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- cross-posted to:
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I’m applying to jobs, and the amount of AI assessments, rounds, AI interviewers, questionnaires, is nuts.
One of these emails for example,
It’s rough.
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It’s always the fucking suits. And nepotism.
I’m glad I’m near death, every day I hope the black hole at the center of the galaxy will swallow the whole solar system.
And here I was thinking that I was cynical
You okay, buddy?
Tired. The endless grind of mindless constant changes to everything for no gains. I can’t keep up and I don’t feel like it anymore.
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He should be having AI write tests for each candidate.
I’ve been hiring for a year now and I can’t get anywhere. Open the job listing for 5 minutes and have 10 million applications. Many are fake made up people. Many are repeated entries, like 100 for the same person but with slight differences, like they are trying to hedge their bets. Have to close the listing after those 5 minutes since there’s already far too many to sift through, which means only automated, generated applications got in.
Sift through all of those, interview a few folks, find no worthy talent, start over. It impossible, there is just too much noise.
I totally get that it can be overload or even crushing for hiring managers, personal department people, and serious recruiters.
But as things look, companies absolutely want that useless oversupply, as if they want to actively devalue and disrespect people. Take Siemens for an example. They have introduced AI into thier hiring portal. They offer to give you messages about new roles. But that subscription does not even allow to filter their open positions by continent. If I look for a job in Germany, I get open positions in India. And one cannot filter this. What the fuck?
And pretty much in general, companies, job sites, and recruiters do not allow any useful specifity. I cannot filter offers by post code. This already makes most offers useless if I don’t use a car. Offers do not specify the actual place of work. They are often not clear about home office rules. They go all wishy-washy about the desired use of AI in software development - which is a huge differentiator for both sides of the table. I could go on. I once had two rounds of interviews until the HR people told me that they required - for a position of developing complex mathematical software - mandatory on-call service every seven weeks, 24/7 for a full week, on top of the normal work. Hard no from me. Excuse me? They could have saved me, and themselves substantial time if they had put that right into the job description.
And one more thing, you speak of job seekers as “talent”. For professionals with experience, that’s devaluating, too. The whole process is obviously designed to devalue people.
Would it make any sense to switch to some kind of physical application process? Not necessarily in person, but require the applications/résumés be mailed in? The advantage that these automated models have is that they are basically for the user to submit as many applications as possible. Requiring that the application be physically mailed would create at least some small barrier and cost that would mean the applicants wouldn’t be able to apply a near infinite number of times.
Almost better off posting the address where you are hiring and see who comes in person to apply. That would be a bigger hurdle for serious applicants.
Or they can send a letter 😅
I got a job in 2017 when I did an application, heard of a widespread computer failure because of shit Windows security, and used that as an excuse to send my application again in paper, ‘just in case’. I got the job. It was perhaps the best job I ever had.
I got my current job by doing contract work so I was already in the chair when they hired me full time.
They’d have to solve the riddle of envelopes and stamps.
Man this bullshit seems to have gotten so much worse since I last looked for a job in 2023
Prior to my current job, I worked at one for 7 years. I’m an industrial electrician, so maybe the demand is higher. But in 2023, I applied for 12 jobs, got 3 interviews which resulted in 2 offers. All cold applications on indeed. I was picky about which jobs I even applied for. For one of the offers I did not want the job and it paid too little so I strung them along as much as I could before I finally turned it down as I had a feeling I was getting my current job, but it took forever for some management to come back from field service for my second interview.
Same story. 2022 I got 12 interviews in one week, 8 in the next from about 30 applications (not counting interviews for second round)
Done i didn’t pass, others didn’t pass me
2026, I’m looking again
200+ applications.
1 reply so far that at least got me a third interview round but I just found out there are 2 more rounds. It’s a higher level job, fine, but seriously… 200, and the one that replied was application #2
From the rest?
Nothing. A very few (less than ten) at least replied with the “we love you but…” mails, the rest didn’t even bother with that much.
