
Get A Job: The Craigslist Experiment - kawera
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/get-a-job-the-craigslist-experiment/
======
wcchandler
I attempted something similar during my last year of college. I made a posting
at my closest large city, detailing my ideal job. I also laid out what seemed
to be good requirements that I would have satisfied for the position.

I was astounded by the results. I quickly had to remove the ad, too. The
messages were heart wrenching to read. One man was unemployed after being
discharged from the military. Another man had been doing senior level work for
10 years. Another didn't have an ounce of experience in this field. And
finally a couple were recent graduates -- these were the only ones I was
interested in. I left mine up for a couple days. I realized the deceitfulness
of this experiment. I genuinely felt remorse despite my animalistic nature to
size up the competition. Then I reflected on myself and thought about the few
times I'd read a job post and quickly turn to my wife "This one sounds
perfect! I really hope I get it!" and be grinning from ear to ear for the next
half an hour only to be hit with sadness for a day or two. Then I wondered, if
it was this easy for me, who is to say others wouldn't be doing the same?

I changed my rules for applying to job posts after that. They had to actually
state their recruiting firm in the post. Bonus points for disclosing their
client. They also had to post an email or website -- some way to validate the
poster. Again, bonus points for phone numbers. I would also search various
strings in the post to see if they're listed anywhere else. I became a lot
more cautious in my search, which was a good thing as I wasn't slapping my
name, email, address and phone number all over to who knows where.

After my experiment I reached a conclusion-- I had broad competition and
shouldn't try to gauge myself on others. This made me much calmer in the
interviews. I felt reassured knowing it wasn't "what I knew", and instead "who
I was." I decided to be more of myself and not give canned answers that I
thought they wanted to hear. My skillset was expendable and I needed to
realize that. I lost my sense of entitlement. I used to think my $100,000
piece of paper meant something.

Then I realized it did.

~~~
pyre

      > My skillset was expendable and I needed to realize that.
      > I lost my sense of entitlement. I used to think my
      > $100,000 piece of paper meant something.
      > 
      > Then I realized it did.
    

I feel like this part is going over my head if the 'did' isn't a typo (meant
"didn't).

~~~
Mystitat
I think he means that his education helped him make these conclusions.

------
patdennis
_We’re familiar with the art of the job search: day after day, scanning the
classifieds, Monster, Indeed, Craigslist, etc. for open positions; forever
touching up résumés to appeal to specific job requirements; writing endless
cover letters that never seem to sound quite right; applying to dozens, maybe
hundreds of jobs per week; staring vacuously at the familiar monitor glow at 3
a.m._

This sounds horrible. I've never gotten a job that wasn't through personal or
professional connections, so for most of them even handing over a resume was
essentially a formality.

I work in a specialized field, which I think accounts for why this is
possible. But I do only have a humanities education, and most of my day to day
skills have been developed since leaving school (without a degree, mind you).
It's just a matter of finding a niche.

~~~
johnobrien1232
For people who don't have personal or professional connections, sometimes
applying to job postings is the only route. I'd also note that to get above
the other 626 resumes, you need to use other avenues of attack (like phone
calls, etc.). Probably relevant to mention job-buddy.com here, a site I manage
to help people track this kind of activity, and keep on keeping on with this
arduous cycle.

~~~
hkmurakami
If you happen to have a Resume/Cover Letter that when read, has a high chance
of making inroads at a company, then snail mail works surprisingly well.
(obvious downside is that it takes a very long time to research companies and
tailor the documents to each one)

Snail mail is the route I took back in the Fall of 2010. The response rate was
roughly 20% for me.

~~~
Retric
That's rather high, I once had a 3 hours of interviews and then zero contact
after that.

~~~
justincormack
Some companies are just incompetent. I had that too, although I had decided I
was not interested by hour 2.5 so was not so bothered. They still advertise on
HN sometimes...

------
tseabrooks
This is interesting and well written. Find yourself a grad student in Math and
you've got your job. I want more articles of a "pop math" variety exploring
the numbers of everyday life. Not only are they interesting and engaging,
these types of stories provide the groundwork for helping "us" (entrepreneurs)
know what industries we should be attacking.

~~~
eru
> Find yourself a grad student in Math and you've got your job.

Sorry, what do you mean by that?

