Tag Archives: recruiters

December 25, 2023 · 16:01

How stupid could stupid become?

Yup that was the question and it all started with an article by the CBC. I had to read it twice because I could not believe my eyes. But yes, I did not read it wrong and that is where the howling began. Lets start at the beginning. It all started with ‘Want a job? You’ll have to convince our AI bot first’, the story (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/recruitment-ai-tools-risk-bias-hidden-workers-keywords-1.6718151) gives us “Ever carefully crafted a job application for a role you’re certain that you’re perfect for, only to never hear back? There’s a good chance no one ever saw your application — even if you took the internet’s advice to copy-paste all of the skills from the job description” this gives us a problem on several factors, but the two I am focussing on is IT and recruiters. IT is the first. AI does not exist, not yet at least. What you see are all kinds of data driven tools, primarily set to Machine Learning and Deeper Machine Learning. First off, these tools are awesome. In their proper setting they can reduce workloads and automate CERTAIN processes.

But these machines cannot build, they cannot construct and they cannot deconstruct. To see whether a resume and a position match together you need the second tier, the recruiter (or your own HR department). There are skills involved and at times this skill is more of an art. Seeing how much alike a person is to the position is an art. You can test via a resume of minimum skills are available. Yes, at times it take a certain amount of Excel levels, it might take SQL skill levels or perhaps a good telephone voice. A good HR person (or recruiter) can see this. Machine Learning will not ever get it right. It might get close. 

So whilst we laugh at these experts, the story is less nice, the dangers are decently severe. You see, this is some side of cost reduction, all whilst too many recruiters have no clue what they are doing, I have met a boatload of them. They will brush it off with “This is what the client wants” but it is already too late, they were clueless from the start and it is getting worse. The article also gives  us a nice handle “They found more than 90 per cent of companies were using tools like ATS to initially filter and rank candidates. But they often weren’t using it well. Sometimes, candidates were scored against bloated job descriptions filled with unnecessary and inflexible criteria, which left some qualified candidates “hidden” below others the software deemed a more perfect fit.” It is the “they often weren’t using it well”, you see any machine learning is based on a precise setting, if the setting does not fit, the presented solution is close to useless. And it goes from bad to worse. You see it is seen with “even when the AI claims to be “bias-free.”” You see EVERY Machine learning solution is biased. Bias through data conversion (the programmer), bias through miscommunication (HR, executive and programmer misalignment) and that list goes on. If the data is not presented correctly, it goes wrong and there is no turning back. As such we could speculate that well over 50% of firms using ATS are not getting the best applicant, they are optionally leaving them to real recruiters, and as such handing to their competitors. Wouldn’t that be fun? 

So when we get to “So for now, it’s up to employers and their hiring teams to understand how their AI software works — and any potential downsides” which is a certain way to piss your pants laughing. It is a more personal view, but hiring teams tend to be decently clueless on Machine Learning (what they call AI). That is not their fault. They were never trained for this, yet consider what they are losing out of? Consider a person who never had military training, you now push them in a war stage with a rifle. So how long will this person be alive? And when this person was a scribe, how will he wield his weapon? Consider the man was a trompetist and the fun starts. 

The data mismatches and keeps this person alive by stating he is not a good soldier, lucky bastard. 

The foundation is data and filling jobs is the need of an HR department. Yes, machine learning could optionally reduce the time going through the resume’s. Yet bias sets in at age, ageism is real in Australia and they cannot find people? How quaint, especially in an aging population. Now consider what an executive knows about a job (mostly any job) and what HR knows and consider how most jobs are lost to translation in any machine learning environment. 

Oh, and I haven’t even considered some of these ‘tests’ that recruiters have. Utterly hilarious and we are given that this is up to what they call AI? Oh, the tears are rolling down my cheeks, what fun today is, Christmas day no less. I haven’t had this much fun since my fathers funeral.

So if you wonder how stupid can get, see how recruiters are destroying a market all by themselves. They had to change gears and approach at least 3 years ago. The only thing I see are more and more clueless recruiters and they are ALL trying to fill the same position. And the CBC and their article also gives us this gem “it’s also important to question who built the AI and whose data it was trained on, pointing to the example of Amazon, which in 2018 scrapped its internal recruiting AI tool after discovering it was biased against female job applicants.” So this is a flaw of the lowest level, merely gender. Now consider that recruiters are telling people to copy LinkedIn texts for their resume. How much more bias and wrong filters will pop up? Because that is the result of a recruiter too, they want their bonus and will get it anyway they can. So how many wrong hires have firms made in the last year alone? Amazon might be the visible one, but that list is a lot larger than you think and it goes to the global corporate top. 

So consider what you are facing, consider what these people face and laugh, its Christmas.

Enjoy today.

