Mysterious algorithms, black-box AI recruiters are binning our résumés

In my experience

It seems they are all coded as "If candidate already has a job, spam them with contract offers. If candidate is unemployed, stay silent"

Eventually resumes will have paragraphs of keywords like a Craigslist ad. 'Fact, I'm off to try that now.

I've been holding it wrong.

Just recalled a conversation I had with a person from a federal agency; their software ranked people like Olympic medals, bronze, silver, gold. Only gold were typically contacted. Which required certain keywords. "I'm not going to tell you to lie, but if certain words aren't in your resume we'll never see it."

Slightly OT but 5% is not the unemployment number except in some government addled dream. Tax receipts or other info vs people of working age show a much higher, 2 digit number of "wish I had a job" but don't. Politics.

That aside, when I ran a company, I learned things. One of which is that in lean times you don't lay the winners off, but the least productive. When hiring back...hmmm, it is as the article says - that person you want probably has a job already. Works as a ratcheting mechanism as society evolves to need fewer workers but still has more people, some of whom are probably actually worth it to pay to stay away and not distract the people who get things done. Wish I knew an unambiguously good answer for that one.

It's all too easy to confuse being equal under the law (a good thing we seem to be losing) - with being equal. We're not, no two of us are the same (good) but some are just never going to be the high productivity types in a complex environment. You can't fix stupid, in other words. Wish I had the answer to that one too.

HR = lowest end of the IQ curve

The problem with any screening system involving HR is the total stupidity of HR. Applications are nothing more than buzzword bingo not a competent review of skills against requirements.

First, the Gross Edit

Algorithms seem to suck in 80% of the places they're employed.

Maybe in a decade they'll be able to accurately sort resumes, or even serve up ads that I care about.

Problem is that humans pretty much handle stacks of resumes the same as an algorithm.

If you think someone hiring is reading every word of every application you're dreaming.

Any decent job gets dozens of applications at a mininum, so the first cull goes roughly :

1) Ugly fonts or layout - GONE!

2) Photocopied photo of applicant on cover page - GONE!

3) Gross spelling mistakes, especially the name of the person hiring - GONE!

4) Names of pets - GONE!

5) More buzzwords than content - GONE!

Now that you've eliminated 60% of the applications, you can do a FAST skim for any with major qualification issues.

That's when the person doing the hiring actually starts looking at them in detail.

The sad truth is that a significant number of resumes received are sad, deficient efforts, and don't get a second glance.

It's not about being "fair," it's about keeping a time-consuming job under control.

Not a new problem.

This has been an ongoing problem, not only in AI but in technology in general for decades now. No matter how good my resume (which went through many, many revisions) the biggest trick was getting past HR to managing supervisors. If I could ever get an interview with those I'd actually be working for I usually got the job. If it was strictly up to HR, I didn't. Even with decades of experience there was almost always someone in HR who merily sorted resumes into neat stacks of degreed, non-degreed. The non-degreed stack usually went to the trash. I imagine that is even worse with AI doing the sorting.

Skip HR

Thaumaturge has good advice here. Back when I got jobs (vs creating them, including my own), 100% of the good ones skipped the HR process almost entirely. That first one is indeed a problem, but after that, word of mouth, customers, co-workers who move on to other companies and your general network are where the really good jobs are. Of course, that means a good job for a deserving productive person, not a sinecure for a lazy laggard, for which I have little to no sympathy. No one handed it to me on a platter, I had to earn it.

By the time some idiot in HR finds out, you've been hired already and are beer buddies or the equivalent with whoever your new co workers or boss is to be. HR hands you a stack of papers to sign and/or fill out, and you do the top and bottom ones, they go in a file, and that's that with those idiots. This once saved me an invention I made with my own time and money - company claimed ownership as they assumed I'd signed that ridiculous form. But I didn't...heh. Attempted theft turned into promotion once they realized their error and how critical I was to their operations.

HR are indeed the dumbest of the group most places. One wonders if they aren't hired more for looks or some other aspect...

I find it funny when they demand say, 6 years experience in something that hasn't existed that long. Say no, only the 3 (maybe I even created that thing) - gone. Say 6, well, you've lied and now that can be held over your head. But their butt is covered, they think. Of course, such places aren't worth working for if you've got any talent and ability to produce value. If not, well...maybe you should work on that before trying to get paid for worthlessness. You special snowflakes out there are going to find out that the world isn't as you wish - it is what it is, and there are reasons for it being that way (not all of them good, but sufficient).

So it's not what you know, or who you know, it's 101011101000101

Bad computer systems, lazy people...

ALthough it is fun to look for conspiracies, in my experience cv management systems are abysmal (both front end and worse backend). Then managers are too lazy to regularly pick up cvs for the jobs that they are recruiting for, let alone be smart enough to say: "this guy isn't right for me, but would be good for team X I'll pass it along..."

Applying for jobs is like selling viagra by email. Spam them hard.

Good scanning system

I've seen someone operating very good CV scanning system.

Any applicants will have read 'No photos with this application'.

As soon as envelopes (it was a while back) were opened they were checked for photo's, if a photo was included the whole lot was binned without being read.

"If they can't fucking read the application form I can't be fucking bothered to read either. I need people who do not just scan but understand, this is a fucking hospital, for fuck's sake".