~~~
JamesLeonis
It appears he means a statistics major, or somebody who could do some
analysis, and continue to write articles that analyze everyday things we do.

------
l3amm
The much sadder reality is what actually happens in a company that posts that
ad:

1) Optimistically post the job ad.

2) Receive hundreds of responses within hours of posting it.

3) Begin going through those hundreds of responses, reading cover letters and
resumes. At first you're pumped then you realize very few people here are
qualified for the position/read the post.

4) After ~20 resumes, you close your email for the day. If you made the
mistake of using your personal email address, I'm sorry.

5) Despair. Pick and choose random emails (maybe filter by email, are there
any harvard.edu's in there?) and immediately call the first person who seems
remotely OK. Iterate step 5 until you find 'the one.'

I've worked with/observed dozens of employers in this process, a tiny fraction
of resumes actually get read, and frankly it's impossible to stay focused
through the experience. A "fun" experiment is to print out 40 resumes in a
pile, write a job description for those resumes and then try to find the most
qualified one in that bunch. Free-text association with often poorly-
articulated job requisitions is a nearly impossible proposition. Add in the
step where you have to download and track those applicants, and it's damn near
impossible to use Craigslist to find the best candidate.

This was the original inspiration for our company, Foundry Hiring
(www.foundryhiring.com). We're trying to build tools to make this process as
painless as possible. In this instance we will give you a free link to post in
your CL ad which has an application form in front of it, so that emails don't
hit your inbox, the applicant's are stored directly in our database. We then
give you tracking tools on top of it to make the process better. We're still
in beta, but I would love user feedback.

------
justjimmy
I recently started looking for an iOS artist to work with and I posted a job
ad on Craiglist and Kijiji, for the first time.

I was overwhelmed with the response - I mean I knew there was alot of people
using Craigslist but I had no idea of the scope. And the spam. I even had
people submitting me their resumes who had nothing to do with what I was
looking for. Needless to say, I was quite surprised by amount of response I've
gotten.

It was definitely insightful to sit on the other 'end', even for a day, to try
and make sense of all these resumes, to read through the greeting emails /
copy+paste jobs. It was only a glimpse but it was an interesting experience.

Now I'm not advocating people to start creating fake job ads to see what it's
like…

Edit: Anyone else notice the author using a coffee ring to make his pie chart
from? Improvisation – mark of a true warrior!

~~~
bilbobaggie
I actually need to start looking for a graphic artist for a small job soon -
Do you have a recommendation for where to post other than Craigslist?

~~~
dennisgorelik
<http://www.postjobfree.com/post-job>

------
xarien
Keep writing and make sure you have a link on your site that says: "Like my
blog? Hire me as a copywriter!"

Good copy is hard to come by and if you can get good at it, you'll definitely
find yourself in demand...

------
hkmurakami
_"However, for a more specialized position, such as Full-Time English
Instructor or Editorial Assistant or Professional Lobsterman, I’m sure there
are far fewer résumés submitted."_

I suspect that this is not even the case, as many/most people doing the resume
machinegun routine blindly apply to everything in sight.

------
Foy
I've heard that the employment prospects with a humanities degree were... not
optimal.

But to think that so many people with Bachelor's or Master's degrees are out
there fighting tooth and nail over meager admin assisstant jobs that barely
pay anything.

I'm shocked. o.o

Also, have you ever thought that maybe having a Master's degree makes you seem
over-qualified for a secretary (sorry) position? When I think of a Master's in
English I think of jobs like Editor, or Journalist.

~~~
sp332
The overqualified part definitely applies, since they assume that you'll quit
as soon as something better opens up. Which, to be fair, is usually true.

~~~
Foy
Oh I hadn't really thought of that part, but that's a very good point.

I had imagined they'd assume you'd be gunning for a raise in short order or
they might not enjoy having an admin assistant who is quite possibly more
intelligent than themselves.

On a more "ideal" note, they may also not want someone with a Master's because
they feel that their expertise would be more useful elsewhere and that their
talent would be wasted in a secretarial role.

------
el_cuadrado
For big companies, the degree is just a requirement. If they ask for a minimum
of bachelor, then they likely do not care if you have a Ph.D.

