I was a recruiter for 8 years, and maybe 1 in 100 applications turned into a hire. I suspect a big factor is the barrier to entry for applying has been lowered. Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant. An increase in applications makes sifting through those applications increasingly burdensome, and tools have not really made mentally parsing a resume easier, so mental energy gets sucked up trying to filter more content. The more energy you burn, the more tired you are. The less energy you have, the less you can focus on the applicants, and you start responding to fewer applications. Fewer recruiter responses to an application means job seekers need to send more applications. Repeat.

The barrier is lower for applying, but as many other posters saying, there is simply just interest in quick ROI and zero willingness to think long term.

I recruited for several years for my companies too. First thing I noticed, there is huge variability in CV for each country. When I receive a CV from an indian person (from India), I don't know if I should expect 100% lies or what, even from qualified seniors. On the other end, I could put my hand on coal if the same CV was written by most germans. Which is bad, because the CV or cover letter become essentially useless as a metric.

To reduce the number of applications we introduced simple tests to submit along with the CV. It does wonders, but I personally hate it. As a senior dev, I keep asking: would I apply to my current application? I have to answer that no, I wouldn't. I have plenty of public projects to investigate my abilities if needed, and I do expect some minimal amount in investment from both parties when hiring.

We also raised the requirements from applicants ridiculously, essentially expecting them to work on core features from tomorrow. Again, completely unrealistic. And again, by our own wording, I would be afraid to apply. We are definitely selecting over-confident candidates (or desperate).

And it's sadly also true that the industry has no apprentice jobs anymore, although there is plenty of need. There are some career paths where I would jump ships despite my lack of expertise to follow my interests. Starting from zero doesn't stop me, but there are simply no opportunities: junior jobs are not really junior anymore. They are simply paid less.

> As a senior dev, I keep asking: would I apply to my current application? I have to answer that no, I wouldn't.

Looking at it from the other point of view, are you getting enough candidates that you are comfortable with via your current application? If so, the question becomes whether it would be enough of a benefit getting "you" (people like you) to apply to your current job... vs the cost of having that many more people to filter through.

Just like the code you deliver, the application process doesn't need to be perfect (because being perfect has a large cost associated). Instead, you have to weight the tradeoffs and pick the solutions that best match the resources you have available to the outcome you want. You need "good enough" (I hate that term, it sounds like "bad" to my ears, but it's literal meaning is correct here).

We're getting enough candidates, but many good ones are simply turned off at some point because the salary or position doesn't match the high expectations we implicitly set.

This, in turn, results in a process of exclusion during the process more than actual evaluation (which then begs the question: why put such high requirements?).

I'm pretty sure we're discarding individuals which are just too afraid or see themselves too conservatively. I'm not afraid to say that I ended up in my position by pure chance, and probably wouldn't pass the hiring method we currently use, despite being here for quite a long time.

>> When I receive a CV from an indian person (from India), I don't know if I should expect 100% lies or what, even from qualified seniors.

Be careful about going there. Discrimination is illegal & unnecessary.

I work in a company with a lot of staff from India (TCS consultants). I can confirm that some of them have a fairly flexible relationship with reality and facts, and it can be incredibly irritating at times. I agree that it is most likely a cultural thing: decorating / distorting facts to achieve goals is looked upon more favorably in some cultures than others, with all the moral hazard and distorted incentives that implies. It is, however, worth noting that not everyone from India I have met is like that or that one attitude or way of communicating is automatically better than another. Once one learns to parse the code, life gets considerably easier.

TCS supply L1/L2 internal support services where I work, and while the more senior members of the teams are very good at their jobs and take a proactive part in providing supporting, the ones who have been there less than 5 years (made up number, the less experienced/greener staff) struggle to follow simple instructions without several confirmations of the actions, even when pretty comprehensive documentation has been provided. It's quite an interesting, and often frustrating, dynamic.

I'm not really making any. This almost seems like a completely different way to present yourself which is taught to people.

Can you share your opinion about other countries as well? It's an interesting statistic which I, suspect, not many would be willing to discuss publicly and non-anonymously.

I would say that indian CV are simply on another level, I have no clear idea why. We're posting positions online, and the openings are often automatically indexed by several job search engines. Maybe this is because indians are just more exposed to online hiring, working abroad and generally simply try to get an interview.

Let me reinstate that also this is not universal. We had very good candidates which didn't inflate the resume, thus my point that I really cannot look at the CV by itself. This is very detrimental for both.

I took "germans" as a stereotypical example here. Thinking back, most qualified applicants anywhere in EU are in a similar ballpark. I would say a small amount of inflation is common, but senior applicants generally match much more closely the qualifications they presented. I didn't have many applications from other eastern countries to say anything else.

I'm also not an HR guy. I just participate in the hiring process when the need arises.

I was also a recruiter for a while and when hiring I am always amazed at the absolute dismal amount of effort given when people apply for good jobs. Hiring is hard, someone with the right skill set will have a terrible mentality, hiring for the mentality is extremely tricky and can lead you down the road of groupthink if you're not careful. I'm still amazed how entirely incompetent people rise to managerial levels on who they know but its very, very hard to break into even with a modicum of talent.

