After having spent a couple of solid weeks applying for jobs, I've had what I can only describe as a particularly interesting experience over the past couple of days. I spent maybe half a day tailoring my CV and writing a covering letter for a role I was genuinely really interested in. Perfectly suited to my skills, great company to work for. I polished everything, sent if off to friends to look at and check over, clicked submit and crossed my fingers. The submission went in lateish Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning at 07:00 I get the dreaded email - they've assessed my application and unfortunately won't be taking me forward this time. Seemed very quick to me - they'd taken less time to make the decision than I had preparing the application, and for most of that time 90% of the country is asleep! I did remember checking a box that said I agreed to have the application checked by AI though, so after a few beers last night I felt a bit naughty. This led to me throwing them a new job application under a fake name at 2:30 this morning. Pasted the job description into Gemini and got it to write me a CV (with no actual roles, just skills), then just turned the whole job description into a pdf and submitted it as my covering letter. Took about a minute. 9:50 this morning - "I had a look at your application and wondered if you are free for a quick 10-15min chat over the next couple of days?" This is a major company, with over 10,000 employees. I knew that standards in recruitment had dipped, but after being out of the actual job search game for nearly a decade I hadn't realised that they'd plumbed these depths. Luckily I do a bit of freelance work on the side basically tricking AI bots into making mistakes, so now that I know the game I've got a good grounding in how to play it!
I immediately throw half of the CVs in the bin to ensure that I don't employ someone who is naturally unlucky.
We always used to randomly select half the CVs we received and throw them straight in the bin, that way we avoided employing unlucky people.
I think automation on CVs has been around for a while, probably stepped up a bit more recently but they’ve been using key word scanning for years. I found out that having anything other than basic formatting causes the scanning to fail so effectively you get rejected. Most recruiters will initially look just for a skills match - they’re not really bothered about the person until later in the process.
Not sure if this link will work but have a butchers - scary!!! https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMA0_4BvkXU/?igsh=MTRibW1qemdtNWFkMQ==
I've been applying fairly constantly since March when I rage-quit my last job, and while I did reasonably ok at getting interviews - probably 10% of applications converted into at least an internal recruiter chat - I found I was good, but not great at the interviews... Although I'm 95%+ certain I'm now sorted thanks to old colleagues. I was originally using tools like CVWolf to check my CV against the job description, and getting it to 80-90% match before submitting, but got frustrated with it and just made incremental adjustments adding skills where needed for specific roles. My record for a rejection was under 10 minutes from sending the CV in. It can be brutal out there!
It's just a continuation of the trends over the last 40 years, it's not what you know or what your skills are, it's what buzz words and blather you can make up. It's just that now it's not a human you've got to fool, it's AI.
My mate years ago sent in a CV for a job that was literally full of crap, he'd not done about 90% of what he said he had. Got the job, been there 20 odd years, now he's a director
Oh yeah, for sure. But like i say, I seriously tailored this - spent hours on making sure my CV and covering letter were packed full of as many keyword matches as possible while still appearing vaguely like a human being had written it. Turns out it was this last part that I got wrong. The thing is that I actually work with AI models. Throwing every application into one without doing the most cursory of checks (is it even formatted like a letter?) is absolutely mad - the old "paste the job description at the end of your letter in size 1 white text" would have sailed through this. Ah well. Like I said in my admittedly rather snippy reply, it did establish that they're probably not a company I'd enjoy working for!
My gaffer did some interviews recently and she said they becoming concerned about everyone's applications being exactly the same due to them using AI. Some interviewees just looked at her blankly when asked to expand on some of the stuff they had put on the application
Tried to buy some Premium Bonds on line but couldn't complete the transaction - computer said 'No!' Phoned them and to all my queries got an unhelpful automated response. Finally got through to someone and things were sorted - issue was my password had the symbol '£' in it and most organisations don't accept a password with a '£' in it. Changed the '£' symbol to a '$' and no problem.
There seems to be an ever increasing number of hoops to jump through even for the minimum wage jobs. Good luck with your job hunting!
I worked for a major retailer for quite a while and recruited many people throughout my time with the company. Issue a lot of the time is that applications go straight to a retailer instead of been screened by a recruitment department first. A lot of the time people are expected to do a role that takes up most of the day and then also look through hundreds of applicants and sometimes this gets put to the bottom of a priority list and they end up with time passing and taking someone on that probably doesn't fit because their desperate for a body. This results in them probably leaving and the process starting again in a few months. Most of the time I imagine that people who would fit a role more than others aren't even looked at which is quite scary. Companies who now trust AI to screen CVs are missing out on top talent. I imagine AI is looking for specific buzz words / detail that may be in one CV and not in another but then miss out on life experience and all round ability to do a job. If you can I would always follow up a rejection, if its possible. I did this a few year ago and questioned the process and was invited in for a interview and got a job offer after. Reason for the initial rejection was based on a CV and a 5 minute call with someone who got crossed wires. If a company is putting a AD out for a new employer they should have people looking through the CVs in a recruitment department. Not a computer deciding who's a better fit by the wording of a CV.