For smaller companies, experience is everything.

And Masters in English is not an advantage, unless you apply for a blogger
position or something.

~~~
deelowe
You aren't kidding. This "every degree" is worth something mentally is what's
killing the workfore. Some skills are highly marketable, some aren't. With the
decline of professional journalism, I imagine english majors aren't in high
demand at this point and no one wants to hire someone who's over qualified and
will get bored in 3 months.

------
hkmurakami
Thought experiment: does applying a "price" to applying to a position make
sense? Legitimate & qualified applicants get lost in the noise because
unqualified candidates send hundreds of resumes on sites like Monster and
Craigslist.

While this would open up possible fraud with disingenuous job postings with no
intent of being filled, would something like charging $1 to apply to a
position improve the situation? After all, this is the approach that
Universities take when accepting applicants.

~~~
aero142
I've seen a number of posts on HN from developers saying, "I won't apply for a
job if they require a {cover letter, resume, code sample}." Depending on your
point of view, adding hurdles could either remove self entitled prima donnas
or all of the code ninjas. The risk is that you create a selection bias the
wrong direction.

~~~
l3amm
Adding hurdles will definitely reduce the number of applicants, but what
you'll find is that if you ask for X, Y, Z in the ad most people will still
send you whatever they were going to send you before (most likely a resume and
coverletter). You then know they didn't read the ad and thus should probably
be deleted.

This is why lots of job ads on craigslist say: "write XYZ in the email title"
buried in the text to filter for those people who aren't even reading the ad.

------
patio11
Cheat sheet for humanities master's degree holders: microecon 101 suggests
that anyone offering to pay a substantial premium to the market clearing price
for X will be offered lots of X.

~~~
chubs
You saying that he simply put too high a payrate on his fake ad and that's why
the glut of responses?

~~~
patio11
He is getting many responses because he is offering approximately $4,000
(delivered half in taxable cash and half in untaxable benefits) in return for
a thing whose market price is closer to $1,500 (delivered all in taxable
cash). He _should_ be offered the product he wishes to buy at any quantity
which he wishes to purchase. (The product is "The full-time labor of _any
literate person legally capable of work in Midtown, NYC_.")

~~~
lrobb
12per hour with benefits is right in line with what payscale reports as the
average for admin assistants in Manhattan.

Which is just slightly more than average pay for baristas.

------
austenallred
To be fair, that was in a big city for an extremely generic job. Anyone who is
employable anywhere is eligible for that job. I used to hire writers from
CraigsList; there were a lot of resumes, but few were well done, and even
fewer had decent writing samples.

If you're really looking for a job, you have to look for something specific.

------
galfarragem
I'll share my experience on how I get jobs. I never won any job answering job
offers. All the jobs I got (6 or 7, doesn't matter) I got knocking doors.
Literally. I never "lost" any interview that I got this way.

Is this a rule to follow or was just luck? I don't know the answer. I know
that it works for me. Ok, I'm in the architectural field, within other
industries and corporations probably would be impossible to have this
approach. Age is also an important factor. Knocking doors when you're during
your 20's is not the same as during your 40's. Even during your 30's is
already more difficult.

It's my experience. I hope it can help somebody.

edit: This way people who could make the interview already know you. You are
already interviewing without any appointment! If they ask you a more formal
interview you're in. Early mornings always choose early mornings. Afternoons
are terrible for this approach. Everybody just wants to go home. Nobody will
have any patience to listen to you.

Smile in the face and confidence of course. This can make the difference. Of
course lucks has a big role also: if the decision-makers are in the office or
not, if tehy are free, if there is any (even a slight is enough) need of
people, etc

------
liamondrop
I've gotten several gigs through Craigslist. Both fulltime and one-off /
freelance. It rarely has taken me more than a couple days to get an
interview/callback.

My single most important tip for doing this successfully is to get your app in
fast. Like within 30 minutes of the job going on the site max. I'm certain
that almost no one looks at more than the first 50-100 submissions. It helps
to put relevant categories/searches into some kind of rss reader that updates
frequently and allows you to see multiple feeds simultaneously so you can see
at a glance as soon as something you're interested in pops up.