If you have to apply to 250+ jobs just to get one, you can't invest much effort into each application.

I've been a part-time developer for three years (and worked full-time on top of that), and I'm looking for a full-time position. I gave up on tech after applying to 500+ jobs and getting three interviews and zero offers. The closest I got was a consulting outfit in a small city in the Inland North, where one of the interviewers got hostile about my major (philosophy) and eventually rejected me over it.

But even now that I'm only applying for positions that just need warm bodies with degrees, my ratio of applications to phone screens is upwards of twenty to one, and every phone screen I've gotten in the last month has rescheduled last-minute on me, sometimes more than once. And I have to put up with shit like getting rejected at the door because the interviewer doesn't like my [perfectly ordinary and unremarkable] shoes.

How in the world am I supposed to find the time to put effort into applying for hundreds of jobs?

> ... where one of the interviewers got hostile about my major (philosophy) and eventually rejected me over it.

Sadly, the hiring process for developers has turned into not much more than hazing.

You're spot on with that ratio and, as you say, it can become utterly draining. Depending on the number of applicants I'm getting, I developed a way of dealing with the problem that works well for software engineers:

FOR LOTS OF APPLICANTS

Send every single applicant a nice, warm email with a link to a coding assessment[1]. Doesn't have to be anything particularly in-depth: just something that requires an hour or two's work from the candidate.

Result: all the people who put slapdash applications together will self-select out at this stage (you won't even hear back from them) and you don't have to send rejections. This will probably eliminate 95% of candidates right out of the gate for you, and when you have 500 applicants in a single month this is going to make your job a lot easier. You'll be left with 25 people who are genuinely interested and, depending on what you're looking for, you might have 10 that are worth interviewing.

IMPORTANT: for the relatively small number you reject at the assessment stage, you should send them some real, and reasonably detailed, feedback as to why. This will generally take around half an hour per applicant. People don't do this out of fear of getting into an argument with the candidate (and, of course, because they don't have time): in practice this seldom happens, and can be diffused quickly when it does. Most candidates appreciate the feedback and, key point, you won't start dehumanising applicants and turning yourself into a worse human being.

FOR FEW APPLICANTS

If you're not doing an up-front assessment, which we don't at the moment because we're a relatively unknown company so we want to make it as easy as possible for people to apply, send everyone a nice email inviting them to a 20-30 minute telescreen.

Your email should lay out the format of the telescreen: we'll spend some time finding out more about your experience, and do a screenshare (or Google Doc share) on a short programming task.

Result: all the lazy or uninterested applicants will again opt out, doing most of your work for you.

KEY POINTS

- In both cases you can focus your finite time and energy on the better candidates, rather than on sifting out the worst.

- You can give every applicant a more positive experience overall (think how many times you've heard the complaint, "I applied for X job and the company never even got back to me"). You also avoid ever having to send out those crappy two-line pro forma rejection emails that just about everyone hates.

- It'll keep you more positive and energetic because you're not spending loads of time having to be critical and negative about swathes of applications, and the people you do end up interacting with, you actually have the time to invest in ensuring that they have a positive experience, whether you offer them the job or not. This is hugely important because I think, of all the jobs I've done - and, granted, this does depend somewhat on your personality and temperament - recruitment is the one with the greatest capacity to turn you into the kind of person you wouldn't like very much (I realised it was happening for me when I did a long secondment in recruitment for a previous employer).

- By giving everyone a positive experience you'll gain a better reputation for your company, which should translate into attracting better candidates. Certainly, the other way, word travels, and if you offer a ghastly candidate experience people will be put off applying. If you're Google you can get away with it because so many great people want to work for you regardless of how drawn-out and overwrought the process is, so it doesn't matter that some great people will be put off because of the process (still I don't recommend it, and I question the value of all the hoop-jumping). If nobody's heard of you, making the process straightforward and pleasant is the way to go.

[1] This might sound cynical but you can totally automate this process, and if you're getting that many applicants it's probably worthwhile: just make sure the emails go out within business hours, and that there's at least a few hours lag between an application being submitted and the email response going out, so it feels like it's from a human being. Also, and this goes without saying: use the applicant's name. Lots of ATS's don't (or didn't) have APIs, but since you'll only need to target (say) Firefox, browser automation with something like Selenium can work really well here.

FWIW when i apply to a job and get sent back a coding exercise, without first even talking to me, that's usually a red flag for me and i do not proceed with them - although I do communicate that I prefer to have some kind of chat so i know there is a culture fit, before i potentially throw hours of my life away.

Fair. But one of the things you end up realising is you can't come up with the perfect process that will please all applicants.

One thing I should have mentioned as well is how I handle referrals, because it's quite different. I always skip the assessment or telescreen in favour of some sort of face to face:

- Invite them in to the office, have coffee, find out more about them, let them meet some of the team, show them what we're working on, maybe have lunch,

- Have a more low-key meeting in a cafe or pub.