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October 10, 2023 · 05:11

The job never evolved

There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald and it angered me. The article (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/recruitment-labour-hire-companies-collapse-amid-worker-reluctance-to-swap-jobs-20231006-p5ea8q.html) gives us ‘Recruitment, labour hire companies collapse amid worker reluctance to swap jobs’ it is there that we are given “the slowing economy makes employers more reluctant to fork out money to external recruitment firms who are struggling to fill job vacancies with qualified candidates.” First of all, the recruitment firms in Australia are a joke. They never learned anything. They keep on playing the same games for resume collections and mass marketing job filling. Over the last 10 years I have had less than a dozen confirmation emails. We are talking in excess of 300 job applications and less then a dozen replied with something like ‘We have received your resume’ or even ‘We regret to inform you that you have not been selected’ Less then a dozen in over 300 applications. That is the recruitment firm setting, a setting that has less credibility than a cocaine pusher in Sydney’s drug capital called Kings Cross.

They are all about cutting corners and all about reducing costs, all whilst they lose more and more credibility. As such there is every chance that employers are more and more becoming self sufficient in this task. There are more and more corporations with talent pages and career pages.

And the stage of “recruitment agencies were struggling with more vacancies than they could find qualified candidates for” is laughable to say the least. Ageism is merely one factor, the other factor is that more and more recruitment agencies have staff members that seemingly have no clue what they are doing. In one event I met the same recruiter a week later by pure chance and he stated that he hadn’t had any time to read my resume. But there he was collecting more resume’s.

So why don’t we give the setting a twist towards the reality of the stage? Perhaps it should be ‘hire companies collapse due to staff competency and repeated outdated actions’, I think that this is a much more to the point reason. In addition we see all kinds of recruitment firms popping up. There is every chance that one person was good at what he or she did and started their own firm. Makes perfect sense to me, but now we have 8 instead of one firm and these 8 firms are not communicative at all, the previous version wasn’t either. 

There are of course valid reasons and the SMH gives it to us via “A broader collapse in the construction industry, including high-profile businesses Porter Davis and Mahercorp, has reverberated through labour hire companies such as Duet Recruitment, ARI Recruitment, Collar Up Recruitment, GRB 365 Recruitment and PG Labour Services, who have called in administrators as their work dries up”. I reckon that in IT similar settings are happening. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM are all shedding jobs. So there would be an impact. Yet the larger issue is that we see dozens of jobs every day in LinkedIn and those jobs are often pushed by recruiters, who keep on doing the same thing again and again and not communicating any of this. So when we see ‘worker reluctance to swap jobs’, the setting might be that these workers do not trust recruitment firms. All promising a calf with golden horns but in the end whatever they promise isn’t set in stone. Firms promising warm calling and inbound calls all whilst the result is that they are cold calling firms and people don’t like cold callers and whatever bonus is promised is a joke. Recruiters haven’t learned their lesson in over a decade and they continue in the trend of  direct mail companies, all whilst that setting is decades old. You either evolve or you become irrelevant. It is that simple.

Enjoy the day.

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June 9, 2023 · 10:53

That same stuff

That was the first thing I considered when I was reading some story about recruiters. The same thing we have seen for decades. Interrogations, not an interview. Fake promises (experienced that myself) and forever the need to collect as many resumes as possible. It is the old way and covid changed ways, yet it seems that recruiters are in the dark on what they need to do. Like taximeters, trying to get to the next ‘cling’ on the timeline.

And then the largest failing of any recruiter. No communication at all. It is like sending a ship in a bottle into a bottomless pit, never to be heard from again. This is exactly why recruiters have lost well over 90% of credibility of whomever they had contact with. I have (to the best of my knowledge) never had any feedback from a recruiter and over a decade only one has ever arranged an interview. I didn’t get that job, but when I saw the scope of what they needed, they would take someone more experienced. So no hard feelings. One in 10 years. 

Recruiters need to alter their scope, their vision and their approach. Yet as far as I can tell there is no chance of that happening. To be honest, I saw one interesting approach last week. One recruiter (or firm) set the advertisement with the line ‘Would you like to be a millionaire in 2023?’ OK, this might be largely fake, but it would catch anyones eye. And an eye catcher is good, but the rest still matters. And in the past LinkedIn was the one place to go, but it seems that they are taking a page out of the approach that Seek had been making. Job notifications are merely advertisement space and that is how it feels. I might be wrong, but for that the job posters would have to communicate. In this the problem is that my setting is that I have had less than 2% response to my application with 60% of those being “We have received your application” the rest were right out rejections, but that is fair. At least you know where you are at that point. 

Still in Australia in a place where ageism is key, I would think that the people who have the decades of experience are learning. We see messages like “Australia’s skills shortage shows no signs of improving as the latest job reports point to gaps in industries” are abundant, and this was less than 3 months ago. Yet the cold shoulder approach that recruiters give are no sign that there is any work shortage and as stated the thousands of jobs that places like Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Google had shed are decent proof of that.  

As such, I am also looking international. Yet at my age that is a dubious approach to take. On the upside, if a firm is large enough and they require me to also man a desk in an international office, that might not be the worst idea to consider. I am still hoping that places like Google and Amazon pen their eyes to the fact that they left billions on the floor, but hey, we can all wish that someone opens their eyes, can’t we?

What is getting clear is that the 90’s approach to recruiting is no longer working and it hasn’t worked for some time. As I personally see it, recruiters are the Direct Marketers of a world that is guiding their postal box straight to the circular filing system. But that might just be me.

