How (not) to apply for a software job
benhoyt.com
benhoyt.com
E.g. "Describe your experience with software operations and running services in production" is a really bad question as it is too open ended and leads to name dropping. Asking for "engaging answers" judges the persons ability to write interesting novels instead of ability to solve (or avoid) problems.
Ditto with “How would you approach the design and implementation of new features for a production service?”. This question is way too generic and a proper answer could fill many books. There is so many different ways of doing this and depends a lot on what the software is used for. When benhoyt says "In short, don’t be generic" then at least he could take his own advice into account when writing questions.
An example response like "At Shopify [...] doubled click rate, from 15% to 27%" likely violate NDAs. I don't think companies like you to tell this to their competitor.
I actually agree with this: I think several of our questions could be improved and made more specific. On the other hand, we do want them to be somewhat open-ended so the writer has to think and can put their best foot forward (or not). I don't write these questions, but I'll try to provide some feedback to those who do.
It is a very common topic. At work we get special training on it and tools to write better job advertisements.
> a really bad question as it is too open ended and leads to name dropping
It is definietly not a "job advertisement" or a description of a job. It is an interview question.
It is open ended, what is wrong with that? They are looking for someone who has experience in the domain, so they ask potential candidates what their experience is.
And how does it lead to "name dropping"? If all a candidate says is that they have worked at FamousPlace the right next question should be what specifically they have done there regarding running services in production. Same as if they say they have worked at NonamePlace.
How about, "Top Quartile for software engineers in the UK market according to itjobswatch.co.uk"
Or, "Above average according to Glassdoor for San Portland, Georgia"
Agreed. "Competitive salary" means nothing. They may as well simply not mention it at all.
Someone in HR or a recruiter will match up the technologies on the job post with your CV and only put you through if you list most of the ones they need.
But I've specifically called out the use of infrastructure as code, version control, and CI/CD at various points in my CV! I genuinely dislike the buzzword bingo CVs that I've vetted when hiring for roles but I try to keep an open mind about the actual experience that the candidate is portraying -- I guess it's too much to ask for the same open-mindedness in other hiring managers?
By "used", I don't mean that I touched it once. I mean that I have used it enough to consider myself competent with it.
One need look no further than the Google Docs LLM demo that generated a job advert from a one line description. No employer wants to say that they’d like to pay their employees low salaries or that they’re looking for unmotivated underachievers, and yet every company feels the need to state they’re looking for rockstars who’ll be paid competitively.
If everyone says the same thing, then, from an information theoretic perspective, it conveys no information, what we’d otherwise call “bullshit”.
I find this advice kind of ironic. The most people I know don't use flowery prose in their cover letters because they consider themselves some kind of overachieving artists, but because it appears to be expected. Writing cover letters is bullshitting time, although this is probably country/culture dependent. Fortunately I didn't have to write an applciation for a long time, but reading my own old applications gives me the chills, even though I got invited to an interview almost every single time.
If you don't want flowery prose, you have to set the expectation when writing the job posting. If your job posting appears to be written by your PR department you get cover letters written by your applicants personal PR departments. Or in other words: bullshit me in the job description and I will bullshit you in my cover letter.
This behavior is reinforced if you don't make it clear who will gonna read my application first. If I get the impression that my application will land on a desk of a hiring manager who doesn't know much about the job I might turn the BS to 11. If you communicate clearly that the person reading the application first knows what you are really looking for, I'll dial down.
I like to think HR starts sweating at how quickly they can get me in and the EM rolls their eyes a full 360.
The key to using AI to write better is: 'with the assistance of'. You don't write a prompt, get a bunch of text and copy paste it. Instead, you use AI to help you, as basically a spellchecker on steroids that can accept commands to do anything.
One example is where the author mentions non-native English speakers. They can use AI to turn their broken English into exactly what they said but with perfect grammar, formatting, spelling and punctuation - and sprinkle in some thesaurus help and rewording here and there. They can even get some ideas for making the tone witty or serious or professional or funny. Key there is 'ideas'. Don't copy paste, use it to help.
AI is a tool just like any other, and it is here to stay. Learn to embrace it.
I think their process is intense but fair, and I believe them when they say they try hard to rid themselves of bias. I'd ditch the psychometric tests, but will give them the benefit of doubt when they say it correlates with job performance (Google's also made that claim before).