Second to speed is writing a good cover letter. The letter should be concise,
active tense, probably with bullet points for easy scanning, and talk about
what you have done and what you will do for them that will make their life
easier. Having most of the letter drafted in advance will help you get it in
fast, but you will likely want to at least touch on a few key points from
their job posting.

------
jdoody
Interesting article. Time to make your own job.

~~~
GregBuchholz
Better yet. How can _I_ make a job for these people? Think of all of the
millions of man years that have gone to waste during this economic downturn.
Surely there are a lot of unemployed people who could be adding value to
something. I wish I was smart enough to figure out a way to harness the value
of these people who are hungry for work.

~~~
gwern
Indeed. It's not hard to see how they could be producing value: if nothing
else, they could be working on Wikipedia which always has an infinite number
of tasks to do (such as copyediting, to tie into the OP, although a bachelor's
or master's holder could be doing much more valuable in-depth research for an
article), and that would produce a lot of value for all the hundreds of
millions of Wikipedia users. The problem is _capturing_ some of that value and
returning it to them as a living wage.

~~~
dev1n
Actually this problem could be solved in the same way most programmers take up
side projects. Even the projects that are not designed to supplement income
are valuable to an employer. Editing a hundred pages in Wikipedia has got to
be a pretty decent way of selling yourself, even if just on a resmue, to an
employer. That's a sort of "buzzword" that isn't found often. Instead of
sitting around filling out 20 applications, that person could have just edited
10 pages of Wikipedia, and felt better about themselves too, and just added
something extremely unique to their profile.

~~~
rprasad
Only until the Wikipedia Mafia reverts all of those changes and then bans your
account for "vandalism."

One of the best ways to get contacts in a field is to volunteer for an
organization that does exactly, or something in the neighborhood of, what you
want to do.

------
pawelwentpawel
After reading the post and admiring the creative pie-chart I started thinking
about more time consuming experiment of a similar type. As I believe, most of
the people that applied for this job weren't "snipers" but more of a bit
desperate types machine gunning each single input appearing in their over-
caffeinated visual cortices. If called back they probably wouldn't even
remember the names of companies they applied for. I wonder what would happen
if the fake job ad contained a fake website with a fake test (of some related
domain or even a basic grammar/maths) for each applicant to solve before even
uploading a resume. I guess that it would give us a more full picture not only
on "quality" of competition but also on the number of machine guns in the
field (ad views -> website views -> tests solved).

And a bit of an unrelated question - how illegal is posting fake job ads for
such purposes?

------
dennisgorelik
1) "Administrative Assistant" postings attract lots of job seekers. For some
reason unemployed candidates like to apply for these jobs.

2) Scammers like to post "Administrative Assistant" postings too. I'd say that
at least half of "Administrative Assistant" postings are scam (scammers are
trying to recruit people for money laundering or pyramid scheme).

3) Job postings looking for software developers are totally different story.
There are plenty of openings chasing limited pool of available developers.

4) See how jobs/resumes ratio varies for different skills:

<http://www.postjobfree.com/skills>

~~~
djeikyb
I was mostly unemployed for a year or so. Admin assistant posts were
attractive because it sounds like a simple office job. Also, 10-13/hr in an
office is incredibly better than minimum wage labour. But as you say, over
half are scams. For my region, craigslist was worthless.

Fwiw, my solution was to move to an area with lower unemployment (18% to 6%).
I have no pro experience and no related education, but I got a dev job with a
probation period to ensure I'm actually learning quick enough to be useful.

------
pjnewton
Great timing on this for me. I just posted a job (a real one) to Craigslist
and received a handful of responses.

Making the assumption that I would get a bunch of resumes I decided to add one
little hurdle. I asked the applicant to copy & paste their resume into the
email body. I did this to see who was actually paying attention and who was
just spamming every posting and hoping someone would bite. Sadly this hurdle
come not be overcome by the majority of the people I heard from... The search
continues.

~~~
Cd00d
Personally, I hate the hurdle of the .txt only, or pasted in resume.

I put a lot of effort into the layout and style of my resume, and wrote it in
TeX. My knee-jerk response when people won't glance at my .pdf resume is that
they are lazy, don't respect the effort that goes into design and layout, and
only wish to keyword search.