Companies have been very spoiled somehow because most think it’s okay to ask for an application that you include a cover letter why you want the job, a separate letter saying why you love the xpmpa souch, a one minute video about how I love the company, and so on
BITCH did you forget that an employment is a mutually beneficial relationship, where you get the fruits of my work and you pay me a good salary? You are not the king, your company sucks and I want to work because I need an income to pay rent
The job market was already ruined, AI is just an yet another excuse that corporations trot out. The heart of the problem is that corporations do not care about society, simply existing to line the pockets of a few people within their ranks. Nothing else matters to them. Country and humanity are equally worthless in the eyes of the elite.
“It will create more jobs.” is the equivalent of trickle down economics.
giving an applicant an engineering test (kind of like a crossword puzzle with code instead of words)
lol.
Remember the pre Covid times when we had mostly on site job interviews? Yeah turns out it’s harder to cheat in person. Maybe companies should go back to that and pay a wage that is fair for the area they operate from.
My last 4 jobs have been in person interview. Never had luck with online aplications, hell my current job I’ve been at 2 years now wasn’t even hiring. I was moving to the area and thought it looked like a great place and reached out and we managed to make something happen. Industry dependent however it can be very hard to do that, nature of my business is mainly independently owned shops so it’s easy to get ahold of the boss and make a conversation happen, that isn’t the case everywhere.
Even for some individual contributor positions I budget to fly them in for a final interview. No access to AI, no ability to hide behind a bot. I’ve actually knocked some people out in the final round because they refused to meet in person.
A few hundred to a thousand spent on travel up front is worth the insurance of the six-digit salary we offer.
Six-digit salary you say?
Maude you say?
How’s his wife holding up?
Impossible. The CEOs would have less time on their islands that way.
Have been applying from a while and have deduced that any org that take OA without cam on or without monitoring or takes any AI interview is just isn’t interested in hiring
What is “OA” ?
Online assignment
Corrected headline: AI gave companies a new excuse to make jobs worse
That’s a thing too, but this article is about interviewing and hiring.
AI teleprompters for remote interviews, AI generated resumes, AI candidates screening, etc.
Everything really shifted aggressively over the last 12 months.
Just use “connections,” you know, the fancy word for “rich friends.” (At least that’s all they mean when first getting into industry)
Works both ways too. The number of AI generated resumes I’ve gone through, the incomprehensible business speak…
Maybe don’t demand a 1,000 word essay for a kitchenhand.
Just a thought.
I sat in on a couple interviews. Blew my mind how many candidates were clearly reading from an AI. They all gave almost the exact same, very AI-sounding answers to the skill based questions then just slammed into a wall when we asked them questions that are more opinion based.
Not all of them of course, and we wound up hiring the person who sounded the most like an actual human being having a conversation with us out of the lot. (Of course, he matched the skills we needed to so that wasn’t the only factor.)
“We’ve decided to hire chatgpt since that is who wrote all of the applications.”
I guess you were hiring. If that’s the case, would you prefer a manually written resume that is not matched to the listed position and skills (because applicants now have to send so many resumes that they don’t have any more time to match them)?
No no. I want the applicant to be human. Don’t bullshit. No buzzwords. Just say I can do this, I want to do that, I like turtles. Be yourself and don’t fill the resume with fake ass shit, it’s so obvious and depressing
The bullshit isnt for you, its for the AI filter that handles intake before you read a single application. (And if your not using AI to filter, your getting spammed by AI applications because everyone else is playing that game) Applicants are trying to beat the machine, and when the requirements get stricter the applicants just use more AI to send out more applications. Its a vicious cycle that will only end when hiring managers filter with something that a machine can not do.
Dont even get started on the personal data collection of the job sites. Its the most soul crushing thing to be looking for a job right now, anything to make you stand out of a crowd is ignored, volume of applications and adherance to posted requirments are the only way to get a fleeting interaction with a human.
I feel like the solution either needs to go back to in person and paper ads or a personal website acts as your resume, anything other than what we have right now.
