I have been working on a product in this space, and I'm aware of the situation. I'd love to help, and also learn from your job search process, can you drop me an email? (I couldn't find email in your profile)
I am building a product/startup [1] to address some of the problems you mention, and as a result, I've been talking to hiring teams at several companies, so I can give you some reasons why the processes are bad.
* Hiring is a marketplace, and supply/demand is not always balanced, so most issues related to job search/hiring is due to this.
* When a company posts an ad for a job, they usually receive about 150-200 applicants within 2 weeks, thanks to job boards, LinkedIn etc. Unless it is for specific high-skilled jobs, in which case, they receive hardly any applicants at all.
* Most of the applicants are usually not a match for the job, but given the number of applicants, recruiters rely on resumes, social profiles etc to shortlist about 20 applicants.
* Tests and assignments are quick means to filter, hence their popularity.
* Not much of an incentive to keep applicants posted at every step, plus, managing communication with a few hundred applicants for multiple positions is hard - so you're most likely to receive only automated communication from the hiring team.
I believe that having a clear specification of the job, that can be checked/validated with applicants is critical to ensuring a smooth, fast interviewing process.
[1] - Shameless plug to my startup (in beta) - https://www.interviewpass.co. If any of you are interested in using InterviewPass in your hiring, drop me an email at suresh@interviewpass.co - happy to help set it up for you.
The problem as I see it is that good applicants don't bother with job boards. When you have recruiters banging on your door and begging to handle all the details for you (and provide proper communication) it's no wonder candidates don't bother applying. That, however, means the expectation is that job board candidates are bad and desperate. So companies will filter them more aggressively than recruiter candidates. So candidates now have even more incentive to go with recruiters since it actually gives them a better chance to get hired.
That's true. Recruiters provide the initial screening, which is lacking in a job board.
But the hiring process is broken beyond the initial screening as well, biggest reason being lack of incentives for the involved parties to close a position quickly.
>That's true. Recruiters provide the initial screening, which is lacking in a job board.
It's not just the initial screening. They actively go out and find candidates who otherwise wouldn't be looking for jobs directly. And as I said before, those tend to be prime candidates since they get so many recruiters they have little need to apply directly.
>But the hiring process is broken beyond the initial screening as well, biggest reason being lack of incentives for the involved parties to close a position quickly.
Again, recruiters are a solution to this because their paycheck is based on closing the deal. They will hound the company and the candidate to get the process finalized.
Founder here. Happy to answer your queries about this product.
Hiring and job search takes way too much time. Most of the bottleneck is at the screening stage for companies, and getting a foot in the door for applicants. This is an attempt towards solving it, although right now our product is focused on the businesses.
I like (and do follow) your suggestion. However, i disagree on Twitter. Twitter is a cacophony of misinformation, misquotes, comments taken out of context, and or responses to really fringe & stupid opinions.
Yep, but occasionally "normal" people go nuts, people with tech tweets start to talk about their newborn child or a sick dog (with pictures of course), not to mention a rare political rant from someone you wouldn't expect it from. Maybe I followed the wrong bunch, who knows.
At last a balanced story on the topic. The discussions online on this topic have been mind numbing - quoting out of context, ad hominem attacks, every bad form of arguments listed in PG's essay[1]. Twitter is the worst.
Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform.
> Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform.
I'd considered this at one point. I marinated on the idea and decided it's not worth building (for me). The right structure for argument doesn't work in environments like Twitter/Facebook because the costs are asymmetric. It's very cheap to turn into a troll and very expensive to think through a thoughtful, balanced, nuanced argument. The platforms themselves don't afford or encourage the latter and incentivize the former.
I do want to build a way to database and store lots of the most useful facts I gather on all of the topics I care about from every platform I learn/work on.
>Almost makes me want to build a better debating platform.
I’ve thought about this for a long time. I think the trick is to realize that most people DON’T want to have a debate. It takes a lot of self-control, forethought, and careful speaking to actually sit down and rationally argue. Realizing you’re wrong is really hard and painful, and most people don’t intentionally seek it out.
