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Comment by twawaaay | Hacker News Reader

As an advisor for startup CEOs who also worked for a lot of large known brands, I fully agree.

Even just a tiny bit of effort in the application process does miracles to filter out people who do not really want to work for your company. Because sending hundreds or even thousands job applications requires you to optimise your efforts and reject possible employers who would require you to spend total of one day in the process.

On the other hand if found the company you would like to work for, you researched the position, you have realistic demands, spending that time is just an investment in getting the job you really want. For example, when I interview I take a day off so that I am rested, fresh and with my head reasonably empty of the projects I am currently running so that I can present my best on the interview.

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I think you've overestimated how many people look for jobs because they "really want to work" for a particular company. Further, you're asking candidates to eat the opportunity cost associated with spending time on one employer's application process.

Job postings trigger a flood of applications. It’s not an efficient use of staff time to trudge through applications from people who couldn’t be bothered to create a login.

Creating a login can be automated. You're not filtering for qualified job applicants by doing that. You're guaranteeing that the only applicants you ever see are bots.

Getting a job these days sans personal collections requires sending out many, many applications. Each job one applies to only has a small chance of getting a callback. Given that, I'm not going to spend 30 minutes filling out pages of redundant information.

If a company has that little respect for my time to make me jump through all of these bureaucratic hoops, seemingly to prove I can tolerate mindless nonsense, I don't want to work for them.

If a company has that little respect for my time to make me jump through all of these bureaucratic hoops, seemingly to prove I can tolerate mindless nonsense, I don't want to work for them.

Yup, all my data is on linkedin, then I click apply, and I get taken to a whole other website? And no way to fill in from linkedin?

Clearly corp x cares little about my time.

And for what? Why? Is 'Apply with linkedin" that bad?!

Here's the truth, top talent? Corps need to do the work. Not us.

> Getting a job these days sans personal collections requires sending out many, many applications.

I am sorry this is the way you see it.

Have you ever tried figuring out where you would like to work, researching the company, be excellently prepared for the interview and working them to get the best terms?

Trust me, it is easier than ever and I have been a long time on the job market. Right now, trying to put ANY effort will immediately put you in front of other candidates because 99% of candidates, frankly, are too lazy for barest effort on their part. Which this entire comment section is an excellent example of.

Found the manager/C-level. a thread with 8 million valid reasons why people are unwilling to do this and Twawaaay's takeaway:

'candidates, frankly, are too lazy for the barest effort'.

You know what they used to call people who would not do something unless they were greeted with red carpet? A diva.

If you join the company, there will be a lot of things that will not work perfectly and yet you will be asked to do things anyway. Everything is in constant flux at any startup because of growth and at large companies things are broken because of entrenched mistakes.

If everything works perfectly it means the company obsesses over its internal processes to the point of ignoring everything else. Which is also a problem.

There exists no company that is in a state of change where everything works perfectly. And every non trivial company is always in a state of change.

If you can't get over one broken form you simply aren't cut for the job.

But that state I will be payed for my efforts.

Unless you do something truly groundbreaking or contributing to a cause I deeply care, which makes me to want to really work there, I will just go to the next company where will be a lot of things that also not work perfectly, but I don't have to jump through these hoops.

If you can't get over one broken form you simply aren't cut for the job.

I guess the good people will just have to go work for one of the 20 other companies who will hire them based on a personal introduction and a couple of reasonable interviews instead then.

Two of the most reliable indicators I have ever found for places I wouldn't want to work are employers who think they're special and only want to hire true believers who agree and employers whose HR and/or legal teams manage to create so much unnecessary friction in the recruitment process alone that it's actively difficult to work with them even if the people doing the useful work there would want to make the hire. These behaviours seem to be quite accurate predictors of poor working environments for those who do get hired in the end.

There's money companies I could work for without this attitude. I shouldn't need to "jump through hoops" to fill out an application. That sort of thing is just a red flag that shows me I wouldn't actually want to work for a company. Why would I want to work at a place that would make me do unnecessary work, especially without getting paid? What makes your company so special anyway?

Have you ever tried figuring out where you would like to work, researching the company, be excellently prepared for the interview and working them to get the best terms?

One of the reasons I got fed up of being someone else's employee and shifted towards B2B and entrepreneurialism was exactly that the above strategy wasn't really working even back then. If it's a direct approach without a personal introduction there's too much randomness to justify jumping through a lot of hoops in a recruitment process even if in fact there would be a great fit and everyone would be happy if they ended up working together.

With the kind of market we've had in the tech industry for at least a decade now it doesn't make sense for good candidates to spend too much time on potential employers who make it too difficult to work with them. Maybe that will change again if the growing economic problems persist for more than a year or two but I'm a long way from placing that bet right now.

And the above comment is how the candidates with the most opportunities will see things, meaning your system to find the best candidate by default filters out valuable candidates that also value and are rational about their time but great for finding 'wage slaves' that will accept unreasonable demands of their time and don't really have other options. Gee, what a funny, totally unexpected result for the company ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh wow they have so many opportunities that they need to go on websites and click buttons to apply? The ones with all these opportunities coming out of their ears are getting recruited, not spamming websites.

Setting up a spam magnet just attracts spam, not the “candidates with the most opportunities.”

Some companies are doing interesting things but unless a good worker already has some kind of connection through their network they're still going to make a direct approach to start the process. Particularly for smaller companies this is very common. That doesn't mean a good and genuinely interested applicant won't have several other possibilities they're interested in exploring as well though.

> Getting a job these days sans personal collections requires sending out many, many applications

I think this may be more a consequence of blasting out numerous applications, than the cause of having to do so.

Every job I've gotten in the past 20 years has been a) the company I was targeting to work for, and b) the result of a targeted, careful, and studious effort to get in there.

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