Given how many people apply for jobs at Canonical, it's to be expected there is a high level of attrition, and quite possible small errors in the resume or application end up disqualifying your application, specially for more junior hobs. I can understand your disappointment, but they can only work based on what you've sent them.
Also, there's a lot of superstition and nonsense about how to succeed at interviews and job applications.
Thank you for applying for Software Engineer. The application process has several stages:
- Initial screening (done)
- Personal essay (this stage)
- Culture interview
- Standardised aptitude and personality tests
- General interviews
- Recruitment screen
- Technical assessment
- Role-specific interviews
- Hiring manager interview
- Executive interview
The current stage is your personal essay. Please take some time to answer the questions below. We’re looking to get a sense of who you are, what’s important to you, and how you communicate. If you’ve already completed this when applying for another role, please feel free to copy/paste from your previous application.
- Beginning in your high school years, through university and into your career, what have you done that you consider exceptional?
- Why do you want to work for XYZ?
- How are you involved in open source software?
- What are your strengths as a software engineer?
- Describe your experience as a Go software engineer.
- Describe your experience with distributed systems.
Writing a Personal Essay after, what sounds like, an automated email is not something I would consider as a good interview process.
canonical’s is indeed a disaster, it’s onerous for applicants (hey that simplified outline doesn’t say it but you can expect between five and fourteen interviews - seriously I know applicants who had fourteen interviews).
Another thing it doesn’t mention is the fact that there’s really no dedicated hiring and interviewing team at Canonical - all engineering teams “pitch in” (read: are forced to) with resume and written interview reviews, as well as in-person interviews.
This wastes a tremendous amount of expensive engineering time, and a lot of this is due to poorly screened resumes. It was very frequent for me to interview a candidate and wonder how they made it to that stage when it was clear from looking at the resume during interview prep that they were totally unsuited for the role.
Source: former Canonical who like everyone else, was forced to “participate” in the hiring process.
Am I so out of touch to expect an application, one interview and maybe a technical assessment for most IT/CompSci jobs? Wouldn't the probationary period be way more effective to see if you fit into the team/company/culture/etc.?
They do read the essay carefully, which is what the OP's article is all about.
I'd rather a company take time to do a thorough assessment of a candidate rather than cavalierly hire one with a high likelihood of dismissal during the trial period, as they may have left an existing job to join.
Is the compensation at Canical that much better than other companies that makes the extra effort worth it?
My information is a decade+ out of date, but Google would perform a recruiter/CV screen, then a technical phone screen, then five technical interviews on one day. And this was all before your CV got in front of the person you'd be reporting to, and before they could say whether they were offering interesting work.
Many other tech companies, having seen Google's success, have decided to ape their interview process.
It comes across like a sort of cargo cult recruitment.
At least one of the FANGs only has 3 or 4 steps, one being a HR contact and another a phone screening.
A 10-step process goes way beyond that.
No, you're not out of touch. Most companies are more like this (although my experience is that most companies will do two interviews -- one that is more social and meant to measure "fit" and one more technical.)
Really?! I'm pretty sure that's illegal.
The restriction only applies to tests which are not a reasonable measure of job performance.
So for example, a test of strength might be allowed for delivery drivers who have to safely handle heavy items, when it wouldn't be allowed for software developers.
If you could describe what superstition and nonsense you see in the article, that might be helpful.
What if there is something about following this advice that unwittingly selects for candidates who will make a super long and off-putting interview loop?
Right before the application form they say "We are proud to foster a workplace free from discrimination." Not everybody had the luck to be able to perform at their best in high school, so that looks like a pretty big discriminant right away! And for most people applying to that kind of job that was more than 10 years ago, so I fail to see how it is relevant to a job application.
Some companies even ask for the specific high school.
AI doesn’t help because if you can articulate your genuine motivation as a prompt for an AI, you should just use the prompt as the cover letter which will be a lot more effective than using the AI-generated letter, as the AI will muddy your authentic motivation and diminish its impact.
Because that's realistically like 80% of the motivation for most job/candidate pairings. In my case the remainder is usually like 15% "and it doesn't require selling my immortal soul to the devil" and 5% "your tech/problem is vaguely interesting".
Given the above, I feel like a typical cover letter is really an exercise in spin.
Also, almost no-one is motivated so purely by money that they are equally interested in all jobs that pay the same. You can probably think of some reason why you would want to work at company X as opposed to any other number of other companies that may be offering similarly-paying roles.