In both cases it's about getting to know them better and giving them the opportunity to figure out whether they're really interested in the role: i.e., not a traditional interview. If they are interested, then we go straight to a technical interview.

The above is important because it's a key route for more senior hires. As a result, certainly at the beginning of the process, it's very much tailored to the candidate at an individual level.

How about reading their resume and cover letter? Looking at a github link, checking out their LinkedIn. You know, actually do YOUR job rather than wasting every single applicants time. Maybe good engineers are self unselecting because your assembly line screening process turned them off.

Look at the hiring process at Apple or Google for examples of how to do it well. Apply; respond to applications with a request for a phone screen or a rejection letter. Do the phone screen. Those that pass, do a technical interview via FaceTime, then those that pass that, send them to the final round. If you reject anyone during the process, notify them immediately.

Be respectful to the candidates and you will end up with better hires. Don’t treat them like you are doing them a favor: you aren’t.

> You know, actually do YOUR job rather than wasting every single applicants time.

I'm not wasting anyone's time. Nobody has to do anything - you can just ignore the invitation and that's fine. I'm certainly not wasting anyone's time any more than they're wasting my time submitting a subpar application for a job they're not really that interested in.

Maybe you were having a bad day but, in case not, let me say: nobody owes you a living. Like it or not, you need to earn it.

> Apply; respond to applications with a request for a phone screen or a rejection letter. Do the phone screen. Those that pass, do a technical interview via FaceTime, then those that pass that, send them to the final round. If you reject anyone during the process, notify them immediately.

nailed it. is that really so much to ask?

You may not have read what I wrote properly: that is exactly what I do at the moment. (We get vastly fewer applicants.)

Thing is, that doesn't scale too well. And when you reach the point when it doesn't, you need to do something else - particularly when you have a day job to do on top of recruitment.

I also kind of agree. If I do something for you, it's nice if you do something for me. So if I put work in to thoughtfully apply, I'm kind of expecting you to do more work than flinging a coding exercise at me. As a recruiter, I saw companies spam every candidate with a coding exercise only to never review many applications w/ completed exercises.

> As a recruiter, I saw companies spam every candidate with a coding exercise only to never review many applications w/ completed exercises.

I'm really sorry you had that experience. For what it's worth I've sat on the other side of the fence: spent a couple of hours working on something only to hear nothing in response. It sucks.

I hope I made it clear above, but my very strong recommendation is that if somebody has sent in a solution to a coding assessment, then you should be taking the time to give them personalised feedback rather than some stock response. If that didn't come across then I apologise.

> I saw companies spam every candidate with a coding exercise only to never review many applications w/ completed exercises.

this is my experience - and why i don't do them out the gate. Because there's a strong chance my work won't even be seen or reviewed - and i have had this happen enough times to know that i should just say no.

Me too, but I guess it would be different if I didn't have a job/hadn't had one before.

“An hour or two coding assessment?”

You can fuck off if that’s is your first contact response.

I’m interviewing YOU just as much as you are interviewing me. There is no shortage of companies hiring. There IS a shortage of quality candidates. I don’t need your job — but you do need developers. I am not going to invest 1-2 hours of time on some bullshit variation of fizz buzz or some equally ridiculous and real-world irrelevant academic game from HackerRank.

If you can’t be bothered to have even a quick 10 minute conversation, I can’t be bothered to do your stupid coding exercise.

That's fine. What you've just told me is you don't want the job I'm advertising; you just want a job. And you can get one. That's cool. I wish you luck, and I'm sure you'll do well.

What I'm interested in is candidates who really want this job. Those people are the ones who will put in the effort.

With all of that said: "You can #### off if that’s is your first contact response." I suggested this in response to your other comment: maybe you were having a bad day. Nevertheless, taken at face value, that remark perhaps demonstrates something of a sense of entitlement. Entitlement is something I aim to select very strongly against, because it's absolutely poisonous in a team environment. Food for thought, if you think it applies.

> Nevertheless, taken at face value, that remark perhaps demonstrates something of a sense of entitlement.

Many people feel entitled to being treated respectfully by their (prospective) employer. Asking people to invest hours doing useless work (which, as others have indicated, they may not even receive feedback on, just a rejection) just to get a chance at an interview, can easily be taken as a sign of disrespect: clearly you feel your time is worth so much more than that of a potential employee that you ask them to invest hours before you'll invest minutes. The potential employee is treated as a beggar rather than a trained professional.

> Entitlement is something I aim to select very strongly against, because it's absolutely poisonous in a team environment.

I'm sure those who feel entitled to basic respect are glad you are selecting against them then :)

Clearly that is not what I'm suggesting since I already said that anyone who submitted a completed assessment would receive personalised feedback from me.

I'm really not sure how you've made the leap from me trying to help people who are swamped with applicants (by taking action that gives every single one of those applicants a fair chance) to a suggestion that I'm not treating people respectfully.

> Clearly that is not what I'm suggesting since I already said that anyone who submitted a completed assessment would receive personalised feedback from me.

