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Comment by JoachimSchipper | Hacker News Reader

If we take the "increasingly desperate" seriously, there's a simple explanation: lots of utterly unqualified jobless people applying. Sure, there are probably people who are both unemployed and good, but throwing all resumes from unemployed people in the trash may save a lot of time.

I'm not saying this is morally right, or even smart; but it explains the observed behavior at least as well as "they would be a problem" (which, as you point out, isn't that strong an argument.)

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I had a discussion with my friend who's in a tech hiring position, and he said exactly this: It's actually harder to hire now because all advertisements are flooded by less-qualified people. The recession may have increased the pool of qualified people, but it has decreased the S/N in the stack of applications far more.

Isn't something akin to Fizzbuzz the obvious solution to this problem? An unemployed person whether skilled or unskilled is still unemployed and doesn't really have grounds for saying a test is beneath them.

If we can filter out a large percentage of the unskilled with a litmus test like Fizzbuzz that should be a big win. Bigger, in fact, because we've stipulated that the unskilled are far more common than the skilled in today's labor market. I would think that this would be a much better solution than throwing out all resumes from the unemployed.

A barebones, 30-minute (5 minutes if you're good) FizzBuzz-esque puzzle given to candidates up front has drastically reduced the number phone interviews that leave me paralytically depressed at the state of CS education.

One of the companies I applied at recently required candidates to write a CRUD app from scratch. It was just 1 page, and really simple, but had to be done within 48 hours of receiving it. (Which obviously gives lots of time to still have a life and a job.)

They also had a puzzle that you didn't have to code for, but had to tell HOW you could code for it.

I think it took more time than you should ask of an applicant (they sure can't apply very many places!) but it definitely weeds out the unqualified. (And possibly the qualified that won't jump through hoops to work for average wages.)

Unqualified people applying is not a problem. The real problem is your application filter. For example, ask every applicant to include a certain character string (maybe the solution to a trivial assignment) in the body of their cover letter, and discriminate accordingly. I'm sure it would work great at most companies.

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