The downside is that if all candidates are thinking like you, you are now hoping that the hiring team can sort through 100s of garbage Resumes to may be find you who may be a good fit. Your odds of being called for Round 1 is now much lower due to all that noise. Doesn't matter whose fault it is. Your probability of being called for Round 1 just went down significantly and this hurts you.

I would have thought the one thing these ATS systems could do by now is filter the obvious garbage resumes.

I can’t stop other people doing this, and not doing it if other people are is a disadvantage for me. Imprisoned in a dilemma of our own making.

What happens when you get an interview and spend time for a company you don't want to work for?

I’ll turn it down if further research shows I don’t want to work there? Why upfront my research if I’ll be ghosted anyway? Turning down interviews because “circumstances have changed” is hardly unusual

Ghost jobs on one side, ghost applications on the other. Some people will just send automated applications everywhere, every day, and check for responses. That leads to ghost responses, and the cycle continues.

Responding to someone to say you got their message but have changed your mind isn’t ghosting. Job hunting would be less miserable if rejections happened in a reasonable time frame

interview practice

You are happy you have anything to pay your bills ;)

Nice wordplay! (see Prisoner's dilemma)

+1

The hiring teams are employed. If they aren't in a position to fix the dynamics then nobody can. HR enjoys a vaulted position under which their suffering KPIs allow them to point their fingers at the market and shrug the blame from their shoulders . It isn't like they are going to suddenly band together and boycott AI. We've all had our sip from the fountain of eternal laziness and now we all want more.

that ship has sailed. companies already get 100s of applications for every job post even without candidates automating applications.

Sorting a few hundred documents don't seem like a very hard task for a software company.

But this is a classic prisoners dilemma then... If I don't do it and everyone else does then I am only hurting my own chances.

Based on what you're saying, the only way to actually fix this is to fix the underlying systematic problem. No idea how you do that, but seems like the only logical way I can think of

Don't look at it as us vs them. Recruiters are part of your (future) team. Maybe not your direct team, but once you get bad people in your team you'll want them to do a better job.. Chicken vs egg. Apply where you actually want to apply and trust that the recruiter does his job.

I have trusted in the past, and verified that the recruiter does not in fact do their job.

Hiring and placement agencies that do prescreenings and provide CVs in standardized formats to employers and them getting paid according to how much salary the hire will get.

win-win-win situation for every party, they got me my last two jobs in Vienna

Yes but now you need these agencies to prescreen for you which is a very expensive and time consuming process. Also, I have used some before and not all agencies are worth the time or money. Most of them are glorified Keyword scanners.

We only ever used body shops when we were really desperate.

I work in an industry where this practice is universal. That said, why don't more of these companies complaining on this thread try that model? I know the reason: Cost. Instead of wasted hours of their staff's time, they are faced with a realistically large bill that most managers would like to deny. For me, head hunters find me on LinkedIn.

Well, those companies can‘t have it that bad if they rather wade through 1000‘s of fake/ai/mismatched CVs and other slop themselves.

The costs will diffuse through a mix of incompetent inhouse HR and already overworked seniors and leads that now need to waste time on hiring.

Referrals and networking? When has submitting a resume to a portal ever been the way to find a job other than a cookie cutter one?

Apply like a bot, work like a bot.

I haven’t seen the power of referrals for 10 years now. At work I can give you a “referral” by uploading your resume to our ATS. That’s it. It receives no more consideration than if you were to click Easy Apply on LinkedIn as far as I’m aware.

I wonder if we might see the rise a broad but weak "yes that's a real person" referral system as opposed to "I know that person will be good for the job" referrals.

That type of referral indeed is mostly worthless (it might get you actually looked at by a human instead of rejected before that). Useful referrals are the kind where you go chat with your friend, figure out what they want in a job, then go find the hiring manager and tell them about this amazing ex-colleague who's a perfect fit for the role. That gets the candidate treated seriously. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but definitely gives the candidate a fair shot.

At a former employer, I sort of hated the referral ambassador or whatever it was called thing (with financial rewards attached I think). I always felt it encouraged quantity over quality. I actually sent a couple people I knew off on their merry way and suggested a couple others just go to the job site. On the other hand, I got several jobs through people I actually knew and had worked with in some manner.

I referred two friends at my former employer and the process has changed in the span of 5 years; first one needed at least a short recommendation, second was pretty much fire and forget (and hope for the bonus if they get hired)

Referrals in my company basically just guarantee that the resume isn't immediately thrown in the trash, doesn't really help anyone's odds otherwise. I suspect in most companies it's similar, if they even get that much of a benefit (unless you're upper management (aka nepotism) I guess)

Nepotism is most associated with relatives although I guess it doesn't have to be. But I've definitely gotten several jobs through senior managers I had worked with which largely bypassed the whole HR system where it existed.

> Nepotism is most associated with relatives although I guess it doesn't have to be.

IIRC "nepotism" is specifically family/relatives, and the larger Venn-diagram circle would be "favoritism."

Wikipedia disagrees even if relatives seems to be the predominant meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism

Charge $x for a candidate to apply for your job. Put the money in an escrow pool. Pay it to the person you hire for the job.

Idea 2: Bid to have yourself reviewed for the job. Money goes in escrow pool.

Betting currency is a terrible solution, especially at the junior level when people are trying to start their careers. On the other hand, forcing candidates to invest time and in exchange guaranteeing their application will be reviewed could work well.

Candidates aren’t going to apply until you can actually guarantee that their application will be reviewed and given due consideration. And that will never happen because the fakers will invest an unlimited amount of time, so your review process will fall over.

Huh? The problem is getting to the point where the company is able to have a candidate invest time and then review their work. If the candidate doesn't have the application fee, there could be a secondary market of people who would back the candidate if they were confident they could get the job and the escrowed application fees.

"Hey, if you want to work, pay us" sounds so fucking dystopian.

I already saw "work" offers where YOU have to pay them their salary. As in, to employer, for the "opportunity"

Idea 3: Use a prediction market to find the best candidate.