Sure, you know that you're going to put in some effort to look over the solutions and provide feedback (but even then you probably won't spend nearly as much time on giving that feedback as the interviewee spent on their "audition"). As others have indicated, not all employers will put in that effort, and as the applicant you can't tell in advance whether you will. Or perhaps you will look at the code, but will instantly reject their code based on indentation (tabs or spaces?) or brace style, or choice of language ("lol Python, real programmers use Ruby"). Because you aren't yet invested in the candidate (after all, you've only sent them the same email you've sent the other 499 applicants) you lose nothing when you're an asshole, while the applicant loses the time they invested (and they won't be able to reuse that code assessment on their next job application).

> I'm really not sure how you've made the leap from me trying to help people who are swamped with applicants (by taking action that gives every single one of those applicants a fair chance) to a suggestion that I'm not treating people respectfully.

Telling applicants to send you a picture of themselves dressed as a clown and selecting the funniest 10 for an interview would also be an effective way to weed down applicants (many wouldn't respond, so clearly they didn't really want the great job you're offering), and one could even argue that it would give every single one of those applicants a fair chance. Would you agree that such a thing might nevertheless be seen by some as disrespectful?

I'm not saying requesting a coding assessment as part of a job interview is always disrespectful, and I think most people would agree with that. But, as you may have noticed from the reactions to your original post, an unpaid coding assessment that must be performed before the applicant gets a chance at an interview is a bit more controversial.

EVEN AS A COLLEGE STUDENT I'm not going to do your coding assessment for free. There are plenty of workplaces that skip such bullshit and instead they talk with people and take a quick look at Github/past experience. I have more important things to do and recruiters keep emailing me about interviews every week.

And yeah, I have a job in software development.

> EVEN AS A COLLEGE STUDENT I'm not going to do your coding assessment for free. There are plenty of workplaces that skip such bullshit and instead they talk with people and take a quick look at Github/past experience. I have more important things to do and recruiters keep emailing me about interviews every week.

Great: I'm really pleased for you, and I hope you have a fulfilling career. But all you're telling me is that if you don't respond to the invitation I've sent you then you don't want the job I'm advertising that much. And guess what? I'm selecting against people who don't want the job I'm advertising that much.

Now here's an interesting thing that I've spotted before on HN: the silent majority have upvoted me, but a few commenters have taken me to task. Clearly I'm not suggesting that the majority are always right (the majority of people used to think the world was flat and look how that turned out), but it's certainly worth further consideration.

I think software developers have a very interesting relationship with the hiring process - there's an unspoken attitude that our skills are highly in demand, so therefore companies should be trying to hire us rather than us trying to get a job with a company.

In reality, while software development skills are in high demand, there's also a very high supply segmented across different skillsets and industries (and yes, in lots of industries being a software and domain SME is important). Companies have had lots of success using take home projects or short assessments for technical skills like HackerRank to separate both the wheat from the chaff and remove those who don't want that particular role that much (as you said).

Definitely. I don't think there's a one size fits all solution to hiring. Hopefully my suggestions will be helpful to those feeling swamped by applications, but it's certainly not the gospel.

At the moment we get few enough applicants that I'm fortunate enough to be able to talk to all of them. What has surprised me is that a relatively high proportion simply don't respond to that invitation. The numbers aren't yet anywhere near high enough to feel confident here, but it does seem - at least superficially - like there might be a correlation with weaker applications here.

> recruiters keep emailing me about interviews every week

Be aware that most of those are basically a scam. Trying to force you into some random job just so they can get the provision.

I think some are just interested in your data, such as current salary and location.

Well, he was saying when he has too many applicants. Either he picks a few and gives none of the others a fair chance, or he gives everyone a fair chance with something some people don't like. Our time on this planet is finite, what do you expect of him?

>> Our time on this planet is finite, what do you expect of him?

Better.

> Better.

Thanks. Anything concrete or specific to add to the discussion?

> Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant.

They all look the same.

There is now way to tell if a position is any more than remotely relevant, because job postings are all the same.

If you want a group (prospective employees) to sift itself (only apply to jobs they want or are qualified for), you should make a concerted effort to give them the information needed to do that. Unfortunately, no one really does.

Recruiting sucks, so let's focus on making it better, rather than just complaining about the userbase.

There seems to be a pretty simple solution to this - you blacklist the obviously unacceptable.

Not the ones you 'don't like' - the ones that don't even make sense.

That process of filtering out folks using the blacklist should be automated and the blacklist should be public.

I wonder if that'd make recruiting jobs almost pointless in a large number of cases however. It sure would make one think twice about spam-applying, knowing you might get blacklisted for spam.

This is not only a PR disaster waiting to happen but probably illegal in most jurisdictions.

Neither of which are arguments against doing it.

With your logic, ending slavery in a time when it was legal, would be a PR disaster, and illegal in most jurisdictions.

Oh wait... It may even lead to a civil war. Oh wait... That has happened... Oh wait... It was actually a good thing!

