

I'm coming down there - SandB0x
http://www.asofterworld.com/oq-display.php?id=22

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troymc
I had a roommate who got an Electrical Engineering degree from Queens
University (one of Canada's more prestigious universities). He then worked for
Motorola somewhere in the USA (so he had the right visa) and had a few years
experience. Then Motorola downsized, he got laid off and started looking for
work. He wasn't getting many calls...

He applied to grad school at Purdue University and was accepted. His resume
now said he was at Purdue University, but he hadn't done anything yet besides
show up.

He sent off some more resumes and the next thing we knew, our (shared) phone
was ringing constantly with people calling to offer my roommate a job.

I guess the robot recruiters liked "Purdue"!

~~~
anamax
> His resume now said he was at Purdue University, but he hadn't done anything
> yet besides show up.

He had convinced Purdue to accept him.

It's sort of like the bias towards hiring folks who are currently employed.

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presidentender
While I was still in college, I had a resume up on Dice, hoping to land a job
after graduation. It apparently flagged the recruiter bots, because I'd get
calls... for contracts starting in a week, months before graduation.

I know these things aren't human screeners, but you would think that a human
would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on the call
center worker who has to call and find out that the prospect is unavailable.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_a human would look at them for two seconds before the company spends money on
the call center worker_

Did your resume have "NOT AVAILABLE FOR WORK BEFORE [MONTH]/[DAY]/[YEAR],
AFTER WHICH I AM AVAILABLE" written across the top in red ink?

Presumably not. But, if not (and maybe even if so!) it would take _way_ more
time and skill for a human to (a) read your resume, (b) parse it, and (c)
deduce that you were not available than for someone to type your contact phone
number into a call-center system, awaiting the day when another human would
deploy automated call-center software to place a call to you, ask "might you
be available for a contract on date X?", and note down your answer.

The other problem, of course, is that it's incredibly easy to represent a
phone number in a database, and it's fairly easy to represent "we called
Prospect X about Potential Contract Y but she said no" in a database, but it
is awfully hard to represent "Prospect X has a resume which suggests that he
will graduate on date Z, and most likely that means he isn't available before
date Z, unless he is down on his luck or has gotten bored with school or we
misread the resume" in a database.

~~~
presidentender
I suppose it's difficult to find "graduation date" in a million differently-
formatted resumes.

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Ygor
How often are the job applications filtered throught some kind of an automatic
process?

Does it happen only in the big companies, or is it a common practice?

Is it effective?

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SandB0x
How did this drop off the front page all of a sudden? One minute it was top,
the next it's #35. I'm not really bothered, but this looks like a bug.

