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Comment by drdrek | Hacker News Reader

This is like changing your profile picture to a model in a dating app, you are going to get responses but what are you going to do with them if there is no real match?

When looking for a job don't stress about gaming the system, look for an actual match that is good for you as well as the employer.

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While this is sensible advice in some scenarios. It isn't really useful for automated screening scenarios. Since you will often get screened out of things that you are suitable for because you didn't game the system.

Somehow or another you need to get your CV to top 10 out of the 1500 hundred applications for the position. If your skills are really that much in demand, and the field so esoteric that there are only 10 of you applying anyway, then this sort of gaming isn't going to help, but that is often not the case.

If you can't pass the most basic of filters like relevant education and work experience than what will you be offering them after you pass the AI system?

If the position is in so much demand that they need automation to filter resumes, what are your chances to be selected when weighed against candidates that actually passed the filter?

Aren't you just creating more useless phone calls for yourself?

You're making a huge assumption that the hiring process (recruiter, ATS, JD, hiring manager) are capable of hiring perfect candidates. Evidence says they're not, especially when the job is not a low-level/technical role.

Those aren't the filters being used, not when there are hundreds of applications for a role.

You could be the platonic ideal candidate yet be screened out in the 0th round because you didn't go to a fancy school or you're missing one keyword from an irrelevant list.

Getting past the resume screening to a recruiter call is always worth it. Always.

Take .NET job positions.

Are they looking for the keyword “Csharp”, “.net”, “c#”, etc?

To further your point, what's actively developed now is called "dotnet" instead of the legacy ".net" (now ".net framework")

It always had name .NET Framework, and what we have now is called .NET.

The "basic" check contains significant randomness and could throw away good candidates.

Also, you might be not good at making resumes but are excellent at in person interviews.

The candidate screening process is usually performed by someone with no actual understanding of the job, e.g. a general recruiter. This used to be me. Somehow I was expected to recruit for electrical and pipeline design jobs, and electrical, chemical, mechanical, and HVAC engineering positions, for both on and offshore oil and gas, LNG, plants, platforms, everything. I vaguely remember there's a serious difference for mechanical engineers specialized in rotating and non rotating equipment, and my clients would get frustrated at me for sending the wrong type, so there's a naive filter: Ctrl f for "rotat." I was 22 years old with a creative writing degree and my previous job was an English teacher.

Getting past the recruiter and automated filtering software is a necessity for getting a good selection of offers (imo a good job hunt terminates with at least 3 offers that you can bid against each other). Even if one of them isn't necessarily the job you want, it's great to have another offer to increase urgency for the job you actually want, or to use to bid up rate.

I've never been questioned by hiring managers why I "lied" in a screening stage because the screening stage doesn't communicate with the interviewing stage. Everyone looks at the resume five minutes before the interview, they don't ask the recruiter what information the candidate put into the LinkedIn filter form.

That sounds very counterproductive.

Why?

>I've never been questioned by hiring managers why I "lied" in a screening stage because the screening stage doesn't communicate with the interviewing stage.

I had one get mad at me because HR kept sending her my resume and she thought I didn't have the skills for the job despite having all of the skills listed as required and most of the ones listed in the 'nice to have' section.

I had another one try to embarass me by asking questions that I obviously had no experience with, even after that became apparent, because HR had listed a level 3 type job as a level 1 type job and I applied and got passed on to the hiring manager.

Space. I may have the qualifications, but resumes recommend being 1 page. Having invisible keywords that you know you meet for the bot but the recruiters don't actually care about when reading the resume itself does appear to be optimal.

helps with time too. Tailoring every resume for every job is annoying. Keep your human template and then paste in keywords that match you in the white space.

It's definitely unethical, you can execute this without outright lying.

> what are your chances to be selected when weighed against candidates that actually passed the filter?

higher than being filtered out, I suppose. At least I get to talk to a human, which lets other qualities other than raw YOE shine.

>changing your profile picture to a model in a dating app, you are going to get responses but what are you going to do with them if there is no real match?

I may be a cynic, and I haven't tried this myself, but I would hazard a guess that doing this could boost a typical straight male's number of matches from none to a dozen a day. With that quantity of chats started, you can then experiment with various responses like "I don't really look like a model, but I identify as one" until you find someone receptive, with the benefit of loss aversion/sunk cost of her having already started a conversation with you.

Instead of the filter being the "match" both sides can then decide based on actually conversing.

I don't think the dating world maps that well to the job search world in that aspect. The only similarity between the two is I think high volume is a good idea. Playing the field.

I think you market yourself entirely different in both though. Job hunt you need to seriously talk yourself up, dating expects more subtlety and humbleness while selling yourself (well I guess depending on the kind of people you're trying to date).

Imo the strategy you're speculating on would never succeed because more than anything it would demonstrate lack of confidence.

Eventually you find a partner who has also changed their profile picture to a model, likes piña coladas, and getting caught in the rain.

Yeah, that works, because it turns out you were already in a long term relationship with that person.

IMHO any company that is using "AI" to screen resumes, or really anything else, is not worth my time.

>> This is like changing your profile picture to a model in a dating app, you are going to get responses but what are you going to do with them if there is no real match?

Depends on what you mean by "model".

- Hey guys, I'm into modelling!

::stampede::

- statistical modelling!

::crickets::

There are many obstacles to receiving an offer from a potential employer. Some of them reflect your likelihood to be successful in the role, and some don't. Fooling an automated screening eliminates one obstacle, which might have fallen into either category.

you fake it. hoping to make it.

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