It really depends on the market. Sometimes there are great looking companies that you really would like to support because they somehow seem awesome to you. But you don’t always have that luxury.
> A cover letter is also supposed to explain why the company should want you to work for them.
For the generic cover letter that’s a reasonable thing to focus on. I’ve seen plenty of application forms that specifically ask the “why do you want to work for us” question (or even worse: “why do you want to work for us rather than our competitors?” which is even harder to answer, especially if it’s a tiny startup you’ve first heard of by reading their job post on LinkedIn).
Not if you word it like that.
>I’ve seen plenty of application forms that specifically ask the “why do you want to work for us” question
That's what I'm saying. That's the formal question posed, but you can easily answer it by explaining why you'd be good at the role. "I want to work at X because I believe that I could make a significant contribution to Y given my Z skills".
Money. I want money. That's the reason I am applying to your job offer. I found a job offer that meets my skillset and I applied to it because I want an income.
But this isn't what you expect me to write, is it? You want something more, so I'm going to bullshit you so I can get the job that will allow me to get money
But what does the potential employer get out of the deal?
- data is in the database
- get data from the database using ORM solution
- pull stuff from Backend (from Frontend), using REST/Graphql
- display it in a nice way using whatever the du-jour styling solution they picked.
This isn't rocket science. Do I really have to make some BS about why I'm "excited" about this company or industry in the cover letter.
Look at the number of applicants at a linked job posting. It's usually high 3 digit numbers, sometimes 4 digits.
Are they really going to read all this flowery cover letters about how you feel about their company.
I've generally had more luck making a small number of applications with a short but carefully considered cover letter. It can just be a few sentences. Sometimes people think they need to spam applications because most of their applications are rejected; but in fact most of their applications are rejected because they're generic application spam.
A cover letter can be the least bullshitty part of an application (at least if you are applying to a small or medium sized company). You can truthfully explain why you are interested in the role and why you might be good at it.
The author is talking about a fairly “classic” approach. I was a hiring manager for a long time, and had a similar (but more flexible) worldview. It may not age well.
I personally think that being able to leverage AI tools will be an important skillset, in the future, and would not disqualify AI submissions, right off the bat (but maybe not consider them a “leg up,” either). They will just be part of the landscape, going forward. A lot of “classic” résumé advice isn’t really much better than what ChatGPT will provide, anyway. For example, he rails against “Buzzword Bingo.” I hate that, too, but it is also a “classic” CV technique, and many professional submissions will be absolutely packed with jargon.
I just think that there isn’t any way to avoid having to dedicate some real time and effort to screening applicants. In my case, it was something that I took very seriously. I had to fight like crazy to get headcount, and I was hiring pretty high-functioning people for a small, rather “elite” team. I really can’t relate to having to sort through hundreds of CVs of folks right out of school.
The second type are the roles where you just need someone that passes the minimum bar, good enough will do.
Problem is, everyone thinks that their role, their company, can only operate with the first type, where really most of them are the second type.
Like I said, I can't relate to the other type, but that doesn't make it any less valid. It's just my personal journey.
Trying to give the candidate a chance, I asked them why they had a applied to the position in the hopes that they would write me a short answer about what piqued their interest. Alas they chose to use ChatGPT to generate that answer as well, hitting me with another wall of text of mindless bla bla bla.
* generated by ChatGPT itself
Honest question: do people actually apply to jobs because it piques their interest? I pretty much just... need a job. I'll assess whether I want to join based almost purely on the team - if the team doesn't feel right, I'll skip.
I don't apply for any jobs that require a cover letter. There's already enough information asymmetry and the effort required from the candidate is a lot higher than from the company as the company can distribute the work across multiple employees. A cover letter is a way to shift even more work to the candidate.
When applying for jobs because I want a change, not because I need a salary, then yea it’s exclusively applications to interesting companies and teams.
I assumed cover letters were for non-programmers and that places that demand them are trying to hire programmers with an antiquated/non-programmer interview process, which I interpreted as a red flag.
We actually don't require a cover letter in the first place. But if there is one, I'll read it of course.
Yes? I mean, I have to work somewhere, but I'd prefer to work on problems that I find interesting.
> I don't apply for any jobs that require a cover letter.
Where I work cover letters are optional, and give the candidate a bit of extra space to explain how their experience is relevant to the role.
I find this becomes less and less relevant with seniority: if you are an obvious fit with oodles of experience then the letter won't tell us much. But I find the letters pretty interesting for more junior candidates, or people coming in from different industries.
