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Comment by nullptr_deref | Hacker News Reader

I am sorry to play the role of devil's advocate.

The hiring industry put up with ridiculous requirements on the engineers. There is such a disconnect between the requirements on job post and actual job. As a result, all entry level people are forced to apply to 300-400 jobs at least. And you are all looking for programmers. If one thing I know is most of them are having a heck of fun creating their automated system.

I know it's annoying to you but it is equally annoying to us. I hope the upper management learns something out of this. Compile a presentation and show it to upper management. If they don't do something, expect more weird stuffs down the line.

I think your upper management will force your senior engineers to come with a filter and we will come with ways to bypass the filter. The race to the bottom is on.

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I agree with this. Just getting to talk to a human is a massive effort in the hiring process. Before that it’s create an account on workday, have it automatically fill in the form with a pdf resume but it doesn’t change anything because I still have to go through it and make sure everything is correct, decide if I want to put effort into writing a cover letter, fill in all the manual questionnaires like “why do you want to work for us?” that I’m comfortable with, wait 2+ weeks for the automated rejection email, repeat!

This is also precious coming from an industry that uses automated emails for rejection. Yeah you don’t want to write 80 personalized rejection emails (probably way more) aaaand we don’t want to write 80 (or more) cover letters. I feel that’s pretty fair.

Also isn’t this the industry that uses keywords to automatically detect “good” resumes and skips the resumes that don’t have those keywords?

How does that have anything to do with the OP and their company? A bad behavior in the industry doesn't justify taking the revenge on one small company. If anything, it creates a negative feedback loop.

> Please don't do this. I spend time going through the resume, the various links in it, and then responding to everyone who applied. But this time, with so much AI-generated verbiage I simply don't want to.

Congratulations, now there's one more company "that uses automated emails for rejection". And rightly so, if you ask me.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with OP or their employer.

Because if someone’s experience is that their cover letter never gets read, and they finally get the chance to automate writing a cover letter, they’re just going to follow the pattern they’ve always experienced.

I also love that the way things have worked for decades is applicants have to do everything by hand, but employers can automate as much as they want. Now suddenly applicants can automate just the writing of the cover letter and suddenly automation is bad and it’s all about being personal and what happened to the human touch lmao. This is just over a cover letter, by the way.

Also this is likely not applicants that are filling out one job application. We’re talking applicants that have probably spent weeks trying to apply for jobs. Spare then the 5 minutes of writing a cover letter for a job they’re probably not going to get for the 50th or whatever time.

yep, you hit it on. I was going to reply the same thing to OP. when companies use AI to determine which resumes/candidates are good, no one can complain, but when candidates use AI to generate cover letters and all that garbage (for the 300 companies they have to apply to) they are literally hitler

This, exactly this! I've been looking for a job for a while now, and of course I automated it... genuinely asking, who reads the 100s of cover letters anyway?

So the era’s gone then. Nobody raises their hat seeing another gentleman on the street anymore. Now that the power of automation is in both hands, everyone has to adapt. Next month we’ll see a medium article about using AI roleplaying chat-instruct mode to bypass the filters and generate what OP finds acceptable or human.

I understand companies not wanting to write personalized rejection emails. I'd settle for them sending automated ones. 2/3 companies that I apply to don't bother to do even that.

> 2/3 companies that I apply to don't bother to do even that.

Your record is far better than mine! I don't think I've ever been informed when I was rejected for a position. I just don't hear from the company again.

Just a heads up, if a field isn't required in Workday, don't fill it in. That includes career and education. Or, maybe just include one of each and delete the rest.

Those fields are mainly for Workday's data gathering anyway vs what hiring managers review.

> This is also precious coming from an industry that uses automated emails for rejection. Yeah you don’t want to write 80 personalized rejection emails (probably way more) aaaand we don’t want to write 80 (or more) cover letters. I feel that’s pretty fair.

This is such a brilliantly good point!

Before getting my current job, I think I had applied to around 180 companies (getting about 10 callbacks -> 3 on sites -> 1 offer).

And I totally used an automated script I wrote for creating cover letters. It was basically a general template about me, listing relevant skills and interests, a blank variable for company name, and then an area where I could say why I wanted to work for XYZ.

Made that part of the process so much easier.

Interestingly, being on the other side, when I’ve reviewed candidate applications before phone screens or interviews, I always enjoyed reading cover letters.

This might fix it: charge the candidate some $amount for each application they send. Also charge the employer $amount * some_factor for each application they receive.

This can filter out candidates that aren't really interested, and companies that aren't really hiring.

The cost to an employer to accept (not review) 100 applications is about 1/100th of the cost to the candidate.

