For entry level jobs requiring young people that are customer facing, a video application makes a lot of sense to me.
It also removes a lot of the awkwardness Gen Z's might feel going down to their local retailer and asking if they are hiring.
My instinct says props to TikTok for at least trying something that's different and thinking a bit outside of the box
This is why comments complaining about HN monoculture get upvoted. Because a large enough piece of the userbase agrees with both sides. If they didn't, those comments would just get downvoted and you would never see them.
Kinda funny how that works. "See, lots of people agree that HN is a hivemind!" Proving it's not a hivemind.
I find myself in state regularly. At least I know now how to recognize the paralizing absurdity. Still very often a new solution is best when it massages an old one to fix problems but the world seems to operate by big deviations that shock the status quo and then new and old blend again.
Don't you know? Recruiter supposed to hire you by using their mind tricks, duh.
Social media, particularly to Gen Z, and particulary TikTok, has a major focus on projecting success, wealth, beauty, and other aspects of vanity - often in unhealthy ways. Rich people tend to have more followers, white people tends to have more followers, blondes tends to have more followers, sexually provocative content tends to have more followers.
I do not see TikTok shedding its whole zeitgeist to forward a a jobs product that helps the world.
Focus on projecting success, wealth, and beauty is a tale as old as time. It is not unique to Gen Z, nor is it heightened in Gen Z.
Funnily enough, those claims are also as old as time.
This statement can apply to LinkedIn as well.
As if it wasn't true for basically entire human history.
It is just the way in which the success or image of it is being projected that is changing.
You, Mister, need to study history a little bit before you start to compare generations. Also get a little bit of distance and learn about your biases.
Citation needed.
Meanwhile, my early-teen step-siblings have very similar interests to what I had back in the day (they enjoy playing games like roblox/minecraft on the computer, and FPS on consoles) - but are way less comfortable messing with the OS to troubleshoot vs what I was doing at their age. They were raised with tablets, where things just kind of work. When they do want to learn something, they pretty much always go to youtube first - and I'm not really sure if that's more effective or less effective than what we used to do, or if means they will have a harder time parsing technical docs later on in life.
They've expressed interested in computer science fields, and I do think they'll be able to learn it just fine. In some ways, maybe the exposure to more polished UX will make their bar for those experiences higher than what my generation would accept.
Because there's three trillion ways you can write a program and all of them seem to come with dozens of READMEs and what-to-do and what-not-to-do and very opinionated maintainers, the creative minds of today might just create their games within Roblox or get to know Javascript by making mods for a browser game, or learn to use DAWs to make cool-sounding EDM, etc. This was already a thing in "our" time with Flash and Adobe's software, but now that's the norm.
Effectively those minds have migrated over generations from the pure hardware to progressively thicker layers of software, which makes sense to me since that's how all human progress basically does with any other field too.
I think for anyone who has a kid, the best way to get them interested in this stuff is to have a bad computer, or at least one that primarily uses the shell (not that those computers are bad, I use one myself).
I got deeply interested in technology the opposite way. I got an iPod touch as a kid, and I was amazed by how well designed it was. The thing felt completely delightful to use compared to the Windows XP/Vista systems that were around in the day. I immediately had dreams of writing apps for the iPod that were every bit as amazing as the rest of the system. It didn't take me long after unboxing that iPod touch for me to boot up an old Mac to start on my programming journey.
And to this day, creating great user experiences is what drives my interest in software above all else.
My dad would tell me stories of copying code from magazines by hand and how little memory they had.
Today, memory and CPU speed is basically a non-factor; it's assumed to be infinite or at least extremely high for many applications.
Funnily enough though, memory constraints were still relevant for me and some of my friends - since Ti-83 calculators were the first exposure to programming for many of us. It helped that we were all required to buy them, so we could collaborate and copy over programs to each other. I would write programs so I wouldn't have to memorize chemistry stuff in HS. The teachers back then never checked, and they expected us to use calculators for normal calculations anyhow.
By the time I was using real code in college though - I agree. Performance optimization like that was taught as more of a "nice to have", and the only classes where it really mattered were assembly, and one elective I took on game engine development.
Because this a really broad extrapolation.
A lot of my peers were starting to use them, but just like kids today, they didn't really look into how things worked, they weren't really curious about them, they didn't really tinker with them.