That's how progress gets made - by changing existing norms and laws because they suck. Recruiting AND job searching at this moment clearly sucks. Which's not to say blacklisting is THE solution. It's A solution, which's a lot better than nothing, at least it gets the conversation going.

Ending slavery didn't cause the Civil War, the Civil War made it politically possible to end slavery.

1) Yes. Any job with entry level requirements will get 20-100 applications on craigslist in seattle (my experience). More or less applications on more or less popular platforms

2) Yes. Half or more of the applications I've reviewed are totally unqualified. Either they ignored the requirements or fudge it and flop on the interview.

3) Tech has even more noise than my personal experience due to higher pay scales and increased interest in "working in tech" (without any personal interest / passion in technology)

> 2) Yes. Half or more of the applications I've reviewed are totally unqualified. Either they ignored the requirements or fudge it and flop on the interview.

I mean if you are calling something "entry level position" and have "requires 3 years experience in the field", I'd expect people to apply anyway. I remember when I was fresh out of college all the entry positions I saw required several years of experience. If you don't apply to those positions then you really aren't applying to anything.

>when I was fresh out of college all the entry positions I saw required several years of experience

Same. That struck me as particularly BS'y. I asked career counselors at my school about that and they said to "embellish" my background a bit, but not to lie. The specific advice I got was if you worked as a developer on a short term project a year ago that would count as a year of work. If asked about it the advice was to just explain what you really meant. It made me feel uneasy because if seemed disingenuous, but I went with it because I needed a job.

This made me really question what does a "year of experience" really mean? 60 Hrs/wk for a year is not the same as 20 Hrs/wk for a year. If you could use a month of work a year ago as a year of experience, what else could you stretch? At that point you could question what does anything really mean on an application? If it has super high qualifications, how could you take it seriously? You can just rationalize away anything! Can't you? 4+ years of experience? I basically got that. 2+ years in some specific programming language? How different could it be from C++? I got the basic concepts down, I can figure out the rest, just give me money!

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take and the worst you will hear is the word 'no'. You need a job to pay off the loans you needed to get the degree to apply to the jobs in the first place. If experience inflation is a reaction to an insurmountable volume of applications then what businesses are really doing is filtering out the honest people.

I've noticed that people conflate "years of experience" with "time elapsed since the first time you did the thing" all the time.

I would love to see job postings that require 2,000+ hours of experience for junior level or 10,000+ hours for senior level.

I've noticed that people conflate "hours worked" with "skill level" or "effectiveness level". I mean they definitely correlate on average, but 100hrs experience for one person is equivalent to 1khrs to another.

Figuring out skill level is hard. And no matter what job you are at and skill level, it requires training. But if we're talking junior positions, that means "we are going to teach you." I feel like that part is being lost.

Sure but I'd argue that there are likely to be more similarities amongst people with 2,000 hours experience than there are amongst people with 1 year of experience. 1 year could mean anything from "watched three udemy courses" to 4,000 hours of hands on keyboard in a full time position + hobby projects.

>2) Yes. Half or more of the applications I've reviewed are totally unqualified. Either they ignored the requirements or fudge it and flop on the interview.

Common advice is that job posters put insane requirements on their posting because they don't really expect an entry level applicant to have 15 years experience in HTML5, Joomla, C++14, Bootstrap, Hypercard, Quechua, nuclear physics, and Go, just a little bit of exposure to half of them. It's not surprising that unreasonably underqualified people respond to job postings with unreasonably high expectations, and that all job postings end up not being taken seriously.

> 15 years experience in HTML5, Joomla, C++14, Bootstrap, Hypercard, Quechua, nuclear physics, and Go,

This is what you put in a job advert when you want to hire your mate who matches that description but feel obliged to publicly tender the job instead.

Has c++14 existed for 15 years yet?

>without any personal interest / passion in technology

Can I not work in tech without being passionate?

Passion is a relative term.

Nobody goes to work at Facebook or Google thinking "wow, I'm so passionate about adverts and tracking, I want to build a world with more ads and tracking in more places". It's normal not to be passionate about your work in that sense.

However, some people find computers frustrating, stupid or boring. Such a person probably wouldn't enjoy a job working with them all the time - and it's difficult to build the skills that let you advance your career if you're averse to or bored by practising them. You need to be passionate in the sense of finding the work sufficiently non-loathsome that you can readily motivate yourself to do it.

> You need to be passionate in the sense of finding the work sufficiently non-loathsome that you can readily motivate yourself to do it.

That is a major abuse of "passion". While the original definitions are even stronger, something you are "passionate" about is something you actively seeking out to do. Something that is merely "sufficiently non-loathsome" is not a passion.

  That is a major abuse of "passion".

That's just the gap between what employers hope for when they place a job advert, and what they get.

I would like someone who loves their work so much they do 150% of the expected amount of work, freely chooses to stay late to make the Foo they're working on the best Foo the world has ever seen. Someone I can promote, and trust with more responsibility and less supervision.

But I'll tolerate someone who does 75% of the expected amount of work, because I'm realistic about the hiring market.

> I would like someone who loves their work so much they do 150% of the expected amount of work, freely chooses to stay late to make the Foo they're working on the best Foo the world has ever seen.

