Instead, the approach that will continue increasing in dominance is hiring referrals and finding jobs through personal networks.
In a world that increasingly resembles The Library of Babel,
- the main way to know what's true is to tune into news sources you trust (monolithic old school media, or personality driven new-school media, social media, etc.),
- the main way to learn what to watch/listen/read is to take recommendations from people you trust, or received through channels you trust,
- the main way to hire or get hired is, increasingly, by exploiting a network of people you trust.
All of this compensates for ambient oversaturation by using the best available (and tunable!) desaturation filter: your trust network.
Social affinity and reputation represent winning strategies that have served humans very well since the dawn of time. It shouldn't be surprising that they continue to be extremely effective even (or perhaps especially) in the age of AI.
Unfortunately these have been bought up by billionaires that use them as play things to get richer.
>from people you trust,
In one particular area where they understand what is going on. I have lawyers I would trust with my life on legal matters, but should not be trusted around any digital device.
>y exploiting a network of people you trust.
agreed, but sucks for people that don't have that.
I'd really like a rejection physical letter back saying thankyou for application but no thanks signed by a human. I put some effort in to applying, they could at least exert some effort coming back, rather than simply ghosting. A reasonable barrier to bots collecting CV's.
>I'd really like a rejection physical letter back saying thankyou for application but no thanks signed by a human
If you want personalized human rejection letters to come back to you, then the hiring process would have to be equally friction based: i.e. mailing in notarized copies of documents and interviewing in person, for it to scale and not overwhelm a company's resources.
>I put some effort in to applying
Yeah but so did hundreds of other people. This worked in the world of 20+ years ago, but it doesn't scale anymore in the era of online applications where every job posting gets hundreds of applications within a week.
It doesn't matter if you put in more work in your application than the other 200 candidates who are doing "spray and pray", it's too much noise for humans to swift through with without some automated screening that might just as well drop you through the net because it can't tell the amount of work you put in, you're just a number in a queue.
Not the same industry but at least one literary agent does this: if you physically print and mail your book proposal, they will respond with a short but polite, physical rejection letter if they reject you.
But I think it's a generational thing. The younger agents I know of just shut down all their submissions when they get overwhelmed, or they start requiring everyone to physically meet them at a conference first.
In Germany it used to be that in some places, not only you were expected to have a proper application folder with various sections for the various kinds of material (CV, application letter, recomendantions, certificates, photo), they would post it back if refused.
This stopped being a thing about 15 years ago though.
I still have some of those applications in a box somewhere.
I like this as an optional "this will be read and considered by a human" guarantee added to a job posting. That way, you can still get the reach of digital submissions but the benefits of this approach.
At this rate we just need the entire system to breakdown so we can rebuild it with some hard standards. I shouldn't need to reenter my information. Period.
After seeing the flood of resumes for application, I do think a small cost to apply wouldn't be a bad thing for either applicants or companies. I also realize that if someone is unemployed, getting them to pay money they don't have to find a new job is counterproductive.
However, when we wanted to hire a new Ops person at work, the flood of obviously not qualified at all applicants we got was insane.
> the flood of obviously not qualified at all applicants we got was insane
From speaking to folks looking for jobs in tech over the past few years, this is a natural result.
1. Companies write requirements on the job posting that are a little beyond reasonable for the role and salary.
2. Applicants learn over time, and start applying to jobs for which they only meet most of the qualifications.
3. Companies adjust and write even more ridiculous requirements.
4. Applicants start applying to jobs for which they only meet some requirements.
5. Repeat.
As evidence that the applicants are, at every stage, correctly reacting to the situation: I have received positive responses (and, later, job offers) by applying to roles for which I am only mostly qualified, and I know many people for whom this is true of jobs they are only barely qualified for.
There are a ton of fake jobs openings out there, or which sort of exist, but they aren't exactly eager to hire and haven't filled the role in nine months.
You'd have to pay with no guarantee anyone will even read it, which even at a fairly low cost rapidly becomes an issue when you might have to apply to a lot of jobs.