They wouldn't go and update / rollback a driver. They would just complain if things didn't work, and maybe asked a "geek" friend for help.
Today, if a random game doesn't work, people will just try the next one.
So if people are curious, it's much easier to get their hands on a computer, and there's less risk.
When I was growing up, a PC was a fairly consequential purchase for my family, and they couldn't afford to buy a new one very often. There was a lot of pressure to "not break it". Of course, looking things up a bit and getting help from my father and friends, I was able to figure out that "messing with drivers" would likely not break it physically. But I understand this could have been limiting for people not having someone to guide them.
There's also the fact that today much more people have access to "computing", so if the part of the population interested in tinkering is roughly the same in absolute terms, the ratio between those who tinker and those who don't is skewed in favor of those who don't.
btw there is no such thing as techie anymore - everyone is into tech, there are very very few luddites left. There's a tendency of UI designers to infantilize their designs , but i m not sure that's based on actual measurable improvement or a certain "contempt" for the end user.
and macbooks. Totally opaque systems that you d rather replace than upgrade. That's OK -- it would happen inevitably, as it did with cars. The problem is that this culture has extended to software, where it is normalized that any technology must be offered through frameworks, APIs and prepackaged cloud solutions
Modern docs, youtube tutorials, and high quality free courses are much more conducive to learning than the forums, mailing lists, and library books of yore.
[1]: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
And I, at the time, had the exact same take.
Despite being full of entrepreneurs and hackers, folks here are remarkably out of touch with the average consumer.
It's not a damning criticism. Like I said, I include myself in this group that reacted with a resounding "What? WHY?" to almost every single Apple product launched under Steve Jobs's tenure, and was wrong every time.
But it's a blindspot we should be cognizant of. And anything related with TikTok is the perfect confluence to lead to the most stale takes.
Having said that, there is always a bit of a survivorship bias with these trends.
I also was completely negative and dubious on Snapchat and turned out to have been vindicated.
I do think TikTok is something different. It captures my imagination and attention better than any platform EVER, and I include YouTube and Instagram in this. Their recommendation algorithm is truly wonderous.
Not in my experience. You just have to subscribe to subreddits that don't have a political tilt. On rare occasions some subreddits go dark or sticky something political, but I'd hardly call that a take over.
Text as a medium is rapidly falling out of favor unless it’s for purely informational purposes. I read an article this morning about how the book publishing industry is all but dead because nobody is buying books anymore. Newspapers are largely dead, and the ones that still exist have pivoted hard to video or metatextual content.
Text doesn’t sell valuable ads and reading requires your full attention, and that is in direct competition with social media. It’s why banner ads were never really effective and the big ad revenue shift only happened after video ads became viable (and made YouTube unwatchable).
Also 'young people new to the job market' will probably always have a major mismatch with respect to expectations and values, it's probably been that way since the dawn of time.
It took me 2 years just to get my head straight in a 'basic way' to even start to understand the professional world.
Though I don't think it's fair to characterize any generation as 'lazy' though, that's not the right word - although Millenials are the first generation to not consider 'hard work' as a characteristic of their generation - this is an old data point (10 years old) which could either indicate a generational value shift - or - simply the fact that people of a certain age don't have that virtue (or don't think of themselves as that) but by the time they are 30 then their views and values shift etc..
TikTok surely can reach young people for certain kinds of jobs, not doubt. But it's also just a way to try to make money in any way they can.
All younger folks I see use TikTok and Snap to communicate, interact and get their data feed.
I'll drop a few invite codes below for anyone interested (if they are all used, let me know)
https://tildes.net/register?code=I448A-IEYUI-UDNWH https://tildes.net/register?code=VDTMC-SBJTQ-PTW9X https://tildes.net/register?code=HEX3N-VA48Z-AIJIT https://tildes.net/register?code=7L0GO-L4BZ0-962ZN
Note: I am not affiliated with Tildes, just an active member who wants the community to grow.
The first confirms that once DJT was removed off of large platforms like Twitter, he lost a lot of followers and digital support, proof that large scale networks have a strong positive feedback loop.
The second provides 2 videos that go into excruciating detail on why Elon Musk is a fake futurist, ruthless capitalist and overall a terrible person (Including working his factory workers at the TSLA factory through COVID forcefully, threatening their jobs and saying we will be at 0 cases by the end of April 2020). At the very least, you should dislike Elon for his anti-union, ruthlessly capitalistic approach to human labor and selfishness.
