Cost Cutting Algorithms Are Making Your Job Search a Living Hell | Hacker News Reader

Cost Cutting Algorithms Are Making Your Job Search a Living Hell

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63 pointspmoriarty21 comments

These effectively blacklist people who aren't the 'average ideal' candidate in any way shape or form.

Since many firms use the same or similar algorithms, and will likely to continue converging, this amounts to a global employment blacklist.

I wonder how much effort has been made to avoid these systems blacklisting people for protected traits (sex, age, race, etc) or disabilities.

Probably very little.

Who is to say the benefit of this algorithm isn't doing such filtering in a nominally neutral way? What if it turned out 40 year old Latino women with vision loss are top performers and the algorithms just naturally selected for them?

This is unlikely considering algorithms act on the given training data set, not on outliers imagined by playing devil's advocate:

remember amazon's recruiting program https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17958784/ai-recruiting-t...

Which would imply that people with "average ideal" resumes are overpriced and you can get a steal on people who, for instance, are unusually qualified in specific ways but lack some common HR filter like a bachelor's.

Or the algorithms are actually accurate and people who aren't "average ideal" candidates are lousy hires on average.

This imply that cost-cutting measures have not been applied to these algorithms, which they probably were. This also imply that algorithms are accurate.

Right. This is a problem that the market solves on its own. Anyone who doesn't want an efficient market is, by definition, a rent seeker. Rent seeking makes us all worse off.

That would make going against the grain and not using any would give a chance at a competitive advantage, both in being able to get talent at a discount because of perceived flaws but also in having a non-homogenous workforce who can think creatively and see what the rest don't.

These systems all favour one specific skill over any other: Lying.

Seems like no one wants to admit that modern job-seeking is a living hell because it would mean that you're not skilled enough to be part of the "booming" software engineering market/economy that everyone else is seemingly a part of.

I work in sales recruiting (agency) with various tech companies in SF.

Compared to the people in this story, it's a totally different world, where candidates have a lot more power (partly evidenced by the fact that companies will pay for external recruiting help).

That said, I've run a few LinkedIn & Indeed job posts. It's frustrating when you see the same people apply for wildly different jobs over and over again. Whenever I hear about someone who's angry that they've applied to thousands of jobs but get no callbacks, I think about the candidates I see with no relevant experience, who've applied for a mid/sr level position only a week after they applied for a graduate level position. I get that candidates are frustrated, but as someone who's screening for people, it won't get you moved forward.

From their perspective, they've probably heard nothing from your company. Rejection notices would help; however, if companies continue to use the standard practice of "never tell anyone if your resume has been accepted or rejected", job-seekers will continue to try to apply to as many jobs as possible.

I find rejection notices do wonders for people. Even better, rejection phone calls that allow for questions. The downside is that, being based in the U.S., there is a litigious danger lurking in every word written or spoken in those setups.

It doesn't matter if you are, you still have to fight the bots.

My read of the HN zeitgeist on this issue is that algorithms would be objectionable even if their predictions were perfect matches to reality. This mindset is totally alien to me: we're better off when we know more than less. Deliberate ignorance is an incredibly dangerous attitude to adopt. It's premodern and antiscientific.

I disagree. The problem is that the skills to get hired are very different than the skills to do the job.

I'm reminded of a thing I read about not too long ago--an organization trying to help those who had stumbled in life to get hired. They had a guy who seemed qualified but nobody would hire him. They tried asking a company to give him a practical test before an interview--then didn't hear back about the interview. A followup call revealed they had hired him on the spot based on the practical test.

There's a huge market waiting for:

1. AI apps to tailor resumes and cover letters to openings

2. Handle the tests and phone interview bots.

These HR test firms should form a standards body so that you can test anywhere and use results at all jobs. Then they could start offering training for the tests, and certifications that you can put on your resume.

I think this idea has legs, to a degree.

Bachelors from the University of HR? I'll pass on that degree, thanks.

Isn't that already the main value of current bachelor's degrees?

That idea "has legs" only in the worst possible timeline.

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