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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

Today I read about Accenture Norway taking in 56 summer internship students from over...1600 applicants. Record year, they reported.

Previously I imagined only the top-top tier firms could enjoy low single-digit acceptance rate, but here we have Accenture crushing it. Competition must be tough.

(But for what I know, could be that AI has made it easier for people to spam everyone with applications)

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My guess is that it's simultaneously easy for a lot of companies to do automated filtering and for candidates to do a lot of automated applications in a way that's easier than sending out a bunch of envelopes. Which makes it harder for candidates who don't have either networks or impressive credentials.

I wonder if there'd be some value to only taking job applications by post.

An interesting question but arguably a lot of the most qualified applicants will go FU at that point and only the most desperate will put a stamp on an envelope which is probably not what you want.

Honestly, it probably comes down to more networking and credentials.

There are plenty of services to send mail form the internet for a small fee, so this will only discourage the most poor candidates and add friction for the best ones.

I don't know what the options are these days but MCI used to do it. Yeah, it's some friction on both sides.

The "small fee" is the point though as it stops practically all automated submissions. I doubt the price of a stamp excludes poor candidates unless you think that poor people could never get jobs before online applications were a thing (and internet connections and phones cost money as well).

It’s not that poor people can’t afford a stamp it’s that they aren’t going to spend money on an automated service or stamp if there are other places to apply to that don’t require this.

So I think it’s going to lower recall a a lot - it reduces volume of good and bad actors equally. Anecdotally, I’m not going to bother with such an application unless it’s my top choice or I’m desperate. For small companies that probably means throwing the babies out with the bathwater.

Adding more hops to the process you filter people so only desperate enough will apply. Excellent if you are looking for cheap labor!

On the other side, I notice it's so much easier to apply for a job today that people apply for thousands of jobs. When I graduated from college I applied at 70 different places, and my peer group thought that was a crazy high number.

When I was graduating from grad school I certainly sent many dozens of letters. Which I think was pretty typical. When I went to another grad school a few years later, I probably traveled to a good dozen interviews in addition to a whole bunch of other letters.

> easy for a lot of companies to do automated filtering and for candidates to do a lot of automated applications

I know this is as real as "a matter of fact" but it's so stupid.

It’s too easy to apply now, the acceptance rate is not really a meaningful number

Companies like Accenture/Infosys/TCS is the reason people are losing job. They outsource so much and tries to bribe managers to hire in India.

Of course Accenture outsources stuff.

They're based in Ireland. There's like 42k software developers in the entire country* and Accenture has 779k staff**, so they had to hire people in foreign places like Norway and the USA.

* OK, it says "Computer Programming": https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/publications/publication-files/...

** and I have no idea how many of them do "Computer Programming"

Accenture exists only because there are enough companies willing to hire contractors. The root cause is not a vendor but buyer.

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