Just require applications to be sent by mail. Explain why you're doing it up-front. The tiny hassle and tens-of-cents cost should cut volume down tremendously.
[EDIT] Incidentally, in the age of ChatGPT, I suspect I'm going to be recommending this more and more often for a lot more use-cases....
It's an interesting idea, especially if you largely automate the analog->digital ingress process.
Unfortunately, you probably would have an adverse selection process. Anyone who can (or thinks they can) easily land a job will be F this crap. And the truly desperate will jump through the hoops.
> Unfortunately, you probably would have an adverse selection process. Anyone who can (or thinks they can) easily land a job will be F this crap. And the truly desperate will jump through the hoops.
I usually think that's the case when adding barriers, but I think it's also the case that the best devs aren't usually shotgunning résumés anyway, so if they really want to apply, it's not that big a deal.
Personally, I'd find "mail your résumé, with [name of role] on the envelope" less onerous than filling out the same fucking work-history shit that's already on my résumé on yet another form... for the dozenth time in a day. Hell, I bet I can have Kinkos or something do it for me for a couple bucks—print this PDF, mail it—if I don't want to do it myself.
It'd be less off-putting than "do this automatically-graded l33tcode exercise before we even look at your application", certainly. I'd actually find it encouraging that a human's likely to be the first one to see the document, without any gate-keeping in front of that, and knowing that the volume's likely to be much lower than all-online processes, so I'm less likely to just get lost in the pile.
Meanwhile, I think the desperate might skip it in the name of pursuing volume. Differs too much from normal procedures.
Possibly. I mean, you'd have people here who would be "The 20th century wants its job application processes back." On the other hand, I also see people pop up here saying they've applied to 500 jobs online which seems like an almost unfathomable level of shotgunning applications.
[EDIT] Incidentally, in the age of ChatGPT, I suspect I'm going to be recommending this more and more often for a lot more use-cases....