If people wanted to have productive debate, that’s possible on virtually every communication platform (except Twitter due to its word count). Tumblr, Facebook, HN, Reddit — they all have public posts and a reply system. It’s all about the context and goals of the people debating. Do they genuinely want to learn, or are they here just to argue?
The best quality debate can be found in places where people actually want to change their mind (some subsets of the rationality community like LessWrong). My favorite layman’s version is /r/ChangeMyView which does a tolerable job. I think the goal should be to build a debating community, where the technology underlying it is only a small piece of the overall construction.
I'm not sure I'd call it balanced, Ross Douthat is a conservative and it shows:
>But the internet industry is also part of a wider elite culture that is trending in the opposite direction, becoming more feminized and feminist, and inclined to view male-dominated enclaves with great suspicion.
>But Damore also made reasonable points about different ways to pursue diversity and the costs and benefits thereof, in an earnest and dialogic style that a healthy corporate culture would have found a way to answer without swiftly giving him the ax.
That first quote is pure perception from someone looking through conservative glasses. And the second is just a farce. There's no "healthy corporate culture" that would tolerate a memo like this. It's a corporation, it's work, the idea that someone should be able to send a manifesto which not only criticizes their employer but does it while they're facing a lawsuit and is explicitly political is crazy. Leave that stuff for the other 8 hours of your day.
I used to be like this. And the problem was, because there was no pattern to my sleep, I found out extremely difficult to sleep, even when I wanted to.
A few things helped me. First, I started logging my sleep. It helped me analyze how much sleep I was really getting. Second, this sounds simplistic, but I first fixed the waking time. Irrespective of the time I sleep, I started waking up at the exact same time everyday. And finally, I stopping using all gadgets at least for 2 hours before my sleep time.
I see a marked improvement in the quality of my sleep these days. Hope you beat your problem too.
1. What do you do if in a situation where you'll get a low amount of sleep. Nap mid day?
2. What about social stuff? I'd love to get up at 8 am most days, but then any social event in the evening throws that off.
Naps might fix the latter, but I have trouble napping due to onset insomnia. Unless I'm extremelt fatigued.
I get to bed at a fixed time. If I haven't had enough sleep then I take a 15 minute coffee nap in the afternoon. Try exercise daily. Disclaimer: I'm a reformed night owl.
> I'm assuming this is just temporary and eventually it's just smooth sailing and you get sleepy?
No, you pick something you want permanent and just do it.
Eating early after waking is helpful. I drink tea with L-Theanine before bed and reduce blue light. I take melatonin when I really need it, which is rare.
> What do you do with social events etc though. Nap?
I eat low carb, I drink a lot of water and I exercise. Makes it a lot harder to be too tired to function. Only 4 hours of sleep? That's tough, rework your day to only do non creative things that don't require too much thinking. Admin, emails etc.
I also have a 10 month old which helps me avoid social situations that are not valuable.
> I guess I should have added the caveat that I want to be getting eight hours fairly consistently. How often would you say you have less.
Right now, I'm sleep training a baby, so less. My goal is 7 hours and I really enjoy 8. And I can get this consistently.
> When doing heavy weight training, it's more or less a necessity.
I've been a gym rat for many years and I can attest to this. Not enough sleep and your tanks are empty, no power.
> (No kid at this point, I'm sure that will change things once I do have once)
Kids make you focus. You cut out things you wasted time on and you're back to where you were. Less time wasty, more family and relationship. Works out well.
> I'm assuming this is just temporary and eventually it's just smooth sailing and you get sleepy?
After reading this again. Yes, the goal is a habit that puts you into a rhythm. The place you want to be is to not need an alarm to wake up and to wake up with light (natural or not). Now I like sleeping too much for this to work. I'll happily stay in bed for 10 hours. More than that and my body starts hurting...
Skip the naps; take the tiredness as punishment, go to bed at a fixed time. The trick is consistency, and a nap will interrupt said consistency. Usually you can function fine with a few hours less sleep, as long as it's not a regular event.
those times its ok to sleep until 10 am. 4 hours of sleep will get you through the day. its important to not sleep too much or you will not be tired enough to fall asleep at night.
i also want to add thats its better to get 6 hours of deep sleep then trying to sleep and basically awake whole night.
and best tip to get tired is to wake up early and do some exercise during the day.