I remember back in recruitment for banking, we simply used to look at stacks of hundreds, maybe thousands, of resumes. Judging HR folks' calibre, I doubt any of them had the time to read and filter through hundreds of cover letters to send the candidates over to us.
The cover letter is a thing of the past and should be eliminated altogether, simply because they have been rendered useless by employers themselves.
Once this exceeds a certain amount it will accelerate because more and more people reluctantly start gaming the system to avoid the penalty.
The more automation and AI and bulk/mass stuff is thrown into it the worse it will get (since you get to put a multiplier behind any bad behaviour). When it was slower and more expensive to participate in the job market it was better.
You can find parallels to this in other areas such as the dating market.
Obviously a generic prompt is going to get a generic response, but if you put in the work to create a prompt with adequate context and descriptions of what you specifically want then I've seen it produce output that is a reasonably good starting place. If you don't want it using overly flowery, weirdly deferential language and copying specific phrases from the job description then you can address that by including those instructions in the prompt: "Be concise. Use a confident and conversational tone, and avoid using specific phrases from the job description."
The problem is most people aren't going to spend 20-30 minutes creating a really customized prompt. But people who can't write a good prompt probably also weren't going to handcraft a great letter either. Mainly because of the investment of time it requires to create a fully bespoke piece of writing by hand for each place you want to apply.
Another thing I want to mention is that it seems that many people don't realize yet that if you don't like the initial output you can give feedback and ask for revisions. E.g. "Can you make it shorter", "Eliminate flowery adjectives", etc or even just "Can you show me some different variations of this letter?"
If you're writing a lot of these, it's worth putting in 20 minutes or so to make a prompt that creates output that doesn't suck but which you can easily reuse for other companies and roles with minor tweaks.
My job sometimes gets really boring and uninteresting. I can then scratch the itch by working on something for my own benefit and interest.
I have a Github profile with multiple public repos, but I don't think it helps with anything. I once had an interviewer say "it seems like you don't have much on your Github profile".
This sounds like a softball question to invite you to talk about your projects phrased in a slightly ignorant way, possibly on purpose. If you had quality projects on your GitHub this should be an extremely easy statement to answer with "I disagree because x and I'm particularly proud of y and its popularity with n users and feel that it demonstrates skills z". It's a perfectly fine way get a chance to state the value you demonstrate on your GitHub. I'd have no problem with getting this.
The interviewer could easily craft this question in any number of ways that creates space for the candidate based on what signals they're looking for. And it should be on the interviewer to get this right, not the candidate to interpret it as intended.
Of course, it could also be that the interviewer's looking for signals around how the candidate approaches being placed on the defensive and belittled; but hopefully the candidate will recognize that signal for what it is. Why would a candidate want to work in a place where they'll be expected to be on the defensive and belittled, to the point where it's highlighted in the interview process?
I can understand why it may be useful if you are making a big switch in terms of the type of programming you do and can see myself putting together a "portfolio" in that case. Otherwise its probably worthless.
This isn't to say I don't have side projects or experiments I do for fun. They just don't go on GitHub (and why should they? It's not particularly more convenient than any other way to host your code. Mostly I use cgit these days since it's very platform portable and lightweight and I can host it internally with just a c compiler), and if they do, there's very little benefit to them being public unless you are doing what I mentioned above about needing to "prove yourself".
I'm not a web developer though, maybe it's more valuable the closer you get to frontend stuff? Just a thought, I don't actually know enough about that to say.
- you have a very popular repo
- you have submitted a significant amount of PRs (or interesting issues) to popular repos
Your toy programming language that hasn’t received a single star nor a commit for over 2 years, your “fix typo” PRs, nor your countless forks don’t matter at all because: interviewers rarely look at them, if they do, they won’t understand it, if they understand it they will judge the smallest mistake they can find, and chances are, you yourself don’t remember a thing about your most interesting project.
If you're apply to a job that's targeting C/C++/rust/low-level take any python (or similar) and either don't include them or, if what you were using them for was relevant to the job itself coalesce them.
If you're applying to a job that involves creative work, make sure to include creative projects, but if you're not then just have a sentence in your "about me" synopsis at most.
Your CV/resume should fit on a single page. Priority should be to things that are directly relevant to the job you're applying for.
