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Comment by thinkingtoilet | Hacker News Reader

There is no real way to handle the influx of applications these days since it's so easy to apply, especially on platforms like LinkedIn. I just take the first X and try to find a qualified applicant. I'm at a small company, we simply can't process 1000 resumes.

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I've heard other people talk about this dynamic. Companies have generally made it very easy to apply. Especially in the current market this means you have increasingly desperate candidates sending out hundreds or even thousands of resumes. Which in turn means companies are applying simple heuristics or "AI" to massively filter the number of resumes that a human even glances at. Which of course reinforces the cycle because it becomes a massive numbers game to even reach a person.

It's even more self-reinforcing than that. There are lots of applicants, so companies don't take the time to communicate the status of the application, so it's not viable for candidates to wait for communication before sending out another resume. If you're applying for jobs you can probably apply for 4-5 per day if you're taking the time to research each company and write individualized cover letters & customize the resume for each, more if you're not doing that much work. If it takes a company an average of a month to send any communication back, the candidate will have applied to over 100 positions before they hear back from the first one.

I last applied for jobs several years ago, and there are still dozens of companies I've not gotten a rejection from. A "fire and forget" strategy of sending out hundreds or thousands of applications is the only thing that makes sense to do if you're not getting a job through networking.

Yup. Whenever people post stuff like "I sent out 1000 applications and haven't received a response" I always think - if you so easily sent out thousands of applications then so did everyone else, which means companies are dealing with an overwhelming volume of applications for each position and you aren't really standing out in any way.

Also, that person sends his/her CV to any job ad they see, even if there is a 30% match in the reqs. I got a friend with IT Audit background. He has spent ALL his life doing IT Audit, and while some skills are transferable, it doesn't make sense he applies for a CISO role. Yet he applies to every job ad that has the words Audit, Security, Compliance. Only to be rejected from all.

A former boss told me that this is how you make sure only to hire lucky people.

I had a role open for a sr. Sys admin.

I got 150+ applications per day.

At some point, you just have to close the window. I can only realistically do 10/25 résumé per day and still do my job.

All most all hiring has a strong element of luck. I've hired really good engineers that can't write a resume or aren't self promoting enough in an interview and they seem kinda flat. But they roll in and make good decisions, good products, good documentation and they are easy to work with.

If I could, I'd talk to everyone on the phone for a few minutes to get a feel but I can't do that either.

If a machine isn't doing a lot of pre-filter, I'm going to be doing a first pass filter on some really lazy heuristics.

Of course, and that right there is luck of the draw. Didn't list the specific thing I need help with? Might not make it to the list of 20 I look at. Not because I wouldn't hire someone for not listing it, or demonstrating they can Lear quickly but jiet be cause I have a limited amount of time.

Or it's look at schools. See if any of the companies pop out and they spent some time there. Obvious exact skills match. The resume isn't too long. Whatever I can get in a 30 second skim.

Ah. Hiring for the Teela Brown gene. I love it.

Google limits you to three applications every 30 days

Interesting.

Adding an application-cost to the dynamic seems to be one sensible approach to applicant-spamming.

It really makes you consider. “I want to do this job or this job is the most realistic one for me to get” instead of just buying tons of lotto tickets to get a google interview

This is ultimately the common factor in spam mitigation. If the costs of transmitting or submitting a message are nil, then the spammer will submit them.

It's also why reducing costs of communications can backfire in all kinds of obnoxious ways. I remember getting my first email account, nearly forty years ago now, and being able to communicate near instantaneously, and with no cost, to ... a very, very, very small handful of people.

Even in the corporate world of the early 1990s, email addresses were sufficiently rarified that for the most part you'd communicate with a few colleagues at the same firm, and perhaps some contacts at other companies, if you were in a technical position (as I was at the time).

I can distinctly recall being in a bookstore in the late 1990s the first time I heard a mother talking with her daughter about a new friend the daughter had made, and the mother asking if the daughter had shared her email address.

Other than cost imposition, the best suggestion I've had for information overload is to have a cheap, unbiased, low-cost, no-regrets information rejection capability.

Earlier mentions: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37440218> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208255>.

Of course, for established contacts you'd want to override that.

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