Its the most soul crushing thing to be looking for a job right now, anything to make you stand out of a crowd is ignored, volume of applications and adherance to posted requirments are the only way to get a fleeting interaction with a human.
Or none at all.
The advice is not helping either, since you’re told to both make your resume and cover letter stand out, but also to make it generic so the automated system doesn’t parse it wrong and disregard it.
So many interviews devolve into:
“Why do you want to work for this company?”
Which is code for
“Just how desperate for this job are you?”
My experience with this is receiving emails with “we will not proceed with your application” and absolutely no indication what or why, for positions that I’m uniquely qualified for.
I’m still looking, don’t use Assumed Intelligence, and want to work, but it’s not going well.
I suspect that your needs for human written applications is being thwarted by bots filtering your applicants before you even see them.
Most job listing now are just data collection with no actual job behind them.
The problem is 99% of hiring is looking for specific keywords and phrases like “increased revenue”. Since they always do that applicants fall into the same patterns, like an evolutionary arms race.
Problem with that is most jobs are using an AI ingestion and rating system. So if I were a job applicant who doesn’t like AI and prefers to hand write resumes but I need a job to feed my family, I’m going to just blast out the AI resumes anyway because it just has the highest chance of working.
When I was job seeking I had two versions of my resume. Things where I was pretty sure it’d be ingested by an AI, I used that resume. Sometimes a rare listing asked for a direct email and I used the more personal resume for that one.
Then it didn’t matter because a recruiting agency scooped me up for something I didn’t even apply for.
However I will say definitely be the most ‘you’ that you can be while still being, yanno, work appropriate about it, that you can be. Good soft skills make such a huge impression.
Hiring manager here… yes. Give me a hand created resume, that shows what you did. I can extrapolate skills without it needing to match every bullet point word for word. Bonus is that you don’t need to butcher your resume, just put your best foot forward.
I’m sorry it sucks.
It seems like there’s a dividing line between newer techs and senior techs that determines the difficulty in getting new gigs. I don’t know where it is but I crossed it at some point in the last 10 years.
Each time I’m done with a job I’m sure there will be some kind of horrible gauntlet to get the next engagement, but it stopped happening. Maybe I just made a lucky connection but it keeps happening. I think they just want candidates who have seen some shit.
I guess the point is that eventually you’ll have done something that gives you the right gray in the ponytail. Keep at it.
I have been in software for 20 years and I never had trouble finding work until this past year. All of a sudden it’s a lot harder. I’m just one data point but this time feels different for me. The job market feels a lot more disjointed and full of spoofs and fake listings.
Yeah I have over 25 years and I also have had the assesment stuff although not to often and not every time. Basically I went into tech because it was a field where they wanted people and if you were sharp you could get a job. They don’t seem to have the demand they used to but I don’t see another place to pivot and honestly I don’t think I can change careers the way I did over 25 years ago.
I am a second data point.
Do you have experience with AI dev environments? That’s generally the differentiator right now. Claude Code replaces managing a junior dev team of 5. Anyone who can demonstrate the ability to leverage it is not short of work.
Those 5 junior devs are, though.
Yep. Actually ran the rollout for Cursor at my last job, right before I got laid off lmao. I trained a bunch of devs on what do and what not to do. A bunch of my recent interviews have incorporated variations of the question “Do you think you could manage an LLM orchestration that would replace our junior devs?” and, I could but I don’t think I can muster the enthusiasm for it that people are looking for. Maybe that’s why I haven’t made it through the interview gauntlet. So much senior hiring right now seems to be looking for people to be the scapegoat for LLM bullshit and I ain’t looking for that kinda work.
Claude Code replaces managing a junior dev team of 5.
But who was hiring 5 junior devs?!
Did nothing they produced matter to anyone who knew better?
I can’t think of a better way to drive my organization into obsolescence, than to have 5 junior devs rampaging across the place leaving stupid mistakes in their wake.