If it's not your first job your uni grades don't matter, just the qualifications, and the more real experience you have the less relevant those are - unless you're an international hire and a work visa will be needed, in that case more or less all countries just have hard "you must have this degree or equivalent" requirements.
Include information about what you actual did, not what project/product you worked on.
I've read many CVs that make it actively hard to determine whether interviewing is worthwhile: lots of pages isn't impressive, all it means I'm more likely to miss info that would make you compelling. Similarly buzzwords aren't impressive they should only be present in significant amounts if you're think you're dealing with recruiter BS.
I'd love one of these companies to actually hire a control group some time instead of just assuming "well, I like the people I hired so they must be good" and then pontificating about it.
"Don’t use flowery prose"
Most job ads out there are flowery prose.
So I went and checked their careers page. Surprised me to see that they tell you pretty clear what you will do on your job.
People in high demand don't have, nor should they have, the skill to write resumes. That's the skill that people who can't get a job naturally develop.
The other thing, a bad resume often protects you from bad employers. Take this passage from the post: "When candidates first started (obviously) using AI for their applications, I would rule them out for “cheating”" - that's... incredibly stupid. You don't want to work for or with stupid people so I think all the ruled-out people dodged a bullet here.
One reason I joined Materialise was that the recruiter used my LinkedIn profile at the interview instead of asking for a resume. Didn't waste their own time, didn't waste mine. That's smart. I want to work with smart people. I'm in.
I have never seen this. Most of the time, not only do they not look at your linkedin profile (because like it's usually a reflection of the CV), they want you to fill in a custom built 'Resume builder' on their 2000 era site. As you can imagine, this is as crap as can be and doesn't work correctly.
I just give up at this point.
I guess it depends on who's reading.
For example, the non-vite job posting some unions, faculties, and work-visa-sponsors must post on public lists by law. These are often so overly specific one could name the single applicant out of 200k CVs. The posters sometimes just want to document time/details with a few applicants to prove on paper they had no option other than hire a specific worker they wanted in the first place.
There are great companies out there that need help building interesting projects. You probably don’t want to work someplace where the process is deceptive, punitive and or humiliating... even with low-stakes conversations about project staffing.
Production programmers/engineers are busy people, and often don’t give a toss about making things aesthetically pleasing for laypersons. For example, they would ignore an article written by chatGPT criticizing chatGPT with 62% certainty.
Good luck, =)
Do you not want a software engineer?
I’m applying for a job that I have to have to survive, not my life’s ultimate passion.
If you don’t want me to use automation to aid my workflow (which in this case is to apply to hundreds of jobs knowing that my chances at each individual one are slim) then you’ll get what you’re asking for: employees who are stupid enough to waste their time on menial, low-value tasks like cover letters for job applications that have a 99%+ reject rate.
For hiring managers lamenting the fact that our resumes don’t stand out, maybe you should be scolded for your jobs not standing out. What do special about working for canonical? Let me guess, you write software that transforms inputs to outputs on a deadline. My bad for my cover letter on that subject being “boring.”
It’s not the applicant’s job to be worried about the difficulty of your screening process. If you don’t want to sift through flowery cover letters, stop asking for them. Also, it’s your job to sift through applications, not our job to tailor our applications for your individual preferences. You’re just one fish in the sea.
Software engineering described by a software engineer, love it!
"Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37059857
Yeah, not taking advice from this fellow. Good writing doesn't necessarily make you a good software engineer (and vice versa). Save this garbage for college applications.
The act of writing fictitious narrative prose is obviously quite far removed from communicating technical ideas clearly and concisely. I think you know that.
The criticisms seem pedantic, given that many job postings might fail the writing bar suggested by the post. How would applicants know that the writing style in a posting is unacceptable in their submission?
Re:business jargon — the example of “actionable insights” that was derided as meaningless merely lacks specificity. It provides more information about a candidate’s prior role. Are they building dashboards with summary stats, or expected to propose strategy based on research? Not knowing business jargon doesn't prove that the jargon itself has no meaning.
What do people think of the language in the job below, evaluated using the criteria in the post?
Can you give some examples of where I use flowery prose in the article (apart from when quoting samples that do)? It's something I try hard to avoid.
This makes it sound like it would be something that would be "copied and pasted to countless other employers", just like a resume often is.
But your last point made it sound like the applicant should invest more of their time than that.
