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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

Take this entire paragraph and read carefully, and it explains how to kill this trend:

> “The truth is, if you want a job, you’re gonna go through this thing,” Adam Jackson, CEO and founder of Braintrust, a company that distributes AI interviewers, tells Fortune. “If there were a large portion of the job-seeking community that were wholesale rejecting this, our clients wouldn’t find the tool useful… This thing would be chronically underperforming for our clients. And we’re just not seeing that—we’re seeing the opposite.”

Great. So he is explicitly telling us that a boycott will work. There you go folks, you have your marching orders.

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If you need a job in a tough job market you can't really afford to be picky about the opportunities. If I need a job I'm willing to put up with just about anything to get it, because the alternative is potential financial ruin for my family in a country with weak social safety nets.

The last entry level job my company posted got over two thousand applicants in less than 24 hours before they paused submissions. I don't think an AI video screen is the answer to that, but it's clearly too many applicants for one open position. And we could have had tons more if we didn't aggressively shut it off early to prevent it from building up too much. It sucks for the candidate because they spend time on an application that might never even be seen much less given a fair consideration, and it isn't ideal for the company either because they need to spend a lot more time and effort filtering through the pile to find the right people.

From a company perspective, the AI interviews don't even have to work well, they just have to get that massive number down to something vaguely manageable.

> From a company perspective, the AI interviews don't even have to work well, they just have to get that massive number down to something vaguely manageable.

Rule out everyone who isn't already local to the job location. That's an easy filter right there.

> If you need a job in a tough job market you can't really afford to be picky about the opportunities

If your odds of getting hired after wasting all that time are 1000 to one, might be smarter to look for alternate pipelines with better odds where your time benefits you regardless of outcome.

Did you put it on linkedin easyapply? That is part of the issue. So many applications I have done where its like 1 click to apply. How is this useful to people on either end? I have no clue about the job. They hardly know anything about me. game theory tells me to apply for all of these even if they are hardly relevant and the lack of friction enables it.

You want fewer candidates? Just post it on your website perhaps. You will then be limited to more ideal candidates that have identified your business as a potential fit for their skillsets, and have bothered to visit your careers page and put up with your own sisyphean system to repost what information is in the resume onto your form fields for hr who apparently cannot read a resume.

We only posted it on our company website.

Most job seekers don't have the luxury of choice.

Well, not with that attitude, they don't.

Boycotts are not pain-free. They require everyone to stick together and refuse to participate in behaviors that are not acceptable. I'd argue that most job seekers don't have the luxury to allow themselves to be diminished into irrelevance.

Most of us on HN are definitely much better off than the average person, so we have the freedom to not desperately pursue any possible chance that comes our way. A lot of people here also have very in demand skills and have companies begging them to work for them, not the other way around.

For the people just starting out with no experience, and those wondering whether they should get their car fixed, buy new shoes to replace their current ones that have a hole in the bottom, or eat something better than rice and beans for another week, they don't have the luxury to boycott jobs. They're focused on surviving, and that's a huge chunk of America.

And that logic would hold up if AI interviewing was being deployed equally across all jobs. But it is not. Go ahead and take the example from the original quote - Braintrust - their web site explicitly caters to technical talent.

Entry-level jobs have already been converted to automated Q&A sessions that take place right alongside your application on the jobs site. They have been that way for years. These new AI interviews are targeted at later career roles.

I know people applying to entry level jobs even outside of tech who are being given AI interviews. Why do you think this is the only company doing AI interviews and other companies aren't bandwagoning? Kind of silly.

So how do we boycott the entire US business community? The "business community" -- as an aside I have a real fucking hard time describing this as a _community_ -- has been working overtime to drown the US federal government in a bathtub since Grover Norquist uttered the phrase.

The behavior of this "community" is abhorrent. Many in the C-suite deserve a life in prison -- looking your way "healthcare industry"!

The pursuit of profit above all else, that is: basic human _greed_ is a VICE, not a VIRTUE.

Boycotts won't stop this madness.

In this industry they do. You know that companies using these tools are exercising minimal effort and due diligence, and that should be taken into consideration before participating. It only makes sense to play the high-volume application game if each application takes negligible effort to submit. The people I've known that have gone that route have had <1% success rates. For quality candidates, a lower-volume targeted approach will yield the best jobs and retain your sanity.

Most Americans have never heard of a strike fund.

Why not do it before you need a job? While you're comfortable, submit your application for open roles and reject the AI interviewer.

The good ones do. Companies may not see problems initially, but they may eventually find their candidate quality has dropped.

Especially in the current American economy. It's a very intentional power balance

I already bow out of leet code quizzes and companies that use Greenhouse for applications; and while I'm not changing the industry, it changes what part of the industry I deal with for the better, ha,

> companies that use Greenhouse for applications

What's wrong with Greenhouse? I've seen several companies use it, and other than being just another bog-standard applicant tracking system I haven't seen anything particularly bad. I would love to know what the scoop is here.

My experience is almost a 100% correlation with being ghosted, so I'm assuming there's some quick and easy filters that I get dropped for. So I'm not wasting time without emailing with or talking to someone first.

Okay, so the issue is less Greenhouse specifically, and more generally applicant tracking systems (ATS) in general. Fair enough, I have found pretty much the same, direct internal referrals are the best way to go. Networking is about more than the Internet.

Maybe, although even direct contacts either way without an introduction or referral has been a much better experience.

I can't say without being a customer of Greenhouse myself, but I suspect they have some SaaS sauce or cross-company application data that hits me somehow for quick filtering out.

Correct, and the second subtext is that every company using one of these is actually filtering for desperation, not talent. So these companies are actually screwing themselves

Think about it: if you’re talented, why would you ever put up with this bullshit?

I hired for my team this year and I read every single one of the hundreds of applications. HR was experimenting with an AI recommendation software which missed a ton of quality candidates, one of which was the one I hired. Everyone loves them and they’ve been a huge boost to the team. And I think we had an easier time courting them because they saw how much work their future manager was putting into finding a great fit.

If you use this kind of software to hire, you are the loser. The good talent doesn’t need you—it’s the other way around.

> every company using one of these is actually filtering for desperation

Exactly. I have a very good job at a name brand tech company and regularly get reached out to by recruiters. I don’t tolerate BS like information asymmetry, take home tests, AI evaluations, etc.

The whole situation kindof reminds me of online dating, the top 10% of people are targeted by the other 90%. I wonder if there is some common phenomenon underlying both online dating and job matching because they are eerily similar.

Much like in dating, the answer may be to reject the whole online recruiting system and resort to in person interactions where symmetry is restored.

Unfortunately it is possible to live without a romantic partner, but in non-socialized nations it is not possible to live without an income.

> Unfortunately it is possible to live without a romantic partner, but in non-socialized nations it is not possible to live without an income.

That’s where self-employment becomes an option.

> If you use this kind of software to hire, you are the loser. The good talent doesn’t need you—it’s the other way around.

Kinda like stack ranking for layoffs, especially when done regularly. The idea of cutting the fat always seems appealing, but it also signals things are going to get unpleasant, and top talent tends to jump ship early unless you're paying top dollar to make it all worthwhile. The ones you wanted to retain the most are the first out the door, and within a few years, the only ones left are those who don't have great prospects elsewhere, frequently with reduced output since the stress induced by the omnipresent prospect of layoffs isn't great for morale or productivity.

I don't read that.

I read that at best few will boycott but the majority plays along.

So until a majority is reached, it stays a collective action problem that's a loss for anyone who doesn't participate. Apes apart weak.

This is a trivial observation.

Boycotts always work. How could they not?

The problem is, you need a critical mass, which you won't get.

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