I love having one or two junior devs around the office. On a large team (15 devs), there’s just enough deeply unimportant unimpactful harmless bullshit to keep two junior devs from doing too much damage.
Once, on a huge team (30+ senior devs split into squads), I had four junior devs at the same time.
That is the maximum I have ever allowed, and that was during a period of exceptional demand.
Anyway, I guess I just wish the folks replacing 5 junior devs with an AI equivalent to 5 junior devs the day they deserve. Lol.
I most places I worked in (all in Europe), Junior Devs are generally hired as an investment, since their productivity sucks until they become more experienced so the idea is to teach them until they become more senior.
You can’t really replace such Junior Devs with LLMs because the LLMs don’t learn (at best they’ll somewhat follow past guidelines still in their context until those guidelines are push out as the context fills over time).
Maybe in the US (were job security is a joke) there’s more a tendency to hire Junior Devs as cheap manpower.
I most places I worked in (all in Europe), Junior Devs are generally hired as an investment, since their productivity sucks until they become more experienced so the idea is to teach them until they become more senior.
Yes. Same here. I never would have managed to build teams as large as I have if I didn’t create some of my senior devs out of junior devs.
You can’t really replace such Junior Devs with LLMs because the LLMs don’t learn (at best they’ll somewhat follow past guidelines still in their context until those guidelines are push out as the context fills over time).
Yes. Exactly! It boggles my mind when folks talk about all the money they’re saving on junior devs. A forever-junior sounds terrible, to me - no matter how cheap.
Maybe in the US (were job security is a joke) there’s more a tendency to hire Junior Devs as cheap manpower.
Yes. When I was doing consulting gigs for clients too incompetent to maintain their own developer teams, I would hire junior devs and charge clients for their work. Organizations too incompetent to hire and retain their own developers are also pretty reliably too incompetent to tell the difference.
Even so - while I never felt I owed those (generally sociopathic, often malicious and usually willfully stupid) clients too much loyalty - professional ethics still meant that I didn’t saddle them with any fully un-supervised junior developers. So they were still better off with my consulting team than with an AI.
An extra problem is that AI heavily favours bullshitters. It destroys the capability and cues to recognize them.
The tech job market is now a lemon market for both sides - neither applicants nor companies can reasonably know what’s really offered to them, and what is made up.
They can, though. You can’t get one paragraph into an LLM slop document before it is obviously completely vacuous. They make pages and pages of text and seldom arrive at any kind of point. They also are very repetitive in ways that humans simply are not. Furthermore, if you want to be sure someone’s not spewing LLM BS at you and don’t trust your own ability to discern it, talk to them in person and see if they communicate similarly to how they did before.
Everyone seems to be allergic to to the idea of de-automating the hiring process, despite the fact that the automation has totally gone off the rails for all parties. Put up a sign! Post your business address online and accept paper applications. Do all interviewing face to face.
Job hunters dont have the power to fix the problem, but talent seekers totally do, so my sympathy for their plight is exactly zero. If you don’t like your results, surely doing the same thing even harder will work! Trying something different is madness!
It has certainly not done any good to job search.
For example, search for job ads for “embedded Linux software engineer” in your area. Notice the phrasing and keywords which are used. Now, ask on chatgpt.com to write a job ad for an “Embedded Linux software developer”, without any further info. You’ll see that half of the job ads use, at least in large parts, exactly the same phrasing and the same silly list of technically unrelated protocols - and demand senior experience in real-time systems, which is actually needed in perhaps 1% of use cases. And looking for Linux kernel developers which “are experts in C++”…
I don’t like it but you gotta game whatever the current meta is. If they are using AI, you gotta figure out which AI they are using and game that. Maximize your chances to get through the automated bullshit. Once you get through the bullshit you can find out what the job really requires and showcase skills. Its dumb to jump through these hoops, but this is the current game. Play that shit.
I have used Copilot to generate specialist job titles and their detailed job description for staffing, extracted directly from documentation and half a dozen knowledge transfer session, under severe time pressure. It did a much better job than I could possibly do.