I had a job where I did this. Know what the employer did? He whined I wasn't doing enough, and gave me more to do then expected me to stay even later to do it.

I was eventually spending more time at work than I was at home - I no longer work for free. If an employer wants extra hours out of me, they pay or I head home at clock out time.

Employment isn't about your dream being fulfilled, it's a commercial agreement between two parties where one agrees to pay the other for time spent at the workplace. I don't live to work, I work to live, and I have other stuff to do.

On my death bed, the one thing I can guarantee that I will never think is "I wish I'd worked an extra evening for free on that project for my employer." It's far more likely to be "I wish I hadn't worked that evening for free, so I could have seen the sun set just one more time."

This. How can people say something so wrong headed like "Passion is a relative term." No you're just manipulative.

Passion: strong and barely controllable emotion.

"sufficiently non-loathsome...motivate yourself to do it" is a far cry from passionate. Tangentially related @sarahmei on twitter wrote a thread about passion in tech. IMO she nails it: https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/921366047122268165

Passion comes from a Latin root meaning "to suffer". If you work in technology long enough, you will become passionate about it.

I am not sure this lady knows what it means to be passionate then. Dismissing passion as the domain of stuffy white men is to dismissing anyone with an overridingly strong interest in anything

I think you are missing her point. She isn't saying that all passionate people are affluent white males. My interpretation is that passion in a swe job description is code for affluent white male. I think she has a point, individuals who have time for passion projects, self study, or other endeavors are privileged. Many of them are white, male, and affluent.

I think the problem is that she falls in the same error as the companies she's criticizing - she conflates passion with external signals like "spending a lot of time on personal projects". At first she uses quotes around "passionate", which seems to distinguish the two, but then she fully conflates them. Inevitably, she will rile up those of us who were passioned about tech despite not having the means to dedicate ourselves to it.

Which is a shame, because her point that filtering candidates based on their dedication of personal time to tech is discriminatory is valid.

  she conflates passion with external signals like
  "spending a lot of time on personal projects"

Job interviewers fear being mislead by people telling them what they want to hear, so they will often look for provable actions and demonstrable knowledge, rather than claims.

If someone tells me they're passionate about embedded electronics, I'll ask what they've worked with - arduino? raspberry pi? esp8266? atmel? pic? mbed? - and what they've done with it.

If they haven't used any of them, or they've barely used them, are they really passionate?

Sure, but that's where her criticism is valid - there are many reasons why a person might not be able to fulfill their passion, and some groups are disproportionately affected by that filter.

This woman completely catches what my college experiences were for me. Great read. From all the data I've seen poverty level is the biggest factor that determines your future potential with race right behind, one would think that we would try to make opportunity the main goal in an advanced society. Not everyone will or wants to be financially successful but when the two things that weigh heaviest on where you end up are where you start financially and what color/gender you are that's not a sustainable or fair system.

>However, some people find computers frustrating, stupid or boring. Such a person probably wouldn't enjoy a job working with them all the time - and it's difficult to build the skills that let you advance your career if you're averse to or bored by practising them.

It's funny really because I thought I was perfect for software development as a teenager. Already knew how to program, spent a huge amount of my free time on a computer, good at maths and sciences in general, etc.

Once I actually got into software development I found the whole thing rather irksome. The company I worked for was a great place to work full of really lovely people, free lunches, paid internships (yay NZ), etc. But software development? Nope. Awful industry. Computers are shit.

As soon as I got out of software, I immediately found my interest in programming as a hobby come back. Unsurprisingly people don't really like doing something as a hobby when they're paid to do it for 40 hours per week already.

What's your current job if i may ask? I'm in the same boat as you now.

Yes you can, I’ve been in tech companies where a fair few of my colleagues are not interested in tech. They want to be part of a “winning” organisation and make money.

I sure as hell wouldn’t hire someone who has no interest in what my company is doing and that level of interest would have to increase relative to the role.

What tends to happen is you get very slick operators who don’t produce anything because they don’t understand/don’t care and all they do is get information from A spin it in a way that makes them look fantastic and push it to B.

Given enough people like that in a tech org it’ll collapse.

I used to work on email archival. Anyone who says they’re passionate about that is either lying or doped up on barbiturates.

I think there are two sides of equation. You can be passionate about the literal problem (search, AI, whatever) or the underlying problem with tech (I could imagine finding interesting problems around new indexing techniques, rapid access, etc if you wanted to really get into the nitty gritty)

How did you get hired for email archival? Started looking at online applications and every single one has something like "Why do you want to work for us?" and yesterday I saw "How do you add to our diversity?"

What's the problem with those questions?

I wouldn't be surprised to find that in the UK it's illegal to ask a candidate "How do you add to our diversity?" because it could be seen as a thinly veiled way to, for example, discover a candidate's sexual preference - something you are outright not allowed to ask about, except in very specific circumstances[1].

(Also, it's an insufferably pretentious question, even if not actually illegal.)

[1] E.g., it might be legally acceptable for a role in a religious organisation.