Making the employer also pay might help, but I suspect then the employers will just wander over to another jobs site that promises free listings.
They already do this, listen to the radio at off hours and there will be many job ads with instructions to apply via postal mail. Of course the reason isn't to deter LLMs it's to deter Americans so the employer can claim no Americans applied in their visa and green card filings.
As much hate as H1Bs get, I’ve worked at two large companies where the publicly posted salary range for H1B applications were consistently higher than my own. In all humility, I was more qualified and more experienced than required by the position.
Maybe there is a dearth of talent, maybe it’s about control, maybe is someone trying to get a friend hired. I don’t think it’s about the money.
In my last job search, I sent out a few dozen resumes utilizing snail mail. It was from a job board that searched for job descriptions that only accepted applications through physical mail. There were some big tech companies I was able to apply to. Ultimately, I didn't get a role from snail mail but it was an interesting process. I would probably expose myself if I detailed the specific service I used, but you can lookup online tools where you upload a PDF and they print it out and send it to an address for like $1 each (more for certified, priority, etc.) and I confirmed it worked. I even had companies mail me back rejection letters, so that was a first.
For every 1 LLM applicant that this idea would deter, you would also deter 50 humans who simply don't feel like having to send a letter to apply to a job.
At least for me, I'd still rather mail a letter versus input all my personal details and job experience into yet another CRM with a crappy data entry interface.
Well, presumably your business charges something to mail out job applications to companies? Like an application fee, that charge incurs a cost to applicant which will do something (presumably reduce applicant volume).
The barrier of entry has gone up from nearly nothing to signing up (and presumably paying for) your service. This is a significant increase, which will simnifically decrease BS applications.
Last job I hired for I required short video submission answering some basic questions. If you didn't submit a video you were automatically disqualified. The previous position we hired for had over 1,000 applicants this last position around 500.
What about doing more to retain employees? Maybe don't layoff employees each time someone on CNBC makes a comment about the company's overhead looking a fraction of a percent too high? Perhaps even train people?
Instead, everyone expects there to be a magical unicorn out there who has decades of experience as a senior at multiple FAANGs but lives in Warm Spit, Missouri and is willing to work for the average Walmart wage in Warm Spit (locality adjustment, surely you understand why we must do this). Shrink your pool to your local area. Even if you allow remote work, require a physical interview at your office. Stop screwing up the process by worrying about edge cases involving unicorns flying across the globe to meet you. Once you stop chasing unicorns, most of the fraud goes away because it's the unicorn chute that's letting the fraudsters into the process.
But seriously, stop getting rid of good employees and stop refusing to build up employees from within. Very few are going to get hired away if you treat them well. The few who do leave will either be treated poorly at their new employer and want to return or be treated well, which means that employer isn't gaining some advantage over you by treating their employees lesser.
Of course, if you're just trying to get a bonus for cutting labor expenses a few percentage points before you parachute off to somewhere else, then you and the company that tolerates this both deserve to suffer. No doubt you'll both be at your congress critter's door to demand access to the global market because you believe skill is based on how little an employee is willing to accept in compensation. In a labor pool of over 150 million, no doubt it's true that you can't find anyone who knows React or Spring Boot.
Surely few people have a printer these days? I do (a color laser printer) but I'm a bit old school. And yes, my handwriting is, and always has been, dreadful.
You can submit an application online, and require a printed QR code be mailed via post with a handwritten cover letter, achieving the personal intent, inconvenience tax, and cost, while still providing the convenience of digital resumes and applications. The mailed QR serves as a CAPTCHA.
I think something like an escrowed fee that both the applicant and the employer pay would be a reasonable way to solve the spam and keep both parties honest. If either the applicant or the employer are unhappy with the process (resume doesn't match, employer ghosts) - the fee is sent to charity, otherwise the fee is returned to both parties.
That used the be the trick FAANG used to justify H1B visas. Onerous application requirements like mailed applications to prove there's no Americans wanting the job
And maybe employers/recruiters should be required to include a template (but .doc is not allowed) of what format they expect, disclose if they will be OCR-ing it and with which tool/LLM, will they read it or feed it to an AI etc.