Conventionally, a good cover letter will be, at least to a degree, bespoke for that job. But that is a non-trivial time investment on the part of the applicant. And it can be a significant waste of time in cases where something on their resume disqualifies them from consideration regardless of their cover letter.
Also, in the last several years, the impact of a good cover letter on getting an employment offer has diminished tremendously to the point that expect it of applicants isn't not respectful of their time.
Do you have anything to substantiate this claim?
I'm an employer and I read and respond to dozens of applications when I have an open position.
Usually when I receive an excellent application, the cover letter is roughly a paragraph in length. It isn't some lengthy, typeset file attachment with a mission statement or some other nonsense that would typically appear if you Googled "example cover letter".
My thoughts on ideal job applications closely mirror those described here[0].
[0]: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1748-forget-the-resume-kill-o...
No, it's my personal experience.
It's an observation supported by people I know who have gotten a similar sense at their jobs. One director level friend, with insight into how they do hiring, explained that it has a lot to do with how HR filter things. (As someone else said in this thread.)
Some HR departments will sanitize information to reduce bias, like a photo of the candidate, but this can include a cover letter.
It's going to be different with different employers. So you could be an exception. But the likelihood that anybody reads my cover letters these days is so low that writing them is almost never worth the time. I've also found it to be more difficult these days because the quality of job postings themselves have diminished. A lot of the complaints that OPs article makes can be said about the job postings. There's just nothing to latch on to.
But yeah many/most places don't read cover letters. Some don't even read resumes. It's very clear from the start of the call you can see them start to skim through it or just ask you to just about read it for them. I even had a call where one of the interviewers had someone eles' resume up and referred to it by mistake and apologized and then did it again five minutes later.
So, no, I have nothing to substantiate the claim.
Edit: Okay here's something you might consider "substantial".
Apparently it's a thing now to not even send applicants rejection notices -- and just to ghost them instead -- on the basis that they might be a wacko and react poorly to rejection. So, as a policy, companies will inflict on all candidates, including nice people, the ill of ghosting them, to spare themselves the risk of receiving a shitty email from a shitty person. They are so thin-skinned/careless that they can't tolerate bad behavior in the form of an email that they don't even let you know they're not interested in hiring you. Even if you started the "hiring pipeline". Even if you apply with a cover letter.
People on this website who apparently work for companies that do this admit that's what their company does. So if companies do do this and admit it then maybe that's substance for you.
In my opinion, the kind of psycho who can't send a rejection email is totally consistent with everything I've experienced above the edit.
Genuinely, I'm sorry you've had shitty experiences in the past. I've had a whole bunch too. I will say however that in the times in my career when I did apply for jobs, most of my successful applications [I believe] came as a result of a short, to-the-point, personalised cover letter.
And I don't think writing a cover letter is going to harm your chances at a job. Or if it does, you might not want to work for a company that penalizes them anyway. But the attitude of "well I don't want to work for a company that doesn't read my cover letter" isn't really viable as an applicant as it rules out a lot of opportunities for work.
The whole situation is so silly too because a nice cover letter can make rejection emails nicer, like "we enjoyed your cover letter and your joke about the thing, but ...". I'd like to think that makes it easier for employers to send rejection emails because they can say something that sounds genuinely positive and personal instead of cookie cutter fake encouragement; "I'm sure you'll land on your feet!" So it makes their job better and probably would help avoid getting hate mail from people acting poorly. It's a win all around. But it's just a race to the bottom at this point.
Anyway sorry for the rant. Thanks for the replies. I agree with you 100% and wish cover letters were more meaningful but for every one of you that reads them there are nine who don't. So I'd just ask, don't be surprised if people don't write cover letters anymore.
I mean half these companies, especially the "always hiring" ones aren't even trying to fill positions, they're just signaling growth to investors. Sending anything to them is a waste of time.
Do you want to disqualify great programmers who are bad at writing prose?
Law of unintended consequences I guess.
Another issue with using AI is that you didn't write it, you're going to struggle to clarify any grandiose claims during an interview. I've come accross only a couple of these CVs before and I have to question what these candidates are expecting to happen. If you're going to write your own bullshit in you CV at least you can (try) to bullshit your way through the interview as well. If you're getting an AI to bullshit for you, you're going to be clueless in an interview.
> they might have perfect grammar, but they’re incredibly boring, and they contain little or nothing from the candidate’s experience.
and walk away with the impression that "perfect grammar gives you penalties".
Another candidate might have interpreted it differently.
Guess which candidate will get hired.