this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Applicants probably spend more time skimming job openings than Managers spend skimming through CVs (lemm.ee)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/showerthoughts
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Much easier to reject bad CVs. On the other hand every job post is the same and you have to check Glassdoor and Crunchbase before applying to a potential bad company

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago (9 children)

Literally yes. I have reviewed over 10,000 resumes between my last two positions. Our current posting has 3,600 applicants.

Should we close the posting? Probably, but we don't. Whenever I have time I sift through the resumes. Most don't get looked at for even 10 seconds. Cover letters don't get read. Stop including cringe things like "Microsoft Word" before PHP and Python in your skills, it makes me think you have nothing better to offer besides what I've read so far, and I'll skip reading the rest of your resume because of it.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 11 months ago

We can't, the filter before you makes sure word is listed in proficiencies, and if not, rejects the applicant even if they wrote Word themselves.

[–] Cold_Brew_Enema 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

You're what's wrong with job searching

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Did you want their fulltime job to be reading thousand of resumes or did you want them to be an actual manager?

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

It's a broken system with no solution in sight.

But yeah let's blame this worker who has thousands of resumes that they have to figure out how to review asap.

[–] Cold_Brew_Enema 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Let's completely fuck off thousands of applicants who hear nothing about job opportunities because the reviewer doesn't like certain words.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Countless recruiters give some very basic advice in person and online, and they almost always say to put skills in decreasing order of importance. Job applications are god awful, but I really don't think being asked to follow basic instructions is a big ask. Blame companies, not recruiters.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What solution to you propose? What do you envision yourself doing if you are the recipient of several thousand applications for one position?

[–] Cold_Brew_Enema -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you can't review the applicants properly, then you shouldn't be reviewing resumes. Find a new job.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

lol I really hope that you never become a leader. It’s clear that you lack the proper intuitions

[–] Cold_Brew_Enema 2 points 11 months ago

k

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

Yo you're probably alright but i seriously hate you rn.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

What if the person is REALLY GOOD with Microsoft Word, though?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Then they applied for the wrong job. I haven't used a word processor at all in many years. Power point is (saddly) important, but no word processor. When I write docs markdown or restructured text is what i'm looking for, since both can link directly to the code.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

(saddly)

lmao

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Word

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fixed, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Word 👍

[–] surewhynotlem 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

So basically, you read their job titles and a couple bullet points? Maybe the skill section?

I'm job hunting, and I've just switched to a strategy where I focus on those things being amazing and tailored to the job.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Skill section, then I skim bulletpoints if I haven't binned it yet. Anything that passes the bulletpoint section goes to a check-later pile, which I revisit and choose who to interview

[–] surewhynotlem 3 points 11 months ago

Cool, that sounds about right. I'm guessing you're hiring mostly for individual contributors if you're looking at skills first?

[–] JJROKCZ 2 points 11 months ago

IT here, I skim the titles, company, dates, and look at a couple bullet point. If things look good I’ll read the full doc. I don’t hundreds or thousands of apps though since I’m not offering a remote or hybrid position

[–] CosmicTurtle 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This is why it is soooo important to network. I'm far more likely to read a resume given to me by a friend or someone I know verses a random resume that lands in my inbox.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (3 children)

"Networking" increasingly just means nepotism.

[–] SCB 11 points 11 months ago

Nepotism is when you hire someone unqualified because you know them.

Networking is when you hire someone who is qualified because you know them.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

It always did.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Who would you rather hire, a qualified person you've met at least once outside of the hiring process and like, or a qualified person who is a complete unknown outside of their likely embellished resume?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

This thread is just so sensitive it seems. I have been on the shit end of the stick this year with losing two jobs and I still agree with so many of the recruiters in this thread and your comment. I don’t want to network, but sadly that does increase the likelihood of getting my resume looked at. These people need to understand that people who are looking at resumes are also working, if your qualifications are in the details instead of being upfront then I’m sorry, no one will spend longer time to look at your resume compared to thousands of other resumes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I know you're getting slammed but honestly people say they can "use Microsoft Word" but I bet 70% of people in an interview/test setting (ie no googling) could not create a dynamic paragraph that changes its content based on a dropdown and then print the paragraph but not the drop-down.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Use a form attached to a spreadsheet FTLoG! What a finicky way to dunce your job!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Also stop using those terrible templates that look someone crashed into Adobe InDesign one day.

The hate you got from your comment is really coming from edgy people with no real professional or leadership experience who just hope and pray that everything is like an episode of the Smurfs or something.

[–] SCB 29 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If you're spending a lot of time on applications, you're doing something wrong.

You find out if it's a good company during the interview. Trying to figure it out before hand is like running a background check on someone before swiping on tinder.

Your resume should be ready, your cover letter ready with just a few sentences to swap per job app, and the entire thing should take like 2-5 minutes, max.

[–] ChexMax 59 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I have to disagree. Job postings straight up lie. My husband got to his second interview at a place before they revealed everything from the posting and first interview was a lie and it was a door to door sales job.

Or they'll lie about the responsibility or the pay of the job and he won't learn that until deep into the interview process, which is costly in time, and stress, not to mention dressing up.

[–] ShunkW 41 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I just recently got to the third interview for a software engineering job. 5 minutes in, they asked about my requirements for compensation and I gave a conservative range for a senior engineer role. They said "thanks for your time" and ended the interview. I spent 4 hours total on this to be told my comp request was too high. So fucking sick of this bullshit

[–] alienanimals 20 points 11 months ago

Leave them a review on Glassdoor. Call out their recruiting team.

[–] SCB 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Their recruiter sucks, because that should be one of the first discussions you have after initial qualifications.

I am genuinely curious how often this is policy vs just recruiters being bad at their jobs. Maybe they're incentivized to generate leads/candidates instead of actual hires? That kind of makes sense if senior leadership is dumb enough.

[–] ShunkW 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The thing is that we discussed it in the initial call. They seemed fine with it. I'm guessing they got some sucker to take a lower rate

[–] SCB 2 points 11 months ago

What a bizarre interview process man. Sorry you even had to be part of that. That's so dumb.

[–] netburnr 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Pay should be discussed before the first interviews starts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

The third interview may not have been the final one, believe it or not.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Then these people acted in bad faith. When hiring someone, even if you have decided that this person isn't going to be the one, based just on salary or whater thing, you should still go through the process like normal and send off a rejection letter after. Cutting things short like that was just rude and unprofessional. You dodged a huge bullet here, honestly, because you'd never want to work for people who would treat you like that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Going through the process despite knowing you’re going to reject an applicant is textbook “bad faith”.

[–] SCB 6 points 11 months ago

You don't qualify a lead before talking to the person. That's rule 1 of sales efficiency.

It's far better to waste an hour once figuring out a job posting was a waste of time than to waste 5 minutes 200 times finding out job postings are a waste of time.

[–] candybrie 5 points 11 months ago

You vet them once they ask you for an interview/phone screen. Vetting takes a lot more time than applying. So apply, then if it matters, check them out.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Nowadays yeah. I miss the days I went through the job listings in the two major newspapers and sent off resumes and was done for the week.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

That makes sense as there are a limited number of jobs. However, recruiters do a lot of work to get more applicants to apply and they often are the ones doing initial interviews