This may not be true of your case, just saying what my emotional response is
in that situation. I agree that minor hurdles to weed out the insincere are
valuable.

~~~
pjnewton
Yeah I can see how it would be annoying. I know I wouldn't be too happy if I
had to copy and paste since I also spent a good deal of time on the format.
However, I think that if I really wanted "THAT" job then the few extra steps,
reformatting, etc. would be worth it.

Turns out it did help screen a bunch of people that were seemingly just
spamming every posting with their resume along with one who copy and pasted an
entire (unedited) email mail chain she used to apply to another position...

Overall I'm not very happy with the performance of the posting, maybe it's my
fault...

------
ilaksh
There are not enough jobs. The 'economic' model is broken, and the 'economy'
is being strangled.

But its worse than that. The very concept of a job doesn't even really qualify
as civilized.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Pretty much agreed. The notion that there will or must exist demand for labor
corresponding to every individual's basic needs has never actually been
proven. The statement is then left as a _should_ statement, but why _should_
we force our society into the mold of a bizarre reverse-moralization?

~~~
suresk
I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I have to ask - how do you ration
goods and services in an economy except for some kind of currency? And how do
you propose we award people said currency besides some direct or indirect
correlation with their work output?

It seems likely to me that technology will continue to create a gap between
the supply of workers and the demand for those workers, but figuring out how
to deal with the social and economic implications of that seems like a
difficult task.

~~~
ilaksh
Who said to do away with currency? I didn't see him say that.

~~~
suresk
Removing currency isn't the problem - removing the traditional dominant method
of acquiring it is.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Precisely the issue. Money is not the problem. Basing an entire economy on
wage-labor is the problem.

------
simonbarker87
I know that unemployment is high but how does a shift from say 6% (arbitrary
number as I'm not american so don't know the numbers) to 9% have such dramatic
effects, if you spin it round and say that employment has dropped from 94% to
91% the stats sound pretty good - wrong direction change granted.

Jumping from 6% to 9% means half as many more are now looking for work.

I must be missing something somewhere so if someone can explain this I would
very much appreciate it.

------
rizzom5000
Why would the author believe 600+ applicants for a semi-skilled entry-level
job posting in NYC is an unusual number? How does that number compare to a
similar job posting in London, Tokyo or Shanghai? This experiment is silly,
contrived and unscientific. The data is without context, and essentially
meaningless.

Also, while I wouldn't exactly call it unethical to do something like this -
it is dishonest, and something about it feels slimy to me.

~~~
dbecker
I'm not sure what sort of context you were looking for. The author certainly
explains the methodology well.

As for whether it's scientific, it strikes me as having many similarities to a
paper "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field
Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination." That paper was authored by two of
the most respected academic economists, and it was published in the top
economics journal.

~~~
rizzom5000
Yes, the methodology is well-explained. My reaction to this article can be
summed up with, "“A lot of résumés” is an egregious understatement.".

Why are 653 responses for an unskilled job with no experience requirements in
a metro area of 20 million people 'a lot'? Where is the context? How does that
number compare to other metro areas? To other times in history? To the history
of NYC? Would that have been 'a lot' 20 years ago? How about during the Great
Depression?

I'll check out the study you cited.

~~~
dbecker
I see. I think many of us had an (uninformed) expectation that he would
receive fewer resumes... I certainly didn't expect so many resumes with 5+
years of experience.

I agree that it lacks context for comparison to other places/times. But for
people who shared my expectations coming (which I suspect was a lot of
people), this was still informative.

------
abiekatz
This is part of why temp agencies and "talent resource" companies can exist.
Trying to filter the ton of resumes and hire the right candidate off of
craigslist.com can be quite the pain.

I do wonder though what jobs bright people without hard skills should pursue.
This guide is interesting: [http://www.slideshare.net/choehn/recessionproof-
graduate-172...](http://www.slideshare.net/choehn/recessionproof-
graduate-1722966)

I think people in that position should try to learn a valuable skill. Of
course easier said than done but there are a number of skills that should lead
to a middle class life that can be learned relatively quickly.

Programming could be a good choice. See:
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-
suc...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-success/)
DevBootcamp seemed to produce quality developers in 3 months.

Though also PR, online advertising, some focus in marketing, web design,
sales...whatever.

------
dbecker
I'm wonder what the ratio of job postings to job applicants is.

If there are 600 applications per listing, and each applicant sends 50
applications, then there are 12 times as many applicants as listings.

Do the 600 and 50 numbers seem about right?