As someone who is currently looking for a job, I don't like this idea.
All this does is increase the effort and barrier to entry to apply for a job. This is not a good thing. Applying to jobs is already time consuming as it is; nobody wants more hoops to jump through.
I understand that recruiters/hiring managers/whatever get a lot of junk applications, but frankly, it is your job to sort through them. You are paid to do this.
Could the hiring/job seeking process be better? Yes, absolutely. Currently, it's terrible, and almost everyone involved is making it worse. But the solution is not mailing job applications.
> I understand that recruiters/hiring managers/whatever get a lot of junk applications, but frankly, it is your job to sort through them. You are paid to do this.
Recruiters, hiring managers, and whatevers are humans too, with ordinary human limitations. Just because they are paid to do something doesn't mean they gain superhuman capabilities.
Even if I am a recruiter with nothing else to do, if I get 5k applications for a role each week, I won't individually review 5k applications in a week. It's not possible. So I will have to rely on some automated system that filters out most of those applications. Who knows how good that system is.
On the other hand, if I get 100 mail applications for a role each week, that I can review that.
I'm not in love with this proposal, but I definitely see the appeal. Adding a little cost/effort on the applicant side automatically filters out a ton of applicants that have not bothered to learn anything about the role or company.
In the past I've had success with adding things to the job description like: "please include a link to your favorite gif in your email." And that filters out about 95% of applicants who don't read the job description and don't have a gif link in their email. But with LLMs I imagine those kinds of filters work less well than before.
> get a lot of junk applications, but frankly, it is your job to sort through them.
But this isn't their job. Their job is to hire someone who passes the hiring bar. If they can do that without ever looking at a random resume everyone at the company is happy.
An unstated thesis of the article is that several years from now people who want to accomplish that job just won't look at resumes submitted online - whatever anyone's feelings about it.
This is beneficial to both parties, it's not just to throw spikes on the road for applicants without care.
The less nonsensical applications they get, the more time they can give your application.
> I understand that recruiters/hiring managers/whatever get a lot of junk applications, but frankly, it is your job to sort through them. You are paid to do this.
Indeed they are, and that is what they're doing by asking for a written application.
Introducing JobbyPasta, the service that will hand-complete and mail in job applications for a small fee of $9.99 per application. Add on a transcription of your cover letter for an additional $4.99, or have us generate one (with your approval) and transcribe it for $7.99.
Have a lot of applications to send out? Subscribe to us monthly for $34.99/mo (billed annually).
I feel like this is already addressed in the "Aha! But you see..." section. There is nothing that one can't poke holes in, but if the holes are not big enough, the proposal is still sound.
And before the in-person interview, the applicant is required to produce a handwriting sample in front of the interviewer of random text, which is then compared against the mailed documents.
While time consuming, I would gladly use my otherwise underused but decent enough handwriting to carefully write out job applications. Can get really good pens to do it too. However, given my own network, that's probably not necessary anymore either way.
My mother had insanely superb handwriting, in part because her mother pushed good penmanship on her. While I can be sloppy, it was for me a challenge when I was young to copy her perfect handwriting (not for forging signatures though!) Handwriting is influenced by which hand is dominant. I am left, she was right handed... so not exactly close :)
Reminds me of how it was common in France until pretty recently for employers to use graphology (pseudoscience) analysis of candidate's handwritten letters to assess personality traits etc. When I was looking for work there I was lucky that the tech sector was already a abandoning the practice.
lanthade|1 month ago
https://archive.ph/iTJTI
staticshock|1 month ago
In a world that increasingly resembles The Library of Babel,
- the main way to know what's true is to tune into news sources you trust (monolithic old school media, or personality driven new-school media, social media, etc.),
- the main way to learn what to watch/listen/read is to take recommendations from people you trust, or received through channels you trust,
- the main way to hire or get hired is, increasingly, by exploiting a network of people you trust.
All of this compensates for ambient oversaturation by using the best available (and tunable!) desaturation filter: your trust network.
the_snooze|1 month ago
pixl97|1 month ago
Unfortunately these have been bought up by billionaires that use them as play things to get richer.
