>I'm all about actually changing things
Oh, I wish things were different, too. But IMHO all I can possibly ever change are my local circumstances, and even that is not always particularly tractable. Intentionally "changing the world for the better" kinda sounds like a single cell of your body arbitrarily changing the laws of physics under which it operates. (Stretch that metaphor a bit and you get cancerous ideologies. We saw how well that worked...)
The world can evolve, though. Over feedback loops that take generations.
>So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :) Maybe de-booting is what we're after?
Now that's some pretty cool wordplay - the world needs more of that, so you made a positive change right there :) The Butlerian debooting :D
Everybody is hoping to acquire lazy and complacent suckers, who won't switch to another employer or cell phone/insurance provider even though the terms they're getting are no longer on par with what the market offers. This strategy largely works too, as I've worked with some exceptional developers working for really meh salaries. They don't think about leaving, too.
>who won't switch to another employer or cell phone/insurance provider even though the terms they're getting are no longer on par with what the market offers. This strategy largely works too, as I've worked with some.
Acquiring competitive market rates and competing in market rates isn't always easy or even reasonable. Sometimes it takes significant effort due to barriers and some of these barriers were erected by companies. Take the modern interview process. Weeks of evening prep time, lots of applications/artificial networking/cold calling/recruiter responding, the time/emotional/ mental energy to step through several hoops, etc. and all this for a chance to compete at a position that probably isn't all that great anyways beyond TC.
That sounds a little rude as a bare question. But it's a good one.
Because friends (real ones that would drive to to the hospital) are
where we start to rebuild this mess.
Not the OP, but mixing employment with friendship can be difficult to navigate.
I know from personal experience that is is possible for a friendship to survive adverse shocks involving money. But it is difficult, it does change things permanently, and it seems rare that it survives at all.
I'm thinking specifically of a situation where things were much less clear-cut, and involved far more than $100.
It is easy to make grand declarations. But when ethical considerations are not very clear-cut and you're talking real pain, you really figure out what a friendship is worth.
“Modern HR” (aka in-house commissar) is a top-down legally mandated entity to 1) exert regulatory control on all but the tiniest companies and 2) reward the useless-nagger constituency of the party with jobs.
There is no system-wide hard-reset, not in our lifetimes. There is retreat & regroup, away from the eye of sauron, while the parasite devours the host.
> There is no way we can build globally competitive and innovative business in this milieu. How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire culture?
Leave and build lifestyle businesses. Not every business has to be globally competitive. Create more opportunities for freelancers. Basically, there need to be attractive options for employees outside of working at globally competitive companies in order to force the change. After all, from the already existing global businesses' point of view, the current methods are working fine.
When you have so many mergers/aq. that build de facto monopolies there's no incentive for companies to care about their employees and the emphasis becomes on the image of caring vs actual caring.
As the employee has a small selection of companies to work for and jobs become about bureaucracy and politics instead of actual `work` and there's not much you as employee can do about it.
The companies not caring about customers but pretending to is another story tangential to this one.
>How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire culture?
One way would be for people to team up and form cooperatives. A cooperative is owned by all the workers and all the workers share the profits and have a saying.
Working with good people is the key to me. The problem with that is that it can change overnight when a senior leader leaves and someone new joins - I had one place that went from "great" to "awful" when a new CIO started and his culture started filtering down.
Yeah it's a difficult question. For me personally, the things you highlighted (good people, good cause) are the most important ones and I'm in the privileged position that I have a job where I like both those aspects. But it's kind of badly organized and that is a shame, maybe even because of growth.
To paraphrase Chekhov - All large companies are the same. All small companies are different in their own different ways.
IMHO large, corporate-style companies all appear to have read the same manuals on how to organize a company, so, minor variations aside, you know what you're going to get.
Small companies don't hire from the same sources or don't reach critical mass in any departments to start down the track of the larger companies, so your experience there may vary a lot, for good and bad.
I've spent approx. 12 years at large multinational engineering companies and 8 at small/medium size companies. I am now at a good, medium-size one (~150 employees, all told), and unless things change dramatically, this is where I'll have to clean out my office when I retire.
Edit: To elaborate a little, I think the sweet spot where you are quite likely to find a decent experience is in a company which employs at least several tens of people, but no more than a couple hundred.
Why? Because by the time it has reached that size, you will have dedicated people (that is, people allowed to spend time to become good at their niche, rather than being generalists) for most functions.
Still, the company is small enough that most people in the organization at least are familiar to each other, making most interaction more flexible (IMHO) than if you're at a huge corporation where anybody is viewed as an easily replaceable resource.
Even at a small company... the 'good' aspects are in the eye of the beholder, and can change quickly.
Some places I've been have been 'good' by department. People in dept X really ... tolerated things. Pay was decent, but periodic pushes for more 'work' burned out quite a few. But people in dept Y loved their setup. Each dept rated 'the company' relatively differently (not surprising).
Another place was... nice. Good... Pleasant. I was on the tech side - around ~20 people in the tech dept (a little bit of networking, some software dev, some testing, some support, etc). We had around a year of everything just humming. Then a new day to day CEO comes in and 8 people left in 8 months. Out of 20... that's a lot. The new CEO was quite damaging (and, I think he knew that he was having a negative effect, and wanted that for reasons that would only benefit him). Suddenly, that company that was 'good' for years got bad real quick.
Perhaps the 'good' companies are the ones where some larger culture can endure top leadership/personnel changes? Does that ever happen, or is it an inevitability?
Idk it seems like many small companies can be just as toxic, and you can probably find a lot of cushy positions for big companies.
Actually, small companies can be even more toxic, because the chance of this toxicity blowing something up is much less, and there may be powerful individuals, who have little to checks and balances.
It seems like at most big companies no one person can really do anything major, it takes 2-5 powerful people; plus there's oversight above them that could theoretically act if the whole team starts going rogue.
I've heard horror stories. Some of my colleagues have had to admit that while everyone may resent HR, you do NOT want to work for a company that does it badly.
Is this really accurate? Usually when I'm doing something I consider important, I get partly through the flow, go offline to prepare further, and then come back later with a more detailed answer. This is especially true if it isn't obvious at the beginning what I will need later on.
Are they identifying if somebody does this, or counting the first visit as a person who left without returning?
That's a valid question, but keep in mind that for most of the people clicking through it's unlikely to be something they consider important. When looking for a job, I click through on a lot of jobs where I simply haven't got enough information yet to be invested in any way, and part of what will make me decide is whether the application form makes them look like idiots I don't want to work for.
I'm in the same situation. One company that was interested in me would have offered me a junior position as a "full-stack" dev, that should also be able to do "some embedded work". Also they don't "track hours", which is illegal in my country.
Jumping through hoops during the process has also left a sour taste in my mouth.Even after spending hours on an application, cover letter, customizing my CV, often no response comes. Even a form letter would be better than nothing! It feels like I'm sending a part of myself into the void.
It's more like 6 once you include the HR screen and Department head meetings. 4 interviews seems totally unnecessary in itself. Especially if they were all 1 hour or more. Their current process would take 4-6 hours and that's only if they don't have any take home technical tests.
1) Quick phone chat
2) Technical interview - Either review or carry out technical test.
3) Team interview
Even then the team and technical interviews can be doubled up and the phone chat can easily be cut out entirely.
4-5 hours of interviews seems pretty standard even for companies you’ve never heard of. Nowadays every tech company pretends like they’re FAANG, and then they complain about how hard it is to hire new devs. As if the Leetcode rigamarole weren’t bad enough every company expects you to do 7 interviews. Finding a tech job is a full-time job in itself
Even interviewing out of school way back when, 4 or 5 interviews seemed pretty normal for all sorts of different roles whether or not there was a phone screen/on-campus interview. And, of course, this was all in-person so you're probably talking a couple days especially if you consider some modicum of research about the company. More recently, aside from a very small company, the few interviews I've had it's been a fairly standard 4 interviews or so panel after whatever initial contacts I had with people I knew.
When is "way back when?" 2007-2011, the interview consisted of one or two hours in person on location. That's it. 20 minutes with HR, 20 minutes with the hiring manager, 20 minutes at the whiteboard, 20 minutes with a VP/CTO/CEO and you were done. Segments were often ended early because you were taking up a conference room, so there was an incentive to keep things brief and at a brisk pace.
I'm not saying the in-person experience was superior or inferior to how it is now, but it was considerate of everybody's time.
My most recent FAANG job (this year) was a total of 3 interviews (~45 min each), plus an optional reach out from the hiring manager's boss who simply wanted to know if the process was going well and if I had any questions.
Add in a couple of convos with the internal recruiter and the negotiation session, and I was still under 3 hours over the course of a week or 2. Completely not unreasonable..