~~~
nandemo
For what is worth, the job_seekers/opening ratio is usually published by the
same agencies that provide unemployment rates.

For instance, a quick search reveals that ratio was 3.5 in the US in May 2012
(down from 4.5 one year before), while it was only about 1.25 in Japan.

[https://mninews.deutsche-boerse.com/content/japan-may-job-
of...](https://mninews.deutsche-boerse.com/content/japan-may-job-offers-
seekers-ratio-081-vs-apr-079)

<http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/job-seekers-per-opening.shtm>

However, if we assume a 3.5 seeker/opening ratio then 600 applications/opening
implies 171 applications per seeker, which sounds too high.

Looking at the methodology, it's clear what the problem is: the denominator in
the official seeker/opening ratio is simply the number of currently unemployed
people. Those 600 applications must include people who are working, perhaps
part-time, so technically not unemployed. I think your estimate sounds about
right.

------
alfredp
I posted an ad in the newspaper with a similar kind of experiment in mind. A
dead marketing dude was daring me to do something crazy. What's the worst that
can happen? (About midway through this:
[http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Newsletters/aslz_winners...](http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/Newsletters/aslz_winners_losers.htm))
You can read this first to see what he actually dared me to do.

The short version of what happened: my cellphone was ringing off the hooks and
I had to just turn it off for a few weeks. Totally insane response.

------
iba
This experiment demonstrates the futility of job hunting cold-calling style.
In my experience the best way to get noticed is through networking, especially
through friends in the field. If I were hiring, I would give more
consideration for someone who was recommended even by a friend of a friend.
Our job hunting time is much better spent networking than spanning every
craigslist job posting with our resumes. I wish someone does a counter
experiment with networking vs craigslist spamming.

------
natmaster
I'm genuinely curious why the author - who is obviously very intelligent
otherwise - does not simply use their intelligence to learn an actual
marketable skill. Especially if they are looking at applying for such boring
jobs - surely some sort of scientific analysis like they did in this article
would be more interesting to do as a job.

------
Paul_S
I see how the author gets useful information for himself but is this ethical?
He essentially wasted time of those people who applied in good faith. A bit
cruel.

He solicited personal information from those people - I'm sure there are rules
about storing and processing personal information.

------
leeny
I wonder how many of the applicants had well-written cover letters and resumes
(good sentence structure, interesting content, devoid of massive typos and
grammatical errors). I would bet that it's no more than 20%, and all of a
sudden, things aren't so dismal anymore.

------
tokenadult
An interesting experiment (for a company that actually has a job and is not
leading people on) would be to distinguish a job posting that says

"Hiring for this position will be based in large part on a work-sample test
during a half day at our office"

versus

"Previous experience . . . preferred, but will train the right candidate."

We can tell that the United States economy is in recession (as is the case in
many other countries with Hacker News participants) because we keep seeing new
stories submitted every day or so about the hiring procedures of companies,
with multiple comments. In a long FAQ post I've posted recently

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768>

here on Hacker News, based on many helpful comments from other participants, I
summarize a LOT of research on company hiring procedures. If you want to hire
someone good in the United States, make a work-sample test part of your hiring
procedure. Work-sample tests are much better than biographical reviews of
resumes for finding good workers. If you want to get a good job in a well
managed company, develop the skills to get past a realistic work-sample test
for the position you seek. Many more details appear in the FAQ,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768>

which is quite long but well worth a read if you are looking for a job or if
you are a business manager trying to hire someone who will do a good job.

P.S. I still hear of young people who are gaining full-time, full-benefits
jobs in today's economy. In the usual case, they are getting those jobs by
showing what they can actually do as part of the hiring process, degree or no
degree.