>from people you trust,
In one particular area where they understand what is going on. I have lawyers I would trust with my life on legal matters, but should not be trusted around any digital device.
>y exploiting a network of people you trust.
agreed, but sucks for people that don't have that.
softgrow|1 month ago
joe_mamba|1 month ago
If you want personalized human rejection letters to come back to you, then the hiring process would have to be equally friction based: i.e. mailing in notarized copies of documents and interviewing in person, for it to scale and not overwhelm a company's resources.
>I put some effort in to applying
Yeah but so did hundreds of other people. This worked in the world of 20+ years ago, but it doesn't scale anymore in the era of online applications where every job posting gets hundreds of applications within a week.
It doesn't matter if you put in more work in your application than the other 200 candidates who are doing "spray and pray", it's too much noise for humans to swift through with without some automated screening that might just as well drop you through the net because it can't tell the amount of work you put in, you're just a number in a queue.
eslaught|1 month ago
But I think it's a generational thing. The younger agents I know of just shut down all their submissions when they get overwhelmed, or they start requiring everyone to physically meet them at a conference first.
pjmlp|1 month ago
This stopped being a thing about 15 years ago though.
I still have some of those applications in a box somewhere.
antasvara|1 month ago
1970-01-01|1 month ago
stackskipton|1 month ago
However, when we wanted to hire a new Ops person at work, the flood of obviously not qualified at all applicants we got was insane.
vulcan01|1 month ago
From speaking to folks looking for jobs in tech over the past few years, this is a natural result.
1. Companies write requirements on the job posting that are a little beyond reasonable for the role and salary.
2. Applicants learn over time, and start applying to jobs for which they only meet most of the qualifications.
3. Companies adjust and write even more ridiculous requirements.
4. Applicants start applying to jobs for which they only meet some requirements.
5. Repeat.
As evidence that the applicants are, at every stage, correctly reacting to the situation: I have received positive responses (and, later, job offers) by applying to roles for which I am only mostly qualified, and I know many people for whom this is true of jobs they are only barely qualified for.
PolygonSheep|1 month ago
nitwit005|1 month ago
You'd have to pay with no guarantee anyone will even read it, which even at a fairly low cost rapidly becomes an issue when you might have to apply to a lot of jobs.
Making the employer also pay might help, but I suspect then the employers will just wander over to another jobs site that promises free listings.
multjoy|1 month ago
chipgap98|1 month ago
ralph84|1 month ago
BobbyTables2|1 month ago
Maybe there is a dearth of talent, maybe it’s about control, maybe is someone trying to get a friend hired. I don’t think it’s about the money.
mckn1ght|1 month ago
kittikitti|1 month ago
ewuhic|29 days ago
wavemode|1 month ago
Zanni|1 month ago
mckn1ght|1 month ago
wat10000|1 month ago
malfist|1 month ago
aitchnyu|1 month ago
pavel_lishin|1 month ago
ghusto|1 month ago
personjerry|1 month ago
I'll just start a business that mails letters to companies for you.
Now, an APPLICATION FEE, that's interesting. Hmm.
postalcoder|1 month ago
I'll just start a business that lends money to job applicants. Apply now, pay later (ANPL).
jaredklewis|1 month ago
ghusto|1 month ago
mccraveiro|1 month ago
msten|1 month ago
rapidaneurism|1 month ago
aitchnyu|1 month ago
Mountain_Skies|1 month ago
Instead, everyone expects there to be a magical unicorn out there who has decades of experience as a senior at multiple FAANGs but lives in Warm Spit, Missouri and is willing to work for the average Walmart wage in Warm Spit (locality adjustment, surely you understand why we must do this). Shrink your pool to your local area. Even if you allow remote work, require a physical interview at your office. Stop screwing up the process by worrying about edge cases involving unicorns flying across the globe to meet you. Once you stop chasing unicorns, most of the fraud goes away because it's the unicorn chute that's letting the fraudsters into the process.