Aside from the usual resume data entry I especially dislike being asked to write mini essays. GitHub is a particularly egregious example in my own experience. Never again will I invest multiple hours into an application only to be quickly rejected by what I assume was a machine.
Would anyone with an OpenAI key be willing to share? Interesting to see what it gives for an "enthusiastic cover letter for a software engineering job at Google" or whatever
Write the greatest ever cover letter for a job at Google (I am open to offers - 7+ figure offers only please)
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing in regards to the open position at Google. I believe that I would be the perfect candidate for this job and I would like to explain why.
First and foremost, I have a passion for technology and Google is at the forefront of technological innovation. I would love to be a part of a team that is constantly pushing the boundaries and developing new, groundbreaking products.
In addition to my passion for technology, I have a strong educational background. I hold a degree in computer science from a top university and I have consistently achieved excellent grades. My skills and knowledge would make me a valuable asset to the Google team.
Finally, I have a proven track record of success. I have previous experience working in the tech industry and I have a history of meeting or exceeding expectations. I am confident that I would be a high-performing employee at Google.
I believe that I have the skills, knowledge, and experience that would make me a perfect fit for the job at Google. I would love to have the opportunity to discuss my qualifications further and I thank you for your time and consideration.
Produce a cover letter that a psycopath would write for a job at google.
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing in regards to the job opening at Google. I believe that I have the perfect qualifications for the position and would be an excellent addition to your team.
I have always been extremely intelligent and have a natural knack for computers and technology. I have also always been very good at working with people and have always been able to get along with everyone I meet. I believe that these qualities would make me the perfect candidate for the job.
I am a highly motivated individual and I am sure that I would excel in this position. I am eager to put my skills to use and I am confident that I would be a valuable asset to your company.
Thank you for your time and consideration and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
I'm happy to provide reasonably lengthy written responses (though not multiple hours) if it's well into the process, but just last night I had a recruiter who on the back of me saying I "might be interested" decided to ask me to fill in a form with multiple free-form text fields where he advised me to provide lengthy answers before he'd even convinced me the role is worth my time.
Being in a position to be picky it felt great to send him a list of pieces of information I expected from him before I'd consider filling in their form.
Can definitely relate to the GitHub example. I sucked it up and went through the application, assuming that if I was putting this much effort into an application then I'd at least get some feedback. Got a short blanket email saying they'd gone with someone else and no feedback as to why.
I don't mind being rejected at all, but it's clear they have absolutely no concept of how much time it takes applicants to submit. The thought of ever going through that again means I'm unlikely to ever re-submit in the future.
The best part I hate is being forced to upload my CV, which as expected is never handled properly by the system, and then I have to manually replicate the CV entering data into tiny form entries.
Also I don't want to give access to my LinkedIn and Xing accounts for data import, which is anyway, again, messed up.
I would estimate 90% of people who finish the application never hear another word from the employer - with the bulk (~75%) being automated responses [1]. The response rate from clicking apply to begin the process is a wonderful 0.2%.
I guess this is why websites reinventing recruitment and recruiters exist, although I suspect 'back in the day' when you would circle ads in the newspaper things were better, much better ...
Well I'll tell you why I don't finish mine. It is because their UI and UX sucks. They ask for a PDF, but they always fail to parse it, and trying to correct the parsed data is an exercise in frustration. Also, they don't let you only manually type-in the data, they require the PDF to do a crappy job of parsing from.
And then they don't let me fill-in things the way I want to. For example, as a one-man operation I have worked with multiple clients at the same time and mediated and implemented projects that were a collaboration between several clients. Their web UI won't accept that sort of thing.
Just let me upload a damn PDF, or even just let me type-in free-form text.
Recently I wanted to apply to a company. First they had you read some weird document telling you how they can’t pay high salaries, so you should be modest with your expectations.
Then further down the form they require you to record a video introducing yourself and telling them why they should hire you.
Ended up closing the form right there.
Do these people not realize how annoying their process is and how talented people don’t have to put up with crap like this?
Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;)
I believe the thinking is: "This is a great filter to ensure we only get great and passionate people!" when the reality is: "This is a great filter to ensure that only desperate or unimaginative people will apply!"
>Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;)
This keeps getting repeated. But honestly these days I can't tell the god damn difference. What is malice, other than incompetent people struggling to survive like anyone else, and paradoxically sticking up for each other through the same repetitive cycle of abuse that prevents them from aspiring to competence?
Malice is the conscious identification of that same pathway and the active exploitation of it for the harm of others. It’s a fairly high bar in terms of the behavior of others.
Functionally, though, your experiences may be very similar on the receiving end of incompetence vs malice.
edit: I want to append this to say: The purpose of the original phrase in my opinion was to encourage cooperation and communication as the solution. In a sufficiently structured corporate environment this solution may be impossible for reasons other than malicious behavior, in which case the statement is without practical value.
> The purpose of the original phrase in my opinion was to encourage cooperation and communication as the solution.
I agree that this might have been the original intention, yet the phrase has become a way of virtue signaling and looking down on those who assume malice. IMHO, difference is minuscule, because in many cases consequences are the same.
Malice is a legal, quasi-religious concept. A tiger can also quite actively exploit weaknesses and imbalances for the harm of its prey, yet we don't judge the animal as malicious - because we don't attribute concsiousness to it in the same way we attribute it to humans.
To have "malice", you need "intent", for which you need need "consciousness", in the classical folk understanding of the term: taking "selfhood", "free will", and "adequate theory of mind" as axioms. Whatever the scientific consensus on those, they seem to have little explanatory power in the domain of business. They're also a pretty high bar, so to speak - certainly higher than we give 'em credit for.
If those words really meant what they purported to mean, we'd be functioning in a much more humane economy; but for whatever reason these concepts just don't "stick" to what's really going on in the day-to-day. They're just the wishful thinking of Western humanist authors who were trying to set an example, i.e. mold the world in their own image a little bit.
> Functionally, though, your experiences may be very similar on the receiving end of incompetence vs malice.
Precisely. And since we're just people who just have objectives to accomplish, and our understanding of the consciousness of others takes at best a pragmatic role in pursuing those, our response to others failing us ends up being essentially the same: looking for ways to enforce compliance so that the counterparty delivers.
At the end of the day, "attributing malice" vs. "attributing incompetence" is about saving face - for the counterparty as well as for ourselves. Either way, dedicating effort to saving face detracts from the effort of understanding the problem at hand, which like you said is fundamentally structural.
> A tiger can also quite actively exploit weaknesses and imbalances for the harm of its prey, yet we don't judge the animal as malicious
A tiger is not malicious when it harms prey, because the intent is survival, and it cannot have that without harm. The survival of abusive CEOs and managers does not require harm to be done to anyone, yet they do it (sometimes for no tangible benefit).
> To have "malice", you need "intent"
You need not intend for your actions to be malicious, for them to be. If you are willfully ignorant of malicious consequences of your actions, your actions are still malicious. This is why "I didn't know what I was doing was harming people" defense doesn't fly, not in the legal sense and not in the moral. At some point it is your duty to determine the consequences of your actions, and something being your job is definitely over that threshold.
> You need not intend for your actions to be malicious, for them to be. If you are willfully ignorant of malicious consequences of your actions, your actions are still malicious.
I think this is almost the same point as parent, albeit slightly askew from that one.
The hint is in your use of the word “willfully” — that is, you know what you are doing will result in harm, and you choose to do it anyway.
A difference is that “intending to harm” may be a differently intractable behavior because it is effectively sadism. That is a tighter reward loop than “pretending it doesn’t harm” which can just be avoidance.
Of course whether or not you can ever learn which of those (if it isn’t both) you’re dealing with is an entirely different matter.
We agree on the tiger, though I do wonder what she would say if she could explain her actions.
I don't think it's really different in a metaphysical sense, but one views the object of irritation more as a potential pupil than as an established enemy.
> Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;)
Actually this thought process has been problematic for me. Seeing that everyone is actually incompetent is more dangerous than there being a reason (good, bad or otherwise) for their actions.
> Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;)
While this is true — I would be very surprised if anyone was actively malicious towards their hiring pool — it's not an important distinction when trying to decide which employer to apply for.
> it's not an important distinction when trying to decide which employer to apply for
Oh I completely agree.
The funny thing is I actively enjoy writing - but I look at the long questionnaire for some otherwise quite attractive companies and sigh, and assume that everything internally is just as clueless and so just pass them by for a company who won't waste my time.
The problem is the potential for malice in a place where incompetence reigns. Management incompetence is malice waiting to happen - not necessarily by the incompetent ones which makes it really hard to fight when it does.
>Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;)
I no longer subscribe to this line of thought after seeing several borderline sociopaths use this very same mental model in order to try and manipulate people into doing their bidding.
There's probably a term for it, but I'm noticing being "deliberately unsuccessful" is becoming more of a thing with the sketchier members of my family. Seems to be a tactic in the NEET playbook.
As I see it, "intentional failure" is just a euphemism for sabotage.
>
I believe the thinking is: "This is a great filter to ensure we only get great and passionate people!"
Assume this were true. Even if this were the case, this might backfire: "passionate" easily works against a company.
This means that if you filter for passionate people, but reject such passionate candidates, these candidates might passionately work against your company (e.g. tell every friend what a shithole of a company this is etc.).
So, filtering for passionate people in the hiring process (even if it worked) is in my opinion dangerous idea.
I doubt they are looking for talents / very competitive people. It's more in the lines of "competent just enough but very obedient / willing to put up with a lot".
You will not find many passionate people anywhere. There are a lot of great people who will do a good job for 8 hours and then go home. You can find a few passionate people who dream of working for you, but not enough who are also great that you can staff a company on them.
I work for John Deere, one of those companies that (where I live) has a lot of loyal customers who teach their children we are the best. Even still the majority of great people I work with just want to work their job and go home. (to avoid burn out we don't allow the passionate to work more than 8 hours very often, so the difference between great; and great and passionate isn't significant)
> Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice ;)
Please stop saying this, especially if you have no actual evidence of incompetence. It's the equivalent of clicking your heels together three times because you really, really don't want to live in a world full of casual malice. Wishing doesn't make it so.
When we’re talking about widely observed practices across broad swaths of activity (this case hiring practices) then we can, ought, and need to move from assuming incompetence to assuming malice. That saying was always meant to be tied with another saying “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” And the other quote about doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result is a good definition of insanity.
The first time you end up working for a malignant narcissist, you will never ever state that quote ever again. As long as you live. If you ever work for a sociopath, it might take a couple of jobs getting abused by sociopaths to wipe that quote out of your memory.
It's considerate of an applicants time by saving them the hassle about price conversation up front. That's for your benefit, not theirs (they lose the "grip" they might otherwise have at price negotiation time due to your sunk cost, which is totally to their benefit). Some applicants know to ask about wage this early, but many don't, so it's equalizing to let anyone opt out pre-pipeline, not just the confident men who've done a billion interviews and know to ask asap.
As for video, that feels like a company trying to supplement a prior process that used to lean a lot on in-person networking and associated soft skills assessment, which is lost in online apply processes. Not everyone feels at ease in networking settings, and so many ppl don't show up to those "meet first" spaces. This is giving the introverts and non-urban ppl a way to enter their pipeline while still requiring those applicants to put some of their personality on the table early on in the filter.
I dunno, I don't get the criticisms in this sub-thread, but I assume commenters have a neurotype that this specifically rubs the wrong way?
I think the lack of reciprocity is the issue for people, especially when it comes to uploading a video of yourself talking to an imaginary person.
Regarding price conversation, salary is always negotiable after an offer is made even when an employer says that it isn't, the applicant just needs to be willing to say no.
The video thing is dodgy. Being able to see the multitude of 'legally troublesome factors' of the initial applicants is making my inner lawyer scream. You can easily bias based on race, sex, wedding ring, kids toys in the background, location, religion, etc.
A few years back I took a call from a recruiter who wanted me to apply for a role at am investment bank - for less money, less holidays and longer hours than the role I had at the time.
He was genuinely confused as to why I wasn't excited by this "opportunity".
>talented people don’t have to put up with crap like this?
Is this true outside of tech? The only application I ever did in finance/accounting that wasn't one of these annoying forms was an IB interview I got through nepotistic networking, nothing to do with my talent.
Yes, there are lots of jobs, and talented people can switch.
Jobs that pay well can treat their people worse - though worse treatment is weird. There are places that treat their people well, but because the job is considered unethical by many they have to pay more.
Funny (true) story: In one memorable case, I went the opposite route and stated my salary expectations up front, knowing full well that they were likely above the HR-approved salary scales the company was likely to offer. The point was I was not prepared to work for that particular company (life insurance) unless the money was eye-wateringly good.
Despite their (supposedly) knowing that, they put me through all their HR hoops anyway, all the way to a final interview, when the manager I'd have worked for looked across the table at me and said, "So what sort of salary would you have in mind?"
I looked him in the eye, didn't blink, didn't blush. Repeated the figure I'd given up front. The interview was over.
Why the fuck did they bother with all the palaver when they knew they were never going to pay that much. Did they think I'd blink?
Last laugh: I ended up doing a short consulting stint there several years later and took more off them in a couple of weeks than the annual salary they'd failed to meet.
You might be overestimating their ability to communicate that information internally throughout the process. Even if their process was set up to request that information, it’s likely that many of the interviewers/hiring managers didn’t see it or remember it.
Yep. I was never totally sure who was bullshitting me, the manager/interviewer or the recruiter person who'd started the ball rolling, hence my "supposedly" above.
> Last laugh: I ended up doing a short consulting stint there several years later and took more off them in a couple of weeks than the annual salary they'd failed to meet.
This is still a dream of mine. I'd like to pull this off somehow. The answer is apparently not "Fiverr" or "Upwork".
1. having a network of trusted people you've worked with in the past
2. building some sort of public reputation where people seek you out.
They're not mutually exclusive, but #1 is probably easiest for people already in a job. Go to networking events (covid has muted a lot of this, I know, but it's coming back). Tell people you're looking for consulting work or open to new jobs. Be nice.
Yes, the answer for most people is not fiverr or upwork. I've known a few folks who've done good there, but they're outliers in my network. And even then, the few businesses I've known that have used platforms like that use it as a test ground, and then go direct with someone they click with.
That said, I've never taken a full year salary in 2 weeks. I have taken my own full year salary matching my early earning days from 30 years ago in 2-3 months now.
>> Recently I wanted to apply to a company. First they had you read some weird document telling you how they can’t pay high salaries, so you should be modest with your expectations.
My favorite one was an employer who low-balled me for a job in NYC. Then he says "I know people who live in Pennsylvania and commute in [read: the wage doesnt have to be sustenance wage in NYC/suburbs, you can just commute to somewhere far away]." suggesting that one can make budgets work if one tries hard enough.
Then they can hire such people. If they can find enough of them. Or better yet they should move to Pennsylvania as that is where they want to hire people from: they can then hire people who would be willing to work for those wages but are not willing for the commute.
Lot of thoughts / questions. First off, if you're getting the talent you need out of your application process, then who cares.
If you're not, and your numbers of abandoned applications are high, then throw the forms in the trash can and see what happens for a month. Contact details, attach resume done.
I highly suspect that a lot of these 'applications' are ad/click fraud (companies spend a lot of money to drive traffic to their job postings), other bots, recruiters testing the waters to play middleman, or people who were never going to apply no matter how easy the process is.
I wonder how many people _think_ about applying for a job advertised by traditional means; but never actually end up applying?
I'd imagine a lot of people do; I know I have in the past.
Perhaps the main difference with a digital application, is that we are able to track some of the behavioural artifacts that are created on the lead up to applying .. which aren't available (or visible) via the traditional alterative.
One thing to remember about stats like this is that the sample is very biased. While there are all kinds of reasons a person might be looking for work, and many people looking will potentially be great employees, most great employees already have jobs. The population looking for jobs is going to be, on average, less suitable for employment than those who already have them. Add to that the fact that more promising applicants tend to be selective with their applications, whereas lower quality applicants tend to spam resumes out widely, as long as little effort is required, and it starts to become unsurprising that a large majority of people who click an apply button don't bother to go further when a minor roadblock is hit.
Ours is a very different type of business than Home Depot, but we intentionally put a minor roadblock (a fizzbuzz-level coding problem) in our job application, specifically to filter out those applicants unwilling or unable to put in the slightest effort to apply. (And we see a very similar percentage who don't bother to complete it - at least 90%.) The question is intentionally easy, as we don't want to waste people's time, and it's not fair to ask for much before reciprocating. But it is a fantastic way to eliminate the applicants who are just using the shotgun approach, and get down to those who actually have a clue and a real interest in the position. (Much fairer and more useful than keyword filtering imo too, and can be a good way to start a dialogue.)
So I guess what I'm saying is, maybe this is a feature, not a bug.
For one, when I'm applying for jobs, I'm in a totally different headspace to when I'm programming. It's uncomfortable and takes me out of the zone.
And two, sometimes I apply for jobs on my phone. With a saved resume and autofill from Google it works out really well - but not if there's a coding question.
