If you ever get through to a person high enough to answer your question of: “why did you ask for my resume?”
…the honest answer is:
“There are two things that look at you, the candidate. For cost cutting reasons, we put your answers you fill in all these blanks into a computer which eliminates you if you don’t match our basic criteria. We save money by never actually even knowing your name. If you pass the computer filter, your resume is needed because actual humans look at it. So thats why we ask for both.”
Unfortunately this computer filtering step tends to be highly inaccurate and game-able, but I’m not sure what to propose instead.
Game-able, as in, entering specific answers (even if they are inaccurate) gets you through the computer and put in front of a human? Working as intended.
Ever since the social contract was broken with employers where they’d give you a job for decades if you stayed there, there’s been an ongoing “arms race” of how job applicants can get noticed, and how employers can get usable candidates out of the massive tidal waves of applicants they get. The first step computer filter doesn’t have to be perfect, if it even filters out 80% of the candidate that don’t meet basic criteria, leaving only 20% for humans to review that is massively better (to employers) than requiring humans to look at all 100% of applicants.
So yes, its game-able to get through the computer filter, but if you still don’t match the basic criteria, you’ll be eliminated by the human reviewers anyway. The difference is only very small number of candidates will figure out the game-able answers to get through even if they aren’t supposed to. This is…until the next round of the arms race where nearly all candidates are getting through. That hasn’t happened yet.
I would really like to know how to game the filters because the number of interviews I get vs the number of resumes I put in is depressingly low. My job history and experience is really extensive, but I can’t seem to even get to the initial HR interview much less get an actual interview for a job.
If you ever get through to a person high enough to answer your question of: “why did you ask for my resume?”
…the honest answer is:
“There are two things that look at you, the candidate. For cost cutting reasons, we put your answers you fill in all these blanks into a computer which eliminates you if you don’t match our basic criteria. We save money by never actually even knowing your name. If you pass the computer filter, your resume is needed because actual humans look at it. So thats why we ask for both.”
Unfortunately this computer filtering step tends to be highly inaccurate and game-able, but I’m not sure what to propose instead.
Game-able, as in, entering specific answers (even if they are inaccurate) gets you through the computer and put in front of a human? Working as intended.
Ever since the social contract was broken with employers where they’d give you a job for decades if you stayed there, there’s been an ongoing “arms race” of how job applicants can get noticed, and how employers can get usable candidates out of the massive tidal waves of applicants they get. The first step computer filter doesn’t have to be perfect, if it even filters out 80% of the candidate that don’t meet basic criteria, leaving only 20% for humans to review that is massively better (to employers) than requiring humans to look at all 100% of applicants.
So yes, its game-able to get through the computer filter, but if you still don’t match the basic criteria, you’ll be eliminated by the human reviewers anyway. The difference is only very small number of candidates will figure out the game-able answers to get through even if they aren’t supposed to. This is…until the next round of the arms race where nearly all candidates are getting through. That hasn’t happened yet.
I would really like to know how to game the filters because the number of interviews I get vs the number of resumes I put in is depressingly low. My job history and experience is really extensive, but I can’t seem to even get to the initial HR interview much less get an actual interview for a job.