I'd argue that they're stupid questions.

What do you stand to learn about the quality/fit of a candidate from the question "why do you want to work with us?"

They could give a 100% bombshell answer and yet not at all fit the role.

The latter is not a question the applicant is qualified to answer. Specifically, "how do you add to <our team>" can only be answered by someone that already knows the team. To me it signals that the recruiter is lazy and expects me, as applicant, to do his job for him.

Sorry, was trying to figure out how the commenter got past those filtering questions.

It depends on the content of the emails.

Tech work is like sex work: you don't need to feel the passion, but you do need to be able to fake it.

I'm stealing that line.

Touche

Anecdata: to me and others I've spoken to 'passion' is short hand for a person having personal work standards. i.e.: a person who won't half-ass their work, who'll often go the extra distance for polish or feature completion, and who'll proactively help raise issues if their experience indicates the team is heading down the wrong path.

And yes, a person who'll very occasionally stay late and pitch in when the whole team is crunching on something.

I think it always helps to care about the quality of your craft. "Passion" seems to be the prevalent HR-speak for that concept.

You have to have had some level of passion to bother learning about it.

It takes time to learn a topic, that's a form of passion - a drive.

That's not to say you have to burn all hours on it tho. Which I think is what you're assuming there. That's honestly somewhat unhealthy and only super passionate people (and lucky ones at that) can do that for any length of time.

Not really.. I have friends with no interest in computers but who studied CS because they knew it would lead to a well paying job. They work at Amazon and Google now so I guess it worked out for them.

One requires motivation, but that motivation does not necessarily have to be interested or passion.

In that case they have a passion for making money ;)

That’s what motivated them to learn. I doubt that’s what causes them to stay. If it is tho... That’s enough.

Passion requires enthusiasim, not merely drive.

And spending effort to learn something requires some level of enthusiasm

I disagree. I have learned plenty of things I had no enthusiasm for because they were a means to an end.

> Can I not work in tech without being passionate?

You can, but from the employer's perspective many markets have more applicants than positions. The employer can choose those who are closer to the ideal employee. One of the qualities of such an employee is often someone who throws themselves with passion into doing the job.

Put another way, why should an employer with a stack of applicants pick those who aren't as motivated or qualified as others? That is why entry-level positions require 3 years of experience.

Yes but you have to be able to fake it for at least the duration of an interview.

Yes you can. Many people work in tech and are not passionate. And plenty of them are very good and responsible.

Tech is not something special, you can lean it like anything else.

It's a cultural-fit thing. You can, but there are the zealous who will deny you.

I don't ignore requirements or fudge them, but I do interpret them based on what they want done.

If they want 10 years of Ruby/Rails experience with a focus on performance/scalability, maybe your 5 years of Python/Django is not applicable.

But if they want 3 years of Ruby/Rails experience and you've got 5 years of Python/Django, and feel comfortable with the transition to Ruby, absolutely you should apply for that position.

Be upfront about it and be prepared to demonstrate your ability, but that's what the interview is supposed to be about in the first place.

These numbers vary dramatically by location and specialty, e.g. a Marketing Assistant in Chicago has very different prospects (and expected # applications to job offer) vs. a Software Engineer in SF vs. an HR specialist in Ohio.

We did an analysis on this awhile ago, specifically about # of days to get a job, but it also has some analysis about # of applications:

https://talent.works/blog/2017/09/22/how-long-does-it-take-t...

Amazing website, I'll have to keep talent.works in mind next time I'm looking for a job!

I'm currently trying to hire cloud solution architects, including in Bangalore. I have had >2000 applicants for the role. About 15 made it through resume & phone screens. I have found 1 so far that could make it through onsite interviews. This is just one data point from the opposite POV: especially in tech, it's extremely hard to find qualified people at the time and place you need them, especially if you need specialists.

This is because recruiters are lazy. In my bunch of years I found exactly 2 non-lazy third party recruiters. Thus actually manually finding the company you want to work with and then sending the resume and cover letter directly has a decent chance of success if you're not a hack or fake.

The trouble is, they so not like to give out salary brackets.

In the U.S. at least, in order to continue receiving unemployment in many states, you need to apply for a certain number of jobs to show that you are "actively looking" for a job. These leads to many applicants to entry level jobs who are applying for a result other than getting hired. Indeed, many applicants of this type have no intention of ever even answering the phone/email if you try to contact them. Though some will just so they can say to the unemployment office that they "Have an interview next week."

I've similarly always struggled to make sense of these kinds of claims, because in my life so far I was offered a job every time I applied, so I'm wondering if I'm either living in an area where the job market is much less competitive or if I'm aiming too low. It's out of the question that I'm some kind of hotshot, on the contrary my CV is a mess and I dropped out ouf college.

I think its a mix of different perspectives. Theres people like you and myself who hear all this about applying to hundreds of jobs and it sounds absurd. For you it sounds like this is because you got lucky enough to not even need to look. Then theres those who apply to hundreds of jobs and then wonder why they don't get many responses.