Employers have more information about the applicants individually and in aggregate but candidates don't about the companies.

Employers don't give much basic feedback to candidates, like underqualified, overqualified, not sure, something else.

> Yeah you don’t want to write 80 personalized rejection emails (probably way more) aaaand we don’t want to write 80 (or more) cover letters. I feel that’s pretty fair.

A rejection letter is meant to convey a single fact. A cover letter is meant to convey important information that is relevant to the hiring decision. The two things are not equal.

When I've been hiring, cover letters have often been really critical to making these decisions. If an applicant omits a cover letter or uses one that is clearly boilerplate (or AI generated), that applicant is reducing my ability to assess their suitability for the position. As a result, they're less likely to land the job.

> As a result, they're less likely to land the job.

And you are less likely to hire someone that is a good fit for your role but couldn't put an insane amount of time to apply to your job post and a 100 more.

A rejection letter conveys a single fact because you want it to convey a single fact. You could also write personalized rejection letters that tell the applicant why they weren’t selected to continue with the hiring process. That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!

And it’s your pickle to put however much stock you want in the cover letter. That’s not what this is about at all. If I were applying to jobs and I know a significant percent of my cover letters will never be read by a single human on earth, I might be tempted to have an AI write it. If you happen to read it and reject me based on whatever likely-subjective metrics you use to determine it was chatgpt that wrote it, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. You could also reject me on a million other factors I don’t control. Either way, I saved however many minutes.

> That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!

I assume you mean the general "you", not me specifically, because I do, in fact, do that.

Looking on Indeed at Product Management roles recently, those that had been up for 24 hours had typically 300-700 applicants already.

Please tell us with a straight face that you craft a personalized response to each of your 300-700+ applicants.

“ You could also write personalized rejection letters that tell the applicant why they weren’t selected to continue with the hiring process. That could help the applicant in their future job applications. But you don’t do that. I wonder why!”

Dear lovehashbrowns,

We are unfortunately decided to proceed with other applicant this time because even if you have roughly the required work experience for the position, based on your cover letter and resume you seemed to be generally unpleasant people to be around.

Regards, HR, Honest LTD.

When I've been hiring I found cover letters to be useless. I just ignored them and looked at the CV to determine whether the candidate was worth an initial screening interview.

Cover letters can be useful in some instances. I was very grateful to write a cover letter when I was changing careers because I wanted to explain why my prior work experience was seemingly at odds with my intended role.

But I only bother with putting that kind of care into a cover letter if I think I have very good odds of getting the job. In this case, I knew my chances were good because one of their top employees was recommending me.

Cover letters used to be a good indication of communication skills. And I don’t mean English skills, I mean the ability to convey a set of facts in an intuitive way. If you can’t write a coherent cover letter then God help us when I DM you on Slack about a problem.

I was about to say: the automation of HR and candidate screening has given rise to 'hidden workers' that may be ideal for certain positions but are missed due to candidate pre-screening [0].

[0]: https://www.hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work/Documents/re...

Not just engineers. My wife recently went through this. Application after application, each expecting a cover letter, as to why my wife is the ideal candidate, and how she would be a great fit in the company.

It's an absolute waste of time.

Then when you get through the first filter, you need to do x aptitude tests and a degrading personality test.

And only THEN, when you understand how those tests work and get to get a perfect score, then you might get an email to set up a phone call.

I'll get laid off end of year.

Now I will soon have to do one (serious) job application a week in order to receive benefits for the time being. If I could use ML to make that part easier (I will get declined a lot without even having been read anyway, not even a non-personal rejection letter) while I put effort into it then all the more power to me. Actually, I'd like to thank the OP for the heads up.

how does the personality test work? what do they want?

That's true. But I always thought that HN's "Who is hiring" was more informal, a kind of back door so to say.

It's not anymore, it's just another job board as many others out there..

Um. No you're not. I refuse to participate in a process where I send out 300 bullshit apps.

Instead, network. Reach out to your college profs and family friends. Go to meetups and tech events. Do hackathons. Anything to get time with a real human to build a connection.

Seriously, its how things get done.

> If one thing I know is most of them are having a heck of fun creating their automated system.

... did AI write this?

Hahaha. This has happened to me once before. I do not use sophisticated language and they thought I sounded like AI because of minor exaggeration on venting opinions. I think that is why your anti-ai flag got triggered.

Not a case of unsophisticated language here -- rather, it's a case of an awkward and non-standard sentence construction, which, to be honest, I just parse as someone who doesn't speak English as their first language; ChatGPT wouldn't make this mistake.

I think the assumption that all bad grammar is the result of speaking a non-native speaker is a bad one. I work with a lot of native English speakers and they get all kinds of grammar school grammar wrong.

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