This invite only approach doesn't seem to be working all that well, I've been following Lobste.rs, from what I can tell it's got the same problems as HN with poor comments.
I'm not much of a social media user, despite being of an age full of extremely active users. I find Tiktok in particular annoying, like someone took the inauthenticity of mediocre YouTube creators and decided that every user in the network should ape it.
But that has nothing to do with the jobs service, the fact that it may expand a company's recruiting reach or provide opportunity to those who don't fit well into the stodgy workflow of traditional job apps. Just because the tiktok application format wouldn't fit my co's hiring doesn't mean that there aren't tons of jobs for whom a short demonstration of personality and creativity is signal as useful as a resumé.
The new replacements for it just don’t have the same vibe.
a decade ago was the single largest financial collapse in american history since the depression. millennials were told they would all get office jobs and a lexus. they all largely got working-poor fast food jobs and endless student debt.
now GenZ is looking at the same prospect. Covid and stagnant wages, and unapproachable college debt.
whatever Tiktok hopes to do, it needs to pivot from this malarkey where everyone needs to be a programmer and start offering trade jobs, which have been starving for new hires for 40 years. plumbing, HVAC, electrical, mechanical maintenance, and engine techs would stop traffic for a chance to so much as talk to someone from GenZ about the trade.
Salaries in those fields have been flat. That shows that there is NOT some magic pent-up demand in the trades.
Yes, a lot of people would like a flood of tradespeople to drive those flat salaries down but that does not mean that there is a shortage.
Pay more. Stop asking people to give up their physical health to compete on the job. Give them a career.
Construction wages have decreased, adjusted for inflation, so it's not a surprise there's no interest in taking those jobs.
Wow! What an insightful suggestion! If you aren't paying enough, just pay enough, duh.
"look at BTC went 500% last year, buy the dip for another 5x"
"these stocks are the future $RANDOM_SOLAR_PANEL_CO, $TSLA, $WEED_CO"
The most generally knowledgeable sizeable investment advice community is on bogleheads.org and users are usually like age 35+. They're generally well informed on tax implications, century old historical performance, different asset classes, factor analysis, ETF securities lending, etc.
The fact is that short-term (<10 years) investing is indistinguishable from gambling, unless you're Warren Buffett. Investment should be done accordingly, with the plan to get rich slowly if you want to be certain of the outcome.
It’s upsetting, uncreative and harmful.
When was this not the case - ever? Perhaps it didn't seem like "politics" for you in the past.
edit - I looked it up and the "Terrorist fist jab" comment was made in 2008 - so 13 years ago
You can’t do if all you do is arguing over what to do and how to do it.
People have limited time and cognitive capacity.
This has always been the case - some sub-groups of the population didn't notice it because it wasn't their/our bandwidth being consumed. Pick any past century or decade, and I will name a group whose world was consumed by politics then.
The problem starts when the bandwidth gets saturated. I don't say that people just should shut the f up and follow the rules, I'm simply saying that this saturated state is very bad.
As a lifelong minority with periods of being undocumented or illegal if you wish, I rarely got a free pass. I'm very familiar of the concept of being not allowed to do things o be denied stuff due to status I have no power change.
There was a time I had to beg bank employees to open me an account because I was working for months now and I need to get paid, and not because the law forbid me from having an account. There was a time when I was on a fishing boat crossing borders illegally and it was not because I was too lazy to get a proper visa.
Can you please inform me about the freebies I got? Why don't you tell me about the wonders of having your family being threatened to be send to the place where people often get lost without a trace? Tell me about the privilege of having your father feeding you by working for less than the minimum wage despite being an Electrical Engineer with Masters degree?
If anything, part of the big political events of the last few year revolves around me getting similar rights to those who are not happy with the new situation. I guess they want their underpaid Engineers back.
DB.
You must be thinking that inheritance taxes discussion or carbon emission limits are intense but no I’m not talking about that. I'm talking about situations where you decide if you like something or not depending to the political affiliation of its makers. Like the idea of a CV in a special format that comes from a Chinese company being instantly dismissed is an example of unnecessary politics.