I'm sure it results in some false negatives, but I don't know of a better way to filter the applicant pool to something reasonable. And so far it's helped me hire a fantastic team of developers, many of whom don't have the standard credentials you might look for on a résumé.
That said, I do think I'm going to try and simplify the question even further, since I think having anything at all will accomplish the goal, so there's no point making people do any more work than absolutely necessary.
> I'm sure it results in some false negatives, but I don't know of a better way to filter the applicant pool to something reasonable.
You mentioned a better way in your original comment:
>>> we intentionally put a minor roadblock (a fizzbuzz-level coding problem) in our job application, specifically to filter out those applicants unwilling or unable to put in the slightest effort to apply. (And we see a very similar percentage who don't bother to complete it - at least 90%.) The question is intentionally easy
Use a difficult question, and you'll get a smaller pool of higher-quality applicants.
We do use difficult questions later in the process. I don't believe it's reasonable to put a difficult question right in the job application before the applicant even knows if we're going to respond. That's why that question is intentionally easy. As another reply said, it's basically like a captcha.
The first stage is just a quick question we ask people to answer along with their initial application. The second stage is what we use as an actual interview process (described in more detail in other replies here). The purpose of the first stage is just to filter out the large percentage of applicants who are unqualified and just spamming out résumés. Passing that alone is of course not enough for someone to be hired.
Well, again, what is the benefit of having a multi-stage process? Is it helping the applicants? Is it helping you? Start with a harder question, and you're doing them a favor at the same time you do one for yourself.
Why would you need one filter for "qualifications > 1" and a second one for "qualifications > 4" when you could just apply "qualifications > 4"?
I couldn't disagree more with you, and I wonder if you've ever managed a hiring process.
If you put a hard programming question as a requirement just to APPLY for a job, I don't think you would get any good candidates at all. It's just not worth the time. When you're applying for a job you have no idea if the company is going to be interested at all, and that's fine, because there are just so many variables involved.
They could have just found someone and not yet taken the ad down. They could be about to receive an application from someone even better than you. They (or their system) might have some inherent bias against you, maybe even accidentally (degree > bootcamp, US college vs Canadian college, etc.).
When you're applying for a job it's just not feasible to go around doing HARD programming questions every time, because for so many reasons out of your control the company might just ignore you. And that's fine, that's for them to decide. But it means doing what you're saying would be a terrible, terrible idea, and actually most likely get the worst candidates who don't have any other options but can find a solution to your problem online.
Because you've already initiated a dialogue with and shown interest in those candidates, so they have at least some assurance that they're not just wasting their time.
How is that? All of these things are still problems once the company has said "hey, we received your resume, and now we want you to do something more":
> They could have just found someone and not yet taken the ad down.
> They could be about to receive an application from someone even better than you.
> They (or their system) might have some inherent bias against you
> When you're applying for a job it's just not feasible to go around doing HARD programming questions every time, because for so many reasons out of your control the company might just ignore you.
> you have no idea if the company is going to be interested at all
Most of those responses are going to candidates the company would never even consider hiring, because the initial filter is so worthless.
Two years ago when I was applying for a job, every application requested a take-home test.
After doing a few of these, I decided I will NEVER do them again. I will not spend hours coding only to be (at best case) reviewed for a few minutes by someone from the other end.
I know you're saying it is a minor roadblock, but how do I know that you're not going to ghost my application like most of other companies do? That's why most people will not bother to do your test, not something about you, but the broken system.
FizzBuzz isn't quite a take-home. A good screen is something that takes under 1minute so it doesn't disrespect the candidate's time whilst also being vaguely useful -- sure passing FBuzz means nothing but failure is pretty much the red flag of red flags for SWE hiring.
Take home tests create a perverse incentive, live coding interviews don't.
Specifically, a company can blast out a bajillion take home tests to a bajillion candidates for one position without a care in the world, but for live coding interviews it requires their own employee's time, so they're incentivized to only do it with candidates they're serious about.
As an interviewee, I don't care. Most take home tests aren't that difficult and don't take that much time. And it's coding, which is much more enjoyable than meetings.
Plus, there's the fact that I don't do well in live coding interviews. I get a version of "stage fright" where my mind goes blank and thinking becomes impossible for a bit. I don't experience it anytime on the job, either. Just in interviews.
> You don't care whether you have almost no effective chance to actually get a job?
Grug care. Grug can't pass live coding interview. Grug freeze. Grug ask for take home test instead. Grug not care about "perverse incentive." Grug want job.
FizzBuzz is a very small roadblock - a couple of minutes. If you have your choice of language, it'll probably take less time than thinking of a creative answer to a form question like "what do you find interesting about our company?".
Perhaps the form should say "do not spend more than 5 minutes on this question", so that people who get stuck don't end waste a long time. It's really just a captcha to filter out people who can't program at all and also don't know to Google for an answer to paste in.
Yeah, we definitely keep the work minimal up front. My process is to filter applications down to anyone who's completed the little 5-minute problem. Then I'll send each of them a quick note thanking them for their application, and asking a question about the answer they submitted. (Generally I can just pick from a small set of questions, since there are a very limited number of ways to solve it given the simplicity.) That starts a dialogue where I can learn a bit more about how they think, and they can see that I'm actually interested/invested.
From there we make a shortlist based on those discussions and résumés (and cover letters if present), and move on to a few more involved programming tests, which try to replicate the actual kind of work that would be done here. (Each was taken from actual development or bug fixes we did in the past, then simplified and encapsulated to make a reasonable assignment.) We start with one of these and ask that the applicant pull the assignment repository, create a branch, make some commits as appropriate to solve the problem, and then start a pull request, which we review much like we would an internal code review. We also encourage them to ask questions and share thoughts throughout the process, as they would as a member of the team.
Through all of this the goal is to show both sides what it would be like to actually work together. (As well as to demonstrate to the applicant that we are as invested in this process as they are.)
I'm sure we do lose some good applicants with the initial quick question on the application, but it does serve to filter out essentially all of the really bad applicants, which gives me the freedom to give real attention to those who remain.
From personal PoV as a software engineer - not that surprising.
I've yet to have any success from any online application, while my hit rate when contacted by recruiters is relatively high - nothing to do with particular recruiters being good at gaging my wants or skills, simply they have the incentive to get this done, because only then they get paid.
My guess is either the official postings are a company policy requirement to give someone a promotion (get some external CVs in, do some biased comparison to justify why the person deserves a promotion - at least my experience from working in a bank) or the company can't be bothered to spend their own time recruiting & just outsources it to a recruiting company, forgetting they have their own listing open. Also, most if not all of those external platforms are quite bad.
There are two reasons I don't finish some online job applications:
1. Some application processes ask me to upload my resume and then want me to manually enter it again in a series of web forms. I'm not interested in spending 30+ minutes manually copying and pasting the resume I just uploaded. I figure that lack of common sense is systemic in the company, so I don't want to work there.
2. Some companies use third-party services, like icimi.com. If I submit two or three resumes through these third-party services and fail to receive a response, I never apply for other companies that use these same services.
They should just put the stuff they extract from the PDF into some queryable form. Then, when there is a hit on a query, direct to the PDF. I doubt that the query results will be significantly worse, probably even better.
1. Some application processes ask me to upload my resume and then want me to manually enter it again in a series of web forms. I'm not interested in spending 30+ minutes manually copying and pasting the resume I just uploaded. I figure that lack of common sense is systemic in the company, so I don't want to work there.
Workday! If the "Apply Here" button takes me to a Workday link, that's my off-ramp.
I have no idea how Workday is so ubiquitous when its user experience and aesthetic is so terrible.
I applied for a role at ThoughtWorks once and their form was an interesting one. They as all the usual details but they an an option in leui of uploading your CV and other details 'or enter manually'.
It's the most bizarro thing I've ever seen, a single line text field.
Feeling kinda leet at the time I decided to take the plunge and cut and paste cover letter, CV, LinkedIn profile etc into this small field and let it burn.
Unsurprisingly I never got contact or received any confirmation or anything....
Why the hell would they even have that as an option?
One of the "questions" on their apply for job form is
TL;DR
Optional field is REQUIRED and only option is "Yes"
"At Thoughtworks, we are intentional about making technology a better place for all. We know that the more diverse our backgrounds are, the more impactful solutions we build for our clients. We foster an inclusive community and focus on creating a balanced workforce reflective of the society we live in.To help us achieve this balance, we encourage you to answer these demographic questions. We collect this data to understand who we are reaching (and who we’re not) so we can do better at connecting with a truly diverse group of potential Thoughtworkers. Our recruiting teams will only see the data collected here on an aggregated level, consistent with our Data Privacy Policy. Responding to the questions is completely voluntary and anonymous. Declining to respond will not impact your standing in the recruiting process."