This is after getting fed up with people seeing the job description and assuming it was a PC World type hard drive replacement service and not a proper IT wonk job.

Obvious niche market here

Generate random CVs(*) and submit them, get some responses, run a Machine Learning system to spot what works, offer tailored CVs, profit.

(*) I'm British, and thus prefer Latin to French.

Algorithm arms race

If we knew how the algorithms worked we would all write CVs designed to get selected, and then they're back where they started. HR then have to refine the algorithm and so the cycle starts again.

Having said that, the Data Protection Act contains rights of the individual when subjected to automated decision taking. The right of subject access allows an individual access to information about the reasoning behind any decisions taken by automated means. The Act complements this provision by including rights that relate to automated decision taking. Consequently:

1. an individual can give written notice requiring you not to take any automated decisions using their personal data;

2. even if they have not given notice, an individual should be informed when such a decision has been taken; and

3. an individual can ask the organisation to reconsider a decision taken by automated means.

These rights can be seen as safeguards against the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention.

The rights in respect of automated decisions only arise if two requirements are met. First, the decision has to be taken using personal data processed solely by automatic means. The second requirement is that the decision has to have a significant effect on the individual concerned. I suspect the firms would all argue that not getting an interview is not a major impact. It would be interesting for someone to take such a case to the ICO Compliance Officers for a ruling...

Applicant Trashing Systems

I saw the summary that one ATS generated from my CV. It said that I had no management experience. It apparently missed the sentence in my CV that said "I have more than ten years experience of managing people."

This might perhaps explain the apparently incompatible "facts" that a) Britain has a skills shortage in IT b) unemployment in IT staff over 50 is running at over 50%.

BOFH, as always, has the answer

Link here.

Also, if somebody is smart enough to figure out how to game the scanning algorithm, surely they're a good candidate for many tech jobs?

Played the CV game once

Not having a degree (the HND was a much better course at the time, and I hadn't thought out the long term consequences!) I usually get my CV thrown out immediately. So I played the game with hidden text once ("1st Class Honours Degree" being amongst the hidden text).

I still didn't get an interview, so I identified the Development Manager at the company and rang him. It turns out that he did get my CV, but because I normally go on Tech Forums using a pseudonym, he couldn't find any digital life for me, and so I was rejected.

I pointed him to a few of the pseudonyms and forums. An hour later I received a call promising me the job if the person he had already given it to earlier in the week left. I told him not to bother this time, reminded him why people use pseudonyms for security and suggested that he actually rings the people whose CVs he likes next time.

Anonymous - what better pseudonym is there?

AI

Bottom line, if I include "AI Programmer" or "AI Systems Analyst" in a CV, they'll regard it as a Good Thing, the fools. "AI Technician" maybe not so much, unless it's a farm job. Funny thing, though, the extraction and massaging of wordy data from text, which is the programming I did for a couple of decades, seems to pass as AI. AI, no lie.

If they want to automate this stuff

They should have a web site where you go and check off boxes for various skills and add number of years of experience, etc. Ideally it would be a standard format so you could just attach it to your resume and your resume goes back to being the thing that people read, and the standard skills form is what goes into the database.

It is ridiculous trying to alter a resume designed for humans to read to try to make it easier for machines to read, especially when different ones will like it written one way and others will like it another. You shouldn't have to do detective work on what sort of ATS the company you are applying to has and tweak your resume to fit.

Maybe this is why tech hiring managers keep claiming there is a skills shortage - people with the desired skills don't have properly tweaked resumes to fit their system so they never get seen by a human!

You play the game...

But you don't know the rules.

Sounds typical of life in general.

PHEW!!! I'm safe!

I don't have one of these American resumes.

I have a good old British CV.

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that here in the UK (soon maybe not to be the UK, but that is another thread) the Data Protection Act gave people the right to know the algorithms they were judged by when decisions were taken by 'computers'.

My own CV is not the problem - I interview really badly :o(

Trying to find simplistic answers to complex problems.

The rot starts in school, at least in the US, where "Grade Point Average" is everything -- you assign a 1 to an 'A', 2 to a 'B' and so on, add 'em up and divide to get the average. Average of what? Who the hell knows. Another common magic number is Body Mass Index; its been proven to inaccurate over 50% of the time....but its a simple number to calculate so it endures.

Hiring automation is the same kind of grading by a rough numerical score. The only problem is that at best its a guideline, not a gospel. At some point judgment has to be exercised. Its possible that AI type algorithms may finally get better results but my guess is that they'll never quite be able to get hold of those rough diamonds you come across from time to time, they'll just focus on finding the people closest to the specified formula (which is known in hiring circles as "knows how to write a good resume").

This, plus a relentless focus on finding only superstars (preferably with exactly relevant experience), means that there will be a chronic shortage of talent for the foreseeable future. (As for me, its word of mouth only....I don't think I'd ever get hired for anything if I just sent in a resume.)

The old style of working has been thoroughly replaced with the millennials entering the workforce and turning the whole system of how jobs were being done till date. The baby boomers and Generation X have changed the way business or work takes place and going forward we can only wonder how Talents will be recruited in a more efficient and long-lasting manner.