Gradual changed are necessary, maybe full throttle are necessary too however the periods of “everything is about our battle in the politics” are huge waste of life’s.
it’s important stuff but should not be replacing the stuff that it’s supposed to regulate.
Intense rule making periods are tragedies. Everything of substance is easily lost on the promise that we will have more of it in the future.
At the end, often the rules remain about the same but the rulers change. Politics is not about philosophical argument but power distribution. It's not the case that the more you argue the better rules you produce. In the Middle East the everyday life is deep into politics and they failed to produce the outstanding rules.
I really loathe the “sell yourself via video snippet” aspect. It’s inhumanely degrading.
Hyperbole much? There are a lot of inhumane, degrading things in this world. TikTok videos are not one of them.
Anyways, clearly some people thought it would be cool and interesting. I think this will be an interesting alternative for those that don’t do well with resumes.
Fortunately, no one is going to make you use this, so I don’t know why everyone here is acting like it will be forced on them. This is obviously a secondary application method, one that will work particularly well for creative or extroverted types.
There are degrees of inhumane and degrading. Sure, there are plenty of worse things than having to apply via a video CV on Tiktok, but that's a difference in magnitude and not a difference in kind.
Acting.
Is there perhaps something deeper you want to say about sex workers that’s going unsaid right now?
Strip clubs don’t care what your skills are, they mostly look for the eye candy their clientele seeks. Video is similar in that it doesn’t care about skills other than maybe being able to present yourself at the cost of all other attributes.
But okay.
Thanks for clarifying and sharing your perspective.
It’s not different from TV news vs Daily newspaper. One is more fluff than the other. When was the last time you saw an “ugly” news anchor. In the papers you don’t care what the reporter looks like.
During a sit down interview you at least have a chance to make your argument if the interviewer has misconceived something or it needs elaboration.
To be completely honest, I don't care what the reporter looks like in either case. But I'm going to presume this was a rhetorical question and not meant as a reply or question to my specific manner of news consumption?
You'll have to forgive me (or, well you don't have to, that's up to you) but this still feels like putting the career carriage in front of the job prospect horse to me-for some reason. Perhaps said another way: none of what you said speaks to me to be a problem with the medium of interviewing (in this case video, ostensibly via tiktok), but instead rather the individuals participating in the process.
I can't quite pin down why, but it's a very strong sensation. I'll take this elsewhere and find a way to reconcile it without going turtles all the way down here in the thread.
Also photogenic characters are at an extreme disadvantage with people like you, who have prejudice against them. So everything evens out in the end.
Interesting, why do you find it more degrading than selling yourself via text snippet (your CV)?
Lots of jobs care precisely about those. Most notably sales, but also most other customer-facing jobs. Even for jobs where these aren’t the primary skills, they contribute to overall success. People who are good at these can equally complain that text doesn’t do them justice. In any case, calling these inhumanely degrading is just a subtle way to be inhumanely degrading to people who possess these qualities. It tells us more about you than the process honestly.
- introverts
- people without well-developed social skills
- people who do OK with smaller, familiar audiences (think an office with 40 co-workers) but not OK with larger, unfamiliar audiences (public speaking and presentation)
- non-neurotypicals
than it already was in the text CV era. How is that an improvement?
Extroverts and people who know how to operate in the society already have an unfair advantage, we don't need to give them yet more of it.
Curiosity comes from exploring both positive and negative consequences. You now have the top comment, so how emblematic of HN's culture is that?
This is the third time today I've read this sentiment and it's always someone frustrated that their view isn't as widely supported as they've hoped it would be. It's a big crowd here, from all across the world and the US. Trying to box HN much less HN users up is fruitless. Feel free to look at some of my post-history where I assumed I knew things about a user or their intent.
A decade ago everyone was telling me how millennials were lazy or disconnected or didn't understand the real world. And it felt pretty bad. I'm seeing all the same commentary shifted down a generation to GenZ without any introspection.
Yes, you might find this silly, and yes, you might not want to get hired this way. But also consider that for some companies, for some roles, or even for some pipelines there could be benefits to broadening the applicant pool.
Some folks are going to have a hard time articulating their experience via resume, some folks are going to have a hard time articulating their experience via tiktok. Why wouldn't we want to consider folks from both input sources and let folks present themselves using the form they feel best conveys their strengths?