The field is REQUIRED and the only option is "Yes"
It seems like they only wanted to include a block of informational text but the software only supported fields, so they had to make it a dummy required field. This smells more like terrible tech than malice.
Thoughtworks asked me talk about a time I've been discriminated against in their culture fit interview. One of the worst interviewing experiences I've had.
That question is illegal in the US. There is no way to honestly answer it without revealing information that they cannot legally ask, and thus they cannot legally ask it. You should stop the interview right there, if they are willing to violate the law then they are not the type of company you want to work with.
You may want to contact a lawyer about suing them for asking, but I'm not sure how that works.
The above applies to the US. If you are in a different country then you need to check your local laws.
I went through one the other day that had some dropdowns for "how many years of experience do you have with technology x", which seemed fine, until I found their form didn't work using the keyboard (tabs/numbers), and then found there were no less than TWENTY EIGHT such dropdowns, all required. Do you want to give me an RSI?
Other issue is companies with a broken captcha. Can't apply without proving you're human, can't prove you're human because their captcha just spins. Wanna refresh? Sure, but you'll have to enter your details again.
In saying that, I find the process better than a couple of years ago. Many companies are able to prefill details like education and employment from LinkedIn. At least it's better than them trying and failing to read your resume automatically.
700 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 340 ms ] threadAt this point I’m not even sure if big companies read cover letters at all.
I have 15 years of work experience.
Maybe to have a separate "get more info" is worse for business. At least for me, the opposite it is true. It makes me hesitate to click in the "buy" button just to find more about the product.
When you advertise traditionally you don't get a lot of information back from consumers other than those who start or make a purchase. The more actions you put between discovery and purchase, the more you can refine parts of the process.
There are probably other psychological elements at play as well about gradually introducing information so you can strategically present the better aspects of something before you talk about say an ugly cost.
I used to think that too, until I clicked a similar button on Amazon...
(Yes it expired was contested etc.)
Also, the article is spot on about the tediousness of the online applications. I applied to a position at my kids’ school last year. School websites are awful enough but then they bounce you into a separate portal for the application. And the flow is built around the most complicated job that they might need to hire for. So, to get a job as, say, a p/t middle school soccer coach or night custodian, you have to go through all these steps that really don’t apply. And of course then they moan about how hard it is to fill positions.
On the other hand the initial step in software development job application (my current profession) typically seems a lot smoother, though of course then they are followed up by more technical steps (which generally makes sense).
I do see start ups here in London who try to make the process smoother. I do not know how successful they are.
To limit the number of applicants; like you said, menial and low paid, so having people go through hurdles to apply makes them more motivated than shotgun applicants - and reduces the amount of applications HR has to sift through.
One suspicion I have is perhaps the people in hiring whether consciously or not believe making the process more difficult improves the signal to noise ratio of applicants. Makes sense when there are 10+ applicants for each open position I think. They don't care about the people they are turning away.
One should generally prefer criminal gangs elected according to social contract, since they are basically "our* criminal gang.
As for moral relativism - not so much. There's enough consensus for judiciaries and criminologists to define objective criminal behaviours. I think you mean that we exercise more or less tolerance of the criminal behaviour of certain groups.
> What I have noticed is that the more menial, low paid and generally low desirable a job is, the higher that initial barrier is. I suspect it is to at least some extend intentional, though I struggle to understand why that is.
It's down to scale. Low paid work has historically had more applicants than positions. Poor conditions resulting in lots of turnover aid in that also.
It's fairly simple to find work in a small restaurant by walking in or knowing someone already there. Even if the owner/manager treats you poorly there's still a social connection.
Large companies have no social connection with their workers. They adopt language intended to dehumanise. Take "person/worker/employee" being replaced by "resource" as an example. Resources don't have feelings or families. That's then reflected in their recruitment process.
Software companies partially avoid this by have a smaller pool of candidates to draw from and lower turnover. They're - generally - incentivised to improve those processes because they don't want the right candidate to go somewhere else. Yet even then we see a lot of software companies with awful hiring processes.
> I do see start ups here in London who try to make the process smoother. I do not know how successful they are.
I don't think it's a problem that can be solved with automation. The solution is bottom up management. You need to trust the people you hire directly to hire wisely themselves. If you can't do that then maybe your company is too big.
Also for a KFC job.
My fave interview was when I was still in college I think the recruiter messed up and put me up for a sr role or maybe the company was a true unicorn: very few generic HR hoops, and heavy on the interesting problem solving with engineers.
Aside from that particular company I had weeks of HR screens, re-fill out your race/gender please(?) emails, and lots of time wasting that was a very very stark contrast for sure.
But yeah, if there isn't an "easy apply" button on a LinkedIn job ad it takes a lot before I'll click through and even more before I'll consider filling in yet another form.
Its considered the "good jobs" in my area, as in well paid enough to own a house, but every time im tempted to apply and see the logos, and the memories come back, i abort these applications.
Some companies are cesspools and its good to remember that and stay away from them. I also warn others to stay away from them. Some people hack these companies and get the easy life there, which is nice, but for people who actually want to work and not interact with such a culture.. not even as customers, if it can be avoided.
Toxic work culture is a very serious thing. It's both a cause and symptom of a dysfunctional economy and we need to fix it with the same urgency as problems of transport, environment and health (and it relates to all).
Every small company starts out "like a family", full of good intentions, and then ends up in a psychological race to the bottom of naked exploitation, greed and systemetised ignorance.
Modern HR selects primarily for desperation and compliance. Management is essentially an activity of self-preservation. Qualities like duty, loyalty, initiative and industriousness are deemed weaknesses.
There is no way we can build globally competitive and innovative business in this milieu. How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire culture?
This is true for the white collar world - the entire point of which is to put restraints on the actual skilled workers, so they don't start changing the world quicker than psychopaths can adapt. Otherwise the idiots will just drop off the gene pool, and then who's gonna start our wars for us, eh?
>How do you do full hard-reset and reboot on an entire culture?
You ask this rhetorically, as if it's some sort of intractable question, but the 20th century is full of examples of the West "rebooting" the cultures and economies of non-aligned states, and it sure ain't pretty. Takes about a generation of chaotic violent struggle, give or take. Then, a new local optimum emerges as power inevitably consolidates into the same externality-blind primate hierarchy, "but different".
Sorry if it came over that way. I certainly didn't mean it to sound rhetorical. I'm all about actually changing things.
> 20th century is full of examples of the West "rebooting" the cultures and economies of non-aligned states
And Britain long, long before that. All have been failures, since all were looting presented as benvolent reform and aid. People help themselves, which can generally happen only once the boot is romoved from their faces. So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :)
Maybe de-booting is what we're after?
One cannot impose a culture. But there's no reason it need take "a generation of chaotic violent struggle". That seems a little pessimistic. Historically, "blind primate hierarchies" [1] have civilised themselves rapidly under the right conditions. It would be nice to think we could reason our way into a better place before it comes to the point W. James's "Moral Equivalent of War", as climate change, inevitably brings us to our senses.
[1] Do you think of Western culture as a blind primate hierarchy? Is not that very perspective part of the problem?
Me too.
Where I am from there is a lot of bullying. All the way.. from small kids and up to the political representatives.
What I am doing (and I do not recommend this btw) is to exit every norm, so I do everything superficial poorly. I never edit anything I write, I just post the first draft, I don't cut my hair, I don't wear shoes, my clothes I've just found, I can't remember when I last bought clothes, I don't own a phone, I don't use any social media. Basically I set myself up for being bullied.
However! I also work on the most important problem; the idea being that the absurdity may wake people up to the idea that maybe it's better to help me (by editing things or contributing things) than it is to bully me when what they are doing is nonsense and what I am doing is necessary... The point is that if you cannot use violence then you've got to use humor and poke fun at the holes in the opponents argument.
The rest is trapping(s).
I thought our individualistic culture was based on the shared understanding that, the more value you provide to others' lives, the more your nonconformities are accepted.
Aint much you can do for your fellows when your hands are in handcuffs though, golden or otherwise, so we better keep up with 'em Joneses and don't dare imagine freedom, or else.
In another recent comment thread, the refusal to use the conveniences of Big Tech was compared to "self-flagellation" - another quaint association with the atrocities of Western religion - while the fact remains that entrusting contemporary connected technology with stewardship over one's social life is the actual self-harmful approach.
However the more nuanced point, something maybe deeper, about society, reminds me of Weil's 'Great Beast'. In a way I'm offering a redemptive hermitdom, and that's why I thought your response was hard to parse (blame me, because my question could either be seen as childishly naive or a handshake from one acolyte to another).