Something to note there is, how much attention is being paid to each listing. For the jobs you've applied and gotten, you probably were a really great fit.

Having reached a point of being on the other side, looking for people to hire, I think there are really warped perceptions all around. If your hiring, you aren't swamped with great candidates but with resumes. Basically, most resumes go in the trash, but because most of them are hollow, there was nothing there to start. If you're actually skilled and can demonstrate it in any way then its far easier to find a job. I think most of the people who apply to 200+ jobs to get one either are not skilled or don't know how to demonstrate that they are.

I'm like you two - the second job I applied to out of college, I got an offer for. Still there 7 years later, and in that time the our tech interviewers have occasionally told stories or shared some of the more absurd programming tests (with names removed). This:

> If your hiring, you aren't swamped with great candidates but with resumes.

is exactly the case for us. 90%+ of them fail a test where each question is only slightly more difficult than FizzBuzz. Some of them don't even attempt to answer all the questions.

I have little doubt they're the ones sending 200+ resumes out, hoping someone bites.

Congratulations but you’re probably an outlier. I’ve applied to hundreds of companies throughout my career (~20 years), probably an average of around 40 applications per job switch. I’ve applied to some companies multiple times, sometimes right after getting the rejection. Most people I know are in the same boat. Tech companies are so picky and there is so much inherent variance in hiring. It’s a numbers game.

From my personal experience in the entry level job market, I have never successfully gotten a job offer to anything I applied to. Only have my current job because a friend recommended me.

If that's your first job and you can hold it down for awhile, then I think your next job hunt will go better.

Especially if you start the next job hunt while still employed. That's an important signal to your employer, that someone else was willing to hire you. It also helps to ensure you're not desperate, because your next paycheck is not hinging on the current interview.

Same - I've interviewed exactly twice, and gotten both jobs. This isn't to say I've only had two jobs but all advancements/movements stemmed from those two jobs I interviewed for (the second after moving cities and being out of my original network).

This has led me to actually be nervous about the prospect of having to interview, because was my success a fluke? Or had I found great fits for jobs? Both interviews I remember getting in to quite technical but off the topic conversations with the interviewer so I presume that was the success bit?

It's probably influenced greatly by industry and region.

The entry level job market is paradoxically the hardest due to the competition and limited opportunity to differentiate.

My first three job searches out of college required several months with 150-200 applications each, and I was an ivy league grad with a finance degree.

It was really tough to get an interview without knowing anyone. I initially tried limiting my search to positions and companies I was passionate about via career websites, but my hit rate of even getting a response was ~5%, so I realized I needed to up the number of applications to get a reasonable pipeline of opportunities.

Thankfully I've passed that point in my career and have specialized, so my last two positions have been through recruiters that approached me. I won't forget how stressful the early career can be though.

My ratio for applications to offers, over 20 years and 7 jobs, is less than two. My last job search lasted 12 hours, from start of search, to signing a contract. I've explained to people in the past that I'm extremely selective about applying. I only apply to jobs I think I would love, where I can clearly communicate why I'd be a great hire. I'm sensitive to early red flags, and avoid job descriptions that don't make sense or have contradictory reqs. I also have only worked in Boston and Seattle, two of the very hottest markets.

Jesus! That's really awesome!

I'm at ~700 jobs and only had 1 offer that was pretty bad. (Optics and/or Bio-tech)

...surely you didn't mean 700 jobs?

70 jobs? 700 applications? Or am I completely mistaken and you are a much more well-traveled person than I am?

700 applications, about 25 phone interviews, 2 offers to fly out, 1 (bad) actual offer. Still waiting to hear back on a lot of the jobs.

Granted bio-tech is a bit different of an environment. There are a fair few certs you can get. Also, I recently found out that a few large companies only hire interns and the job postings are just for legal compliance. That info felt like a punch in the guts, sooooo many hours wasted.

Probably a function of your industry and where you are.

If you're applying to that many jobs, you're not being deliberate in the search. I've found all of my post-highschool jobs either from people in my network advertising something, or recruiters reaching out to me.

When I was in highschool I did not understand that it was really about who you know (I was homeschooled, so I didn't have a school network to reach out to for jobs), and went applying for typical highschool retail/fast food jobs willy nilly and never got an offer. It's because I was lacking someone who could "intro" me in to the organization. Now I can't really imagine trying to apply for a job cold.

There's a distribution there that needs to be mentioned, because most job applications are submitted by unqualified applicants.

My last half dozen gigs have taken 0-2 emails to secure. The 2 was a genuine job search where I identified two possible fits and reached out. The zeros all were people seeking me out.

Contrast that to the guy applying for your Sr. Developer position who can't FizBuzz. He has applied to 1000 such jobs already. Every one he's seen. All over the country. Every once in a while a company will make the blunder of hiring one of those people (they make up 99% of the applicant pool, because they are always on the market, whereas skilled devs are not), he will skew your number.

So yeah, that guy averages a couple hundred applications before scoring.

But you don't want to emulate his tactics, or you'll find yourself lumped in with him and filtered out of every job you apply to.