After edit: I recently read the VERY interesting book The Folly of Fools: The
Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

[http://www.amazon.com/Folly-Fools-Logic-Deceit-Self-
Deceptio...](http://www.amazon.com/Folly-Fools-Logic-Deceit-Self-
Deception/dp/0465027555/)

(I wonder if this book has been discussed here on HN yet?) and that reminded
me of one of the main reasons that hiring by screening resumes is demonstrably
less effective than hiring by giving work sample tests: many people lie on
their resumes. The author of the interesting submitted blog post was of course
posting a fake job ad, and several comments here on HN point out that many job
ads may just be fronts for recruiters rather than postings by actual
employers. Participants here gave examples (NUMEROUS examples) of job ads
getting responses that don't appear at all to fit the job, but an employer
also has to worry about "false positives," applicants who look like they fit
the job but who are inflating their educational credentials or multiplying
their years of actual work experience. The only way to know what an applicant
can do is to test. Perhaps announcing up front that the hiring process
includes actual testing of job-related skills MAY screen out some of the
poseurs from even sending in their fake resumes (although the many shotgun
applicants who don't even read the job ad closely will still be sending
resumes all over the place only to waste the time of anyone who receives the
resumes).

One way the author of the blog post could have demonstrated statistical acumen
is by labeling his data presentations "Self-Reported Experience" rather than
"True Experience" and "Self-Reported Credentials" rather than "Education." He
has NO idea what the actual educational credentials or work experience (or
other aspects of biography) of any of his applicants really are. He would have
been aware of this point if he had taken a good statistics course in college,
but alas good statistics classes are very rare in the United States.

<http://statland.org/MAAFIXED.PDF>

<http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz>

~~~
yummyfajitas
_We can tell that the United States economy is in recession_

The recession ended years ago. May 2009, if I remember right.

~~~
digitalengineer
Somebody must of forgot to tell the people: \- Pending Sales of U.S. Homes
Unexpectedly Fell 1.4% in June \- Foreclosure Filings Increase in 60% of Large
U.S. Cities \- Household Income Still Bottom-Bouncing \- June Home Sales Fall-
Off, Quarterly Growth Slows/Contracts \- New U.S. home sales decline 8.4% in
June \- One-Third Of Colleges, Universities In ‘Real Financial Trouble’

~~~
yummyfajitas
A recession isn't just general bad stuff happening. Recessions do tend to
cause general bad stuff, but bad stuff can happen without a recession.

------
keithnoizu
its kind of depressing to think of someone with a masters degree hoping to
land a job that pays less than a fifth of what I make with an associates
degree . . .

------
gsibble
I am sooooo happy that I'm an engineer right now.

------
donnfelker
his post, in itself, just may get you a job. Nice work.

------
systematical
pssht. I've been doing this for years

------
stevejabs
From personal experience, don't apply to any positions that don't reveal the
company name in the post. You'll rarely get anywhere, and when you do it will
likely not even pan out to being who you want to work for or the job that was
described.

What I normally do is this:

Find a job that you find unique or intriguing. If it has a company name
attached I immediately jump to LinkedIn to find who I may be working for and
if it's the small company, I just look up the CEO.

At this point, I start following the CEO on Twitter (if they have one) and I
find out what they are interested in and post about. I will now usually start
engaging that person every now and then to make them put a name to a face.
This also allows you to get an idea of the personality of the person you may
be working for.

After a while, I'll put the question out there, "Hey I saw that you posted Foo
job at your company. Has this position been filled? I'm extremely interested."

If they don't have Twitter, I'll engage them straight through LinkedIn. At
this point I'll be straight upfront and honest. Just tell them that you are
interested in finding out more information about the company before you
formally apply for the job. When the time comes, try and get your resume
straight to their personal email via this conversation.

Open up a line of dialog with someone who is posted the job. If it's an HR
department, it may be tough, but not impossible. It's worth it in the long run
to build up connections (even if their virtual) with people. Blindly applying
to positions is just going to leave you in the dark.

EDIT: Grammar

~~~
danmaz74
Out of curiosity, how many times did you do that? And how many jobs did you
find?

~~~
stevejabs
This method has worked for me 3 times now. I turned down one of the
opportunities. Not necessarily the best sample size, but the method shows very
clearly that you intend to work for that company or at least that you are
extremely interested in going the extra mile.

~~~
danmaz74
Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. I was curious because you have to change
jobs very often to have enough exprience.

By the way, it worked 3 times out of 3 attempts?

~~~
stevejabs
So far, yes.

