When we post a job ad on LinkedIn, I already get 30 spam answers in the first few minutes, people that have obviously spent not a single second reading the requirements. And you want to further automate this? I’ll just ask my people person to automate the response.

We really try to spend the time to answer every application, but since AI generated applications have become a thing, we have decided to not answer those. Why should I spent time if you haven’t spent the time?

The spammers spend almost no time filling any application, no matter how much work is intended. They have scripts for that. Granted, making it standardized means less skilled spammers can spam too.

Making it difficult to apply reduces the number of legitimate applications, however.

Either way, you need an automated first screen.

I've always thought the easiest way to stop spam applications would be to require paper application.

That’s a great idea if you’re hiring locally but we do hire international remote and I suspect no one will snail-mail me an application from the Americas or South Africa to Germany.

Perhaps they could fax it

But that would filter for German applicants. Who else would have a fax?

No idea, though it's interesting that it may yet outlive posting a letter from their Danish neighbors.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg8jllq283o

Japan as far as I know - old allies and such ;)

That is good to remember - I'll keep that in mind if I ever want to hire in [Germany, Japan] without spelling this out for some reason.

Sorry about that! I apply to those jobs because you put out some insane requirements, and I assume you're not actually looking for a single SME with expertise across half a dozen distinct domains and a decade of experience in tech that hasn't existed for half that time.

Unless, you are actually hoping to find a full stack developer that can also serve as the principal engineer for your entire network, storage, VMware infra, plus support basically anything with cord all for ~$80-100k.

Normally when you get to the point of discussing things with a human, you find out what the actual job is. The job ad is almost always completely irrelevant to the actual job.

Standardized data formats would greatly reduce the amount of weeding. The candidate should have compared your wants to their skills already, you cross-check their listed skills vs your wants.

And we need to sort out needs vs wants. Job postings should include the required skills (do not submit if you don't meet them) and a separate listing for additional skills that would be desirable. Don't waste everyone's time with a guessing game where people need to decide if they are close enough to the wish list.

Did you even read the comment you are responding to?

Companies already get so many applications that applying is a crapshoot without a referral. I feel like this is the opposite of what we need.

The employers want applications so badly they are willing to post job ads that don't exist.

The need for a referral to get human eyes on your resume is a different problem that isn't made better by making every application expensive for the applicant. Poor quality applicants have more time, you might say.

I disagree and think that increasing the cost of applying would indeed help this problem. If the number of applications is too high for humans to possibly review, what other possible solution could there be?

The problem posed by this article is that companies are wasting candidates' time by making applying take time while offering no actual position.

What if we imagined that companies charged a fee to apply instead of charging candidate time? Then these ghost positions would be obviously considered fraud. We don't normally pay applicants for their time, but isn't a ghost position requiring substantial time to apply also a fraud on the applicant?

All I'm saying is, by removing the payment in time, you remove the fraud.

Applicant spam is an orthogonal problem that has other solutions. Linked-in could limit applicants to one application every 30 minutes, max 16 per day. Employers can use keyword filtering as they already do.

Start accepting CVs over snail mail. Much more difficult to automate, there is a cost already embedded in the process (72¢ for a stamp) and any attempts to automate this will be obvious.

A referral isn't really useful on its own. Ideally the person doing the referral needs to have the ear of the HM and followup regularly. Otherwise it's an easily missed note on an ATS.

We could make the referrer's company email a field in the ATS

My experience is that most of my time goes to writing cover letter (I should probably copy-paste, but instead I always reflect 'why I'm doing this' and write proper letter), never had to spend 30 minutes entering my details...

I feel the biggest blunder would be when applicant gets a take-home, spends some time on it and then there is no answer. Though I never experienced that myself. I never ghosted a candidate when I was on the other side of hiring table, but I was always finding it draining my energy to write the 'no' responses