But seriously, stop getting rid of good employees and stop refusing to build up employees from within. Very few are going to get hired away if you treat them well. The few who do leave will either be treated poorly at their new employer and want to return or be treated well, which means that employer isn't gaining some advantage over you by treating their employees lesser.
Of course, if you're just trying to get a bonus for cutting labor expenses a few percentage points before you parachute off to somewhere else, then you and the company that tolerates this both deserve to suffer. No doubt you'll both be at your congress critter's door to demand access to the global market because you believe skill is based on how little an employee is willing to accept in compensation. In a labor pool of over 150 million, no doubt it's true that you can't find anyone who knows React or Spring Boot.
zabzonk|1 month ago
slaymaker1907|1 month ago
midnitewarrior|28 days ago
siliconc0w|1 month ago
amadeuspagel|27 days ago
I find handwriting physically painful and people feel the same about reading it.
ottah|1 month ago
pavel_lishin|1 month ago
I like this suggestion, but please don't practice some equivalent of phrenology to deny me a job.
ksenzee|1 month ago
malfist|1 month ago
isodev|1 month ago
Arch485|1 month ago
All this does is increase the effort and barrier to entry to apply for a job. This is not a good thing. Applying to jobs is already time consuming as it is; nobody wants more hoops to jump through.
I understand that recruiters/hiring managers/whatever get a lot of junk applications, but frankly, it is your job to sort through them. You are paid to do this.
Could the hiring/job seeking process be better? Yes, absolutely. Currently, it's terrible, and almost everyone involved is making it worse. But the solution is not mailing job applications.
drdec|1 month ago
The reduction in what are essentially spam applications means your genuine application will stand out and be more likely to be considered.
Things that help employers find qualified candidates also help those qualified candidates.
jaredklewis|1 month ago
Recruiters, hiring managers, and whatevers are humans too, with ordinary human limitations. Just because they are paid to do something doesn't mean they gain superhuman capabilities.
Even if I am a recruiter with nothing else to do, if I get 5k applications for a role each week, I won't individually review 5k applications in a week. It's not possible. So I will have to rely on some automated system that filters out most of those applications. Who knows how good that system is.
On the other hand, if I get 100 mail applications for a role each week, that I can review that.
I'm not in love with this proposal, but I definitely see the appeal. Adding a little cost/effort on the applicant side automatically filters out a ton of applicants that have not bothered to learn anything about the role or company.
In the past I've had success with adding things to the job description like: "please include a link to your favorite gif in your email." And that filters out about 95% of applicants who don't read the job description and don't have a gif link in their email. But with LLMs I imagine those kinds of filters work less well than before.
Magmalgebra|1 month ago
But this isn't their job. Their job is to hire someone who passes the hiring bar. If they can do that without ever looking at a random resume everyone at the company is happy.
An unstated thesis of the article is that several years from now people who want to accomplish that job just won't look at resumes submitted online - whatever anyone's feelings about it.
wat10000|1 month ago
ghusto|1 month ago
The less nonsensical applications they get, the more time they can give your application.
> I understand that recruiters/hiring managers/whatever get a lot of junk applications, but frankly, it is your job to sort through them. You are paid to do this.
Indeed they are, and that is what they're doing by asking for a written application.
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
elgertam|1 month ago
Have a lot of applications to send out? Subscribe to us monthly for $34.99/mo (billed annually).
budududuroiu|1 month ago
ghusto|1 month ago
jaredklewis|1 month ago
oojuliuso|1 month ago
bigpeopleareold|1 month ago
My mother had insanely superb handwriting, in part because her mother pushed good penmanship on her. While I can be sloppy, it was for me a challenge when I was young to copy her perfect handwriting (not for forging signatures though!) Handwriting is influenced by which hand is dominant. I am left, she was right handed... so not exactly close :)
voxelghost|1 month ago
Its all in the profile - and we can all just swipe left/right instead.
Dysfunctional FAANG seeks 10X prompt engineer in hyderabad
stevage|1 month ago
BobbyTables2|1 month ago
Leynos|1 month ago
boogrpants|1 month ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]