I'm tempted to make snarky comments about how its a red flag if a company is asking open ended questions with a textbox as part of an initial screen but I'll be open minded and ask:
One is a basic technical question that I’ve been asked a handful of times in interviews.
We could eliminate the question, but then we’d need to have hundreds of phone screens and literally ask the same question. That’s not feasible. So this is how we screen.
Is that a quality way to screen though? Anyone can look up answers to basic technical questions.
Also have you considered that maybe ChatGPT itself is applying? Its gotta feed all those babyGpts when it gets home from work. Might be a good hire, LOL.
Unfortunately this ship has sailed. The job market is broken right now for software engineers and it’s far easier to use AI to apply to a hundred jobs in the of hopes one gets backs to you instead of 5 handcrafted applications per day that have tailored responses.
> Not if you're on the opposite end of a shitty job market attempting
to find any way to get a foot in. The market sucks, and cynicism is
growing among all parties.
What you say is interesting, because I am watching this "market"
carefully as an educator. The disconnection you speak of is real and
worrying.
Each day we read stories about layoffs and talented people desperately
seeking a job. Each day we read an equal number of stories about how
tech firms cannot hire anyone. We hear of "massive skills shortage".
In cybersecurity we have 50 jobs to fill for every candidate we can
train.
How is this mismatch possible? Someone, somewhere is lying.
In Little Britain we have Dafydd Thomas (Matt Lucas) the controversial
"Only gay in the village". The running joke is that his gaydar is so
broken (because he is so insular) that he misses every chance. Guys
are coming on to him all the time, but he can't see it [0].
That is "industry". It's so misunderstood, so delicate, and special,
and hard-done-to.
So called "industry", insofar as it's a collection of HR people with
completely made up job-descriptions based on a drunken game of
buzzword bingo, hasn't the first clue what it really wants.
Likewise we have universities that churn out tepid, conformist
graduates who nobody would ever want to employ. If they're lucky most
of them have been taught by adjuncts and temps using materials that
are 10 years out of date. If they're unlucky they were taught remotely
by some Microsoft product, and would certainly have learned more from
just picking up and reading the first chapter of any decent textbook.
I'm talking about the UK now, but I'm sure the same disconnect applies
to similar cultures.
A dating game in which both parties are motivated to lie, is just
round after round of disappointment.
I wish you luck. My advice is steer clear of any company big enough to
have an HR department.
> How is this mismatch possible? Someone, somewhere is lying.
Yeah, and it's the fucking "employers". They put up fake job listings to look like they're "growing" (which makes investors happy) while they simultaneously lay off substantial fractions of their workforce for quick bumps in short-term profit (which makes investors happy). Who cares about human decency as long as "line goes up", right?
Any "employer" claiming "nobody wants to work" or that there's a "skills shortage" can kindly and respectfully eat an entire bag of dicks. They're literally the problem.
And before someone predictably complains that I'm breaking HN's civility rule: nothing about this socioeconomic system is "civil". It's indeed fundamentally uncivil to the core. I'm only responding to that lack of civility, and my remarks are a product of it, myself being a victim of it alongside countless others.
You know that "be the change you want to see" thing. I hope you'll
find a way to become the business-person and employer you'd like to
work for, and set your own standards of civility. It can be done.
I'd love to be that change! I'm indeed putting some of the pieces together to that effect. The problem is around money; kinda hard to hire people without it - and I'd definitely want to hire someone good at sales, since I suck at it. But first I need to get something built for that person to sell in the first place :)
Attn applicants across the job market: stop using ChatGPT to write answers! This advice does not apply to people doing hiring though, as I personally do not use it for that purpose for the company that I decline to mention
There’s gotta be a service or library people are using for this because we’re getting a ton of duplicate responses to our questions. At least turn up the temperature if you do this.
Share some numbers - I'm totally curious how many applicants you are getting for roles total/applicants that you easily identify as using LLMs. Even ballpark would be ok, "We got 40+ applicants for a senior software engineer, at least 50% had identical answers to our questions."
I have some theories about the duplicate answers that go beyond LLM usage . . .
If candidates are using LLMs to generate answers to your hiring questions, perhaps it's your questions that are the problem. Care to share some of them?
Where I work we ask some candidates in client-facing roles how they’d respond to a hypothetical email from a client about a situation they’re likely to face in the job.
I know an LLM can easily generate a pretty OK and boring reply. But I want to get to know how the person we’re considering would answer it so we can talk about their approach in their next (and final) interview.
We ask people nicely to not use an LLM and explain our reasoning. They can still use one if they want of course.
I mean people can still modify the answers. Let me say that in the era of LLM it's probably a lot better just to change the interview format -- for example, put questions and coding tests in zoom/in person instead of online.
I'm convinced that 99% of my applications are not getting through to a human.