My conception of hermitdom isn't cursed or evil or self-destructive necessarily, and I was poking at the parent commentor a little to see if they might think the same way. Weil is probably hitting at the core of the issue with more resolution that I could ever hope to achieve:
> Relationship breaks its way out of the social. It is the monopoly of the individual. Society is the cave. The way out is solitude. ... To relate belongs to the solitary spirit. No crowd can conceive relationship: "This is good or bad in relation to..." "in so far as ..." That escapes the crowd. A crowd cannot add things together. One who is above social life returns to it when he wishes; not so one who is below. It is the same with everything.
Honestly? I used to think of it as an edifice of enlightened human thought... HAHAHAHAHA.
>Is not that very perspective part of the problem?
Don't think so. I'm not even sure there is a problem.
>I'm all about actually changing things
Oh, I wish things were different, too. But IMHO all I can possibly ever change are my local circumstances, and even that is not always particularly tractable. Intentionally "changing the world for the better" kinda sounds like a single cell of your body arbitrarily changing the laws of physics under which it operates. (Stretch that metaphor a bit and you get cancerous ideologies. We saw how well that worked...)
The world can evolve, though. Over feedback loops that take generations.
>So perhaps "rebooting" is clumsy language, if you're suggesting that a new boot will simply take its place :) Maybe de-booting is what we're after?
Now that's some pretty cool wordplay - the world needs more of that, so you made a positive change right there :) The Butlerian debooting :D
Wherever you look, loyalty is for suckers. Be it as employee, car insurance or cell phone plans. Only the new guy gets respect.
Acquiring competitive market rates and competing in market rates isn't always easy or even reasonable. Sometimes it takes significant effort due to barriers and some of these barriers were erected by companies. Take the modern interview process. Weeks of evening prep time, lots of applications/artificial networking/cold calling/recruiter responding, the time/emotional/ mental energy to step through several hoops, etc. and all this for a chance to compete at a position that probably isn't all that great anyways beyond TC.
I know from personal experience that is is possible for a friendship to survive adverse shocks involving money. But it is difficult, it does change things permanently, and it seems rare that it survives at all.
This is only true if you both dont either have eachother as a priority or act hypocritically in light of that stated value.
Losing $100 to a false friend is a great way to pay your enemies to get lost.
It is easy to make grand declarations. But when ethical considerations are not very clear-cut and you're talking real pain, you really figure out what a friendship is worth.
There is no system-wide hard-reset, not in our lifetimes. There is retreat & regroup, away from the eye of sauron, while the parasite devours the host.
Now it’s looking more and more likely every day.
Especially when the CEO publicly brags about being called the Eye of Sauron by employees, as Mark Zuckerberg did.
This is a great way to put it.
Leave and build lifestyle businesses. Not every business has to be globally competitive. Create more opportunities for freelancers. Basically, there need to be attractive options for employees outside of working at globally competitive companies in order to force the change. After all, from the already existing global businesses' point of view, the current methods are working fine.
So do nothing and ignore it, especially if the person is poor.
easy, hire management consultants
When you have so many mergers/aq. that build de facto monopolies there's no incentive for companies to care about their employees and the emphasis becomes on the image of caring vs actual caring.
As the employee has a small selection of companies to work for and jobs become about bureaucracy and politics instead of actual `work` and there's not much you as employee can do about it.
The companies not caring about customers but pretending to is another story tangential to this one.
One way would be for people to team up and form cooperatives. A cooperative is owned by all the workers and all the workers share the profits and have a saying.
There are good companies out there though. Finding them is difficult though.
IMHO large, corporate-style companies all appear to have read the same manuals on how to organize a company, so, minor variations aside, you know what you're going to get.
Small companies don't hire from the same sources or don't reach critical mass in any departments to start down the track of the larger companies, so your experience there may vary a lot, for good and bad.
I've spent approx. 12 years at large multinational engineering companies and 8 at small/medium size companies. I am now at a good, medium-size one (~150 employees, all told), and unless things change dramatically, this is where I'll have to clean out my office when I retire.
Edit: To elaborate a little, I think the sweet spot where you are quite likely to find a decent experience is in a company which employs at least several tens of people, but no more than a couple hundred.
Why? Because by the time it has reached that size, you will have dedicated people (that is, people allowed to spend time to become good at their niche, rather than being generalists) for most functions.
Still, the company is small enough that most people in the organization at least are familiar to each other, making most interaction more flexible (IMHO) than if you're at a huge corporation where anybody is viewed as an easily replaceable resource.
All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina)
Some places I've been have been 'good' by department. People in dept X really ... tolerated things. Pay was decent, but periodic pushes for more 'work' burned out quite a few. But people in dept Y loved their setup. Each dept rated 'the company' relatively differently (not surprising).
Another place was... nice. Good... Pleasant. I was on the tech side - around ~20 people in the tech dept (a little bit of networking, some software dev, some testing, some support, etc). We had around a year of everything just humming. Then a new day to day CEO comes in and 8 people left in 8 months. Out of 20... that's a lot. The new CEO was quite damaging (and, I think he knew that he was having a negative effect, and wanted that for reasons that would only benefit him). Suddenly, that company that was 'good' for years got bad real quick.
Perhaps the 'good' companies are the ones where some larger culture can endure top leadership/personnel changes? Does that ever happen, or is it an inevitability?
Actually, small companies can be even more toxic, because the chance of this toxicity blowing something up is much less, and there may be powerful individuals, who have little to checks and balances.
It seems like at most big companies no one person can really do anything major, it takes 2-5 powerful people; plus there's oversight above them that could theoretically act if the whole team starts going rogue.
I've heard horror stories. Some of my colleagues have had to admit that while everyone may resent HR, you do NOT want to work for a company that does it badly.
"Give an example of how you used Amazon's Leadership Principle, Customer Obsession, in your current position."
"I just did that in the last interview."
"Oh, I just wanted to see if you could extrapolate or give another example."
"But... I just... told you..."
My god that gives me nightmare flashbacks to that horrible process.
Are they identifying if somebody does this, or counting the first visit as a person who left without returning?
1st time: "after the initial HR screening and meeting with Dept head, you will have 4 interviews with 4 of our engineers" (expressvpn)
2nd time: "please tick to confirm your data being shared for the purpose of automated application processing" (crossover)
F!#k this job market.
Jumping through hoops during the process has also left a sour taste in my mouth.Even after spending hours on an application, cover letter, customizing my CV, often no response comes. Even a form letter would be better than nothing! It feels like I'm sending a part of myself into the void.
Would you rather they use your data without your consent?
4 interviews sounds reasonable, and also useful for you to meet the team
1) Quick phone chat 2) Technical interview - Either review or carry out technical test. 3) Team interview
Even then the team and technical interviews can be doubled up and the phone chat can easily be cut out entirely.
I'm not saying the in-person experience was superior or inferior to how it is now, but it was considerate of everybody's time.
Add in a couple of convos with the internal recruiter and the negotiation session, and I was still under 3 hours over the course of a week or 2. Completely not unreasonable..
the wording was different, it was meant as we will filter your application automatically based on the data you provide, are you ok with that y/n
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing in regards to the open position at Google. I believe that I would be the perfect candidate for this job and I would like to explain why.
First and foremost, I have a passion for technology and Google is at the forefront of technological innovation. I would love to be a part of a team that is constantly pushing the boundaries and developing new, groundbreaking products.
In addition to my passion for technology, I have a strong educational background. I hold a degree in computer science from a top university and I have consistently achieved excellent grades. My skills and knowledge would make me a valuable asset to the Google team.
Finally, I have a proven track record of success. I have previous experience working in the tech industry and I have a history of meeting or exceeding expectations. I am confident that I would be a high-performing employee at Google.
I believe that I have the skills, knowledge, and experience that would make me a perfect fit for the job at Google. I would love to have the opportunity to discuss my qualifications further and I thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
[My Name]
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing in regards to the job opening at Google. I believe that I have the perfect qualifications for the position and would be an excellent addition to your team.
I have always been extremely intelligent and have a natural knack for computers and technology. I have also always been very good at working with people and have always been able to get along with everyone I meet. I believe that these qualities would make me the perfect candidate for the job.
I am a highly motivated individual and I am sure that I would excel in this position. I am eager to put my skills to use and I am confident that I would be a valuable asset to your company.
Thank you for your time and consideration and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Being in a position to be picky it felt great to send him a list of pieces of information I expected from him before I'd consider filling in their form.
So much for worldwide hiring and all-remote.
I don't mind being rejected at all, but it's clear they have absolutely no concept of how much time it takes applicants to submit. The thought of ever going through that again means I'm unlikely to ever re-submit in the future.
Also I don't want to give access to my LinkedIn and Xing accounts for data import, which is anyway, again, messed up.
I guess this is why websites reinventing recruitment and recruiters exist, although I suspect 'back in the day' when you would circle ads in the newspaper things were better, much better ...
[1] Annecdata collected 2018-2022*
And then they don't let me fill-in things the way I want to. For example, as a one-man operation I have worked with multiple clients at the same time and mediated and implemented projects that were a collaboration between several clients. Their web UI won't accept that sort of thing.
Just let me upload a damn PDF, or even just let me type-in free-form text.
Then further down the form they require you to record a video introducing yourself and telling them why they should hire you.
Ended up closing the form right there.
Do these people not realize how annoying their process is and how talented people don’t have to put up with crap like this?
I believe the thinking is: "This is a great filter to ensure we only get great and passionate people!" when the reality is: "This is a great filter to ensure that only desperate or unimaginative people will apply!"
This keeps getting repeated. But honestly these days I can't tell the god damn difference. What is malice, other than incompetent people struggling to survive like anyone else, and paradoxically sticking up for each other through the same repetitive cycle of abuse that prevents them from aspiring to competence?
Functionally, though, your experiences may be very similar on the receiving end of incompetence vs malice.
edit: I want to append this to say: The purpose of the original phrase in my opinion was to encourage cooperation and communication as the solution. In a sufficiently structured corporate environment this solution may be impossible for reasons other than malicious behavior, in which case the statement is without practical value.
I agree that this might have been the original intention, yet the phrase has become a way of virtue signaling and looking down on those who assume malice. IMHO, difference is minuscule, because in many cases consequences are the same.
Malice is a legal, quasi-religious concept. A tiger can also quite actively exploit weaknesses and imbalances for the harm of its prey, yet we don't judge the animal as malicious - because we don't attribute concsiousness to it in the same way we attribute it to humans.
To have "malice", you need "intent", for which you need need "consciousness", in the classical folk understanding of the term: taking "selfhood", "free will", and "adequate theory of mind" as axioms. Whatever the scientific consensus on those, they seem to have little explanatory power in the domain of business. They're also a pretty high bar, so to speak - certainly higher than we give 'em credit for.
If those words really meant what they purported to mean, we'd be functioning in a much more humane economy; but for whatever reason these concepts just don't "stick" to what's really going on in the day-to-day. They're just the wishful thinking of Western humanist authors who were trying to set an example, i.e. mold the world in their own image a little bit.
> Functionally, though, your experiences may be very similar on the receiving end of incompetence vs malice.
Precisely. And since we're just people who just have objectives to accomplish, and our understanding of the consciousness of others takes at best a pragmatic role in pursuing those, our response to others failing us ends up being essentially the same: looking for ways to enforce compliance so that the counterparty delivers.
At the end of the day, "attributing malice" vs. "attributing incompetence" is about saving face - for the counterparty as well as for ourselves. Either way, dedicating effort to saving face detracts from the effort of understanding the problem at hand, which like you said is fundamentally structural.
> A tiger can also quite actively exploit weaknesses and imbalances for the harm of its prey, yet we don't judge the animal as malicious
A tiger is not malicious when it harms prey, because the intent is survival, and it cannot have that without harm. The survival of abusive CEOs and managers does not require harm to be done to anyone, yet they do it (sometimes for no tangible benefit).
> To have "malice", you need "intent"
You need not intend for your actions to be malicious, for them to be. If you are willfully ignorant of malicious consequences of your actions, your actions are still malicious. This is why "I didn't know what I was doing was harming people" defense doesn't fly, not in the legal sense and not in the moral. At some point it is your duty to determine the consequences of your actions, and something being your job is definitely over that threshold.
I think this is almost the same point as parent, albeit slightly askew from that one.
The hint is in your use of the word “willfully” — that is, you know what you are doing will result in harm, and you choose to do it anyway.
A difference is that “intending to harm” may be a differently intractable behavior because it is effectively sadism. That is a tighter reward loop than “pretending it doesn’t harm” which can just be avoidance.
Of course whether or not you can ever learn which of those (if it isn’t both) you’re dealing with is an entirely different matter.
We agree on the tiger, though I do wonder what she would say if she could explain her actions.
No, you _don't know_ the consequences and you don't bother finding out before doing it.
Actually this thought process has been problematic for me. Seeing that everyone is actually incompetent is more dangerous than there being a reason (good, bad or otherwise) for their actions.
While this is true — I would be very surprised if anyone was actively malicious towards their hiring pool — it's not an important distinction when trying to decide which employer to apply for.
Oh I completely agree.
The funny thing is I actively enjoy writing - but I look at the long questionnaire for some otherwise quite attractive companies and sigh, and assume that everything internally is just as clueless and so just pass them by for a company who won't waste my time.
I no longer subscribe to this line of thought after seeing several borderline sociopaths use this very same mental model in order to try and manipulate people into doing their bidding.
As I see it, "intentional failure" is just a euphemism for sabotage.
https://www.theskimm.com/wellness/weaponized-incompetence
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/weaponized-incompeten...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/weaponized-incompetence-women...
Assume this were true. Even if this were the case, this might backfire: "passionate" easily works against a company.
This means that if you filter for passionate people, but reject such passionate candidates, these candidates might passionately work against your company (e.g. tell every friend what a shithole of a company this is etc.).
So, filtering for passionate people in the hiring process (even if it worked) is in my opinion dangerous idea.
I work for John Deere, one of those companies that (where I live) has a lot of loyal customers who teach their children we are the best. Even still the majority of great people I work with just want to work their job and go home. (to avoid burn out we don't allow the passionate to work more than 8 hours very often, so the difference between great; and great and passionate isn't significant)
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Please stop saying this, especially if you have no actual evidence of incompetence. It's the equivalent of clicking your heels together three times because you really, really don't want to live in a world full of casual malice. Wishing doesn't make it so.
Easy. They select for compliance, not skill.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_to_Be_a_God
It's considerate of an applicants time by saving them the hassle about price conversation up front. That's for your benefit, not theirs (they lose the "grip" they might otherwise have at price negotiation time due to your sunk cost, which is totally to their benefit). Some applicants know to ask about wage this early, but many don't, so it's equalizing to let anyone opt out pre-pipeline, not just the confident men who've done a billion interviews and know to ask asap.
As for video, that feels like a company trying to supplement a prior process that used to lean a lot on in-person networking and associated soft skills assessment, which is lost in online apply processes. Not everyone feels at ease in networking settings, and so many ppl don't show up to those "meet first" spaces. This is giving the introverts and non-urban ppl a way to enter their pipeline while still requiring those applicants to put some of their personality on the table early on in the filter.
I dunno, I don't get the criticisms in this sub-thread, but I assume commenters have a neurotype that this specifically rubs the wrong way?
Regarding price conversation, salary is always negotiable after an offer is made even when an employer says that it isn't, the applicant just needs to be willing to say no.
He was genuinely confused as to why I wasn't excited by this "opportunity".
Is this true outside of tech? The only application I ever did in finance/accounting that wasn't one of these annoying forms was an IB interview I got through nepotistic networking, nothing to do with my talent.
Jobs that pay well can treat their people worse - though worse treatment is weird. There are places that treat their people well, but because the job is considered unethical by many they have to pay more.
Technically they can.
But on practice, jobs that treat people badly also tend to pay badly.
Despite their (supposedly) knowing that, they put me through all their HR hoops anyway, all the way to a final interview, when the manager I'd have worked for looked across the table at me and said, "So what sort of salary would you have in mind?"
I looked him in the eye, didn't blink, didn't blush. Repeated the figure I'd given up front. The interview was over.
Why the fuck did they bother with all the palaver when they knew they were never going to pay that much. Did they think I'd blink?
Last laugh: I ended up doing a short consulting stint there several years later and took more off them in a couple of weeks than the annual salary they'd failed to meet.
This is still a dream of mine. I'd like to pull this off somehow. The answer is apparently not "Fiverr" or "Upwork".
1. having a network of trusted people you've worked with in the past
2. building some sort of public reputation where people seek you out.
They're not mutually exclusive, but #1 is probably easiest for people already in a job. Go to networking events (covid has muted a lot of this, I know, but it's coming back). Tell people you're looking for consulting work or open to new jobs. Be nice.
Yes, the answer for most people is not fiverr or upwork. I've known a few folks who've done good there, but they're outliers in my network. And even then, the few businesses I've known that have used platforms like that use it as a test ground, and then go direct with someone they click with.
That said, I've never taken a full year salary in 2 weeks. I have taken my own full year salary matching my early earning days from 30 years ago in 2-3 months now.
My favorite one was an employer who low-balled me for a job in NYC. Then he says "I know people who live in Pennsylvania and commute in [read: the wage doesnt have to be sustenance wage in NYC/suburbs, you can just commute to somewhere far away]." suggesting that one can make budgets work if one tries hard enough.
that kind of sums it up - talented people won't apply there as they won't be compensated and they will leave - waste of time.
https://github.com/jsonresume
If you're not, and your numbers of abandoned applications are high, then throw the forms in the trash can and see what happens for a month. Contact details, attach resume done.
I highly suspect that a lot of these 'applications' are ad/click fraud (companies spend a lot of money to drive traffic to their job postings), other bots, recruiters testing the waters to play middleman, or people who were never going to apply no matter how easy the process is.
I'd imagine a lot of people do; I know I have in the past.
Perhaps the main difference with a digital application, is that we are able to track some of the behavioural artifacts that are created on the lead up to applying .. which aren't available (or visible) via the traditional alterative.
Ours is a very different type of business than Home Depot, but we intentionally put a minor roadblock (a fizzbuzz-level coding problem) in our job application, specifically to filter out those applicants unwilling or unable to put in the slightest effort to apply. (And we see a very similar percentage who don't bother to complete it - at least 90%.) The question is intentionally easy, as we don't want to waste people's time, and it's not fair to ask for much before reciprocating. But it is a fantastic way to eliminate the applicants who are just using the shotgun approach, and get down to those who actually have a clue and a real interest in the position. (Much fairer and more useful than keyword filtering imo too, and can be a good way to start a dialogue.)
So I guess what I'm saying is, maybe this is a feature, not a bug.
For one, when I'm applying for jobs, I'm in a totally different headspace to when I'm programming. It's uncomfortable and takes me out of the zone.
And two, sometimes I apply for jobs on my phone. With a saved resume and autofill from Google it works out really well - but not if there's a coding question.
That said, I do think I'm going to try and simplify the question even further, since I think having anything at all will accomplish the goal, so there's no point making people do any more work than absolutely necessary.
You mentioned a better way in your original comment:
>>> we intentionally put a minor roadblock (a fizzbuzz-level coding problem) in our job application, specifically to filter out those applicants unwilling or unable to put in the slightest effort to apply. (And we see a very similar percentage who don't bother to complete it - at least 90%.) The question is intentionally easy
Use a difficult question, and you'll get a smaller pool of higher-quality applicants.
Why would you need one filter for "qualifications > 1" and a second one for "qualifications > 4" when you could just apply "qualifications > 4"?
If you put a hard programming question as a requirement just to APPLY for a job, I don't think you would get any good candidates at all. It's just not worth the time. When you're applying for a job you have no idea if the company is going to be interested at all, and that's fine, because there are just so many variables involved.
They could have just found someone and not yet taken the ad down. They could be about to receive an application from someone even better than you. They (or their system) might have some inherent bias against you, maybe even accidentally (degree > bootcamp, US college vs Canadian college, etc.).
When you're applying for a job it's just not feasible to go around doing HARD programming questions every time, because for so many reasons out of your control the company might just ignore you. And that's fine, that's for them to decide. But it means doing what you're saying would be a terrible, terrible idea, and actually most likely get the worst candidates who don't have any other options but can find a solution to your problem online.
> They could have just found someone and not yet taken the ad down.
> They could be about to receive an application from someone even better than you.
> They (or their system) might have some inherent bias against you
> When you're applying for a job it's just not feasible to go around doing HARD programming questions every time, because for so many reasons out of your control the company might just ignore you.
> you have no idea if the company is going to be interested at all
Most of those responses are going to candidates the company would never even consider hiring, because the initial filter is so worthless.
I know you're saying it is a minor roadblock, but how do I know that you're not going to ghost my application like most of other companies do? That's why most people will not bother to do your test, not something about you, but the broken system.
To me, they should do at least one solid hour on the phone/vid/in-person technical interview. If OK, then proceed to take-home test.
Of course if I were unemployed and didn’t have other options I’d do it for free…
Offering $100/hour for a take-home problem would signal that they respected my time, which goes a long way.
Specifically, a company can blast out a bajillion take home tests to a bajillion candidates for one position without a care in the world, but for live coding interviews it requires their own employee's time, so they're incentivized to only do it with candidates they're serious about.
Plus, there's the fact that I don't do well in live coding interviews. I get a version of "stage fright" where my mind goes blank and thinking becomes impossible for a bit. I don't experience it anytime on the job, either. Just in interviews.
You don't care whether you have almost no effective chance to actually get a job? Yeah, something tells me you're not being entirely truthful here.
> You don't care whether you have almost no effective chance to actually get a job?
Grug care. Grug can't pass live coding interview. Grug freeze. Grug ask for take home test instead. Grug not care about "perverse incentive." Grug want job.
Perhaps the form should say "do not spend more than 5 minutes on this question", so that people who get stuck don't end waste a long time. It's really just a captcha to filter out people who can't program at all and also don't know to Google for an answer to paste in.
From there we make a shortlist based on those discussions and résumés (and cover letters if present), and move on to a few more involved programming tests, which try to replicate the actual kind of work that would be done here. (Each was taken from actual development or bug fixes we did in the past, then simplified and encapsulated to make a reasonable assignment.) We start with one of these and ask that the applicant pull the assignment repository, create a branch, make some commits as appropriate to solve the problem, and then start a pull request, which we review much like we would an internal code review. We also encourage them to ask questions and share thoughts throughout the process, as they would as a member of the team.
Through all of this the goal is to show both sides what it would be like to actually work together. (As well as to demonstrate to the applicant that we are as invested in this process as they are.)
I'm sure we do lose some good applicants with the initial quick question on the application, but it does serve to filter out essentially all of the really bad applicants, which gives me the freedom to give real attention to those who remain.
I've yet to have any success from any online application, while my hit rate when contacted by recruiters is relatively high - nothing to do with particular recruiters being good at gaging my wants or skills, simply they have the incentive to get this done, because only then they get paid.
My guess is either the official postings are a company policy requirement to give someone a promotion (get some external CVs in, do some biased comparison to justify why the person deserves a promotion - at least my experience from working in a bank) or the company can't be bothered to spend their own time recruiting & just outsources it to a recruiting company, forgetting they have their own listing open. Also, most if not all of those external platforms are quite bad.
1. Some application processes ask me to upload my resume and then want me to manually enter it again in a series of web forms. I'm not interested in spending 30+ minutes manually copying and pasting the resume I just uploaded. I figure that lack of common sense is systemic in the company, so I don't want to work there.
2. Some companies use third-party services, like icimi.com. If I submit two or three resumes through these third-party services and fail to receive a response, I never apply for other companies that use these same services.
They probably want you to fill that so they can query that data easier
Meanwhile still have access to original CV
Workday! If the "Apply Here" button takes me to a Workday link, that's my off-ramp.
I have no idea how Workday is so ubiquitous when its user experience and aesthetic is so terrible.
Every job i have applied for requires i create a new account on [abc].myworkday.com. this just seems incredibly STUPID?
It's the most bizarro thing I've ever seen, a single line text field.
Feeling kinda leet at the time I decided to take the plunge and cut and paste cover letter, CV, LinkedIn profile etc into this small field and let it burn.
Unsurprisingly I never got contact or received any confirmation or anything....
Why the hell would they even have that as an option?
(I am the %8 !!)
Example: https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-au/careers/jobs/4526889
Scroll down to 'Apply for this job' and click to activate JavaScript expanding form....bleaugh
One of the "questions" on their apply for job form is
TL;DR
Optional field is REQUIRED and only option is "Yes"
"At Thoughtworks, we are intentional about making technology a better place for all. We know that the more diverse our backgrounds are, the more impactful solutions we build for our clients. We foster an inclusive community and focus on creating a balanced workforce reflective of the society we live in.To help us achieve this balance, we encourage you to answer these demographic questions. We collect this data to understand who we are reaching (and who we’re not) so we can do better at connecting with a truly diverse group of potential Thoughtworkers. Our recruiting teams will only see the data collected here on an aggregated level, consistent with our Data Privacy Policy. Responding to the questions is completely voluntary and anonymous. Declining to respond will not impact your standing in the recruiting process."
The field is REQUIRED and the only option is "Yes"
You may want to contact a lawyer about suing them for asking, but I'm not sure how that works.
The above applies to the US. If you are in a different country then you need to check your local laws.
Other issue is companies with a broken captcha. Can't apply without proving you're human, can't prove you're human because their captcha just spins. Wanna refresh? Sure, but you'll have to enter your details again.
In saying that, I find the process better than a couple of years ago. Many companies are able to prefill details like education and employment from LinkedIn. At least it's better than them trying and failing to read your resume automatically.