For me I am silently enjoying last night’s dream. I was in the Dubai Mall and a baby Cheetah (yes those fast cats) jumped on my lap as I was sitting on a bench, the little rascal curled up and fell asleep. I reckon the holy grail for any cat lover. I woke up with quite the smile on my face.

Enjoy today day, the next weekend is now within reach.

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July 10, 2022 · 20:38

The joke on any corporation

Yes, there are corporations that are comfy and good and there are corporations that due to hiring practices and whether they rely on hiring teams or recruiters are soon to be seen as a joke. It all started with ‘The over-qualified workers struggling to find a job’ (at https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220705-the-over-qualified-workers-struggling-to-find-a-job). There we see several connecting issues, but what caught my eye was “In some instances, recruiters can see workers applying for positions apparently ‘below’ their current career level as a red flag”, you see there are two problems with that. The first is their subjective view, one that is often given to them by superiors who have lost all connection to a working force that is now beyond their comprehension. The second one is that I had been looking for something for almost 8 years. The fact is that this boss is a lot better than the previous two. I had actually forgotten what it was to be treated like a person. That last part is on me, but it is still unnerving how the workaholic setting took over my life and made me less than human. So there are issues all over the field and as this work force is experiencing a new breath of life. Bosses that treat their staff good (like mine now) will suddenly find an abundance of interest, because everyone wants to work for such a boss. 

So it is a new sight to work for, in an age of shortage a lot of people will have learned that more pay is second best to nice treatment. The second issue is seen in ““In hiring, you have to act paranoid,” he says. “If someone is coming down a level or two, and they’ve likely already achieved what the role offers, then you have to ask questions about their motivation.”” The recruiter is again in short supply of brain matter. It is old way thinking, the idea that a good boss with prospects in 1-3 years is preferable than a new challenge with no future in sight is beyond their scope of vision. Knowing you can do the job matters, it always did, but the Deloitte idea of a bigger future is still on their brains, even though beyond Deloitte and half a dozen firms that idea will never be delivered on, merely speculated on. I reckon that a player like Deloitte is one of the few that actually delivered on their mission statement. The rest will hide behind “It is a complex situation and we are feeling the market right now” is an excuse that was acceptable 10 years ago but it is obsolete now. And it is worse when you see the impossible way where Amazon is burning through  the global workforce. There is every chance that they will become the first undesirable employer for the working class (packaging and shipping). Fortune reported less than a month ago ‘Amazon’s warehouse problems? It’s running out of workers to hire, and has too much space’, it had become a place where proper robotics and automation would have made all the difference, but there is a chance that they could buckle before that point is reached. So in all this as we see temp agencies and recruiters seeking people, they had ventured on the wrong highway and when we see “In turning down such workers, employers may say they’re too experienced for the position. Sometimes, they inform them that they’re simply not the best fit for the company.” We suddenly see the failure that Apple stores engaged in, to seek the average person, not the inspiring one that is handled by a senior to get that person on board for the Apple frame of mind. Look in any Apple store, all young, dynamic and in some cases clueless past the Apple articles they promote. Some will try to adjust their way of thinking and that is good, but those who wrongly assessed a person will not just lose that person, it will lose that persons friends as well. You see in this atmosphere of hiring shortage the recruiters relying on capturing resume’s with fake jobs will not survive for long, the ones who did a fair job and adjust to a new working atmosphere will be around a lot longer. You can watch it happen in the short term at a recruiter agency near you. As I personally see it they all had the same flaw, instead of collecting resume’s they should have engaged with the candidate and whether it was their boss who told them, or their own insight that 500 resume’s will get them their bonus faster than engaging with 50 candidates is a numbers game, but I reckon that any recruiter that engaged with 50 candidates will have a much better 2022 than the other one. Mark my words.

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February 8, 2021 · 22:05

Setting sun of reality

There was a BBC story that struck a chord with me, it was about jobs and it is given to us by Andrea Murad. The article called ‘The computers rejecting your job application’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55932977) shows us new ways on how HR and recruiters are just a joke. Even as Andrea Murad (unintentionally) falsely gives us “Welcome to the fast-growing world of AI recruitment”, we see the initial failure, AI does not exist, not yet at least and that setting is the larger lie that HR’s and recruiters are spinning. As such whist we look at “While recruiters have been using AI for around the past decade, the technology has been greatly refined in recent years. And demand for it has risen strongly since the pandemic, thanks to its convenience and fast results at a time when staff may be off due to Covid-19” we get the following:

  1. AI does not exist.
  2. Demand for something that does not exist is a delusional lie.
  3. Convenience of what, something that does not exist?

The stage is slowly starting, you see games are games and these recruitment games are set to get rid of the ‘slow’ applications, then they look at the ones with the most errors and the most hesitations, you see everything is measured in these games. So even if the explanation is a little wobbly, as people are trying to figure things out, they get one shot. And that is not even close to the end.

So when we see “The questions, and your answers to them, are designed to evaluate several aspects of a jobseeker’s personality and intelligence, such as your risk tolerance and how quickly you respond to situations”, it is one that is loaded with issues, but the nice part is that it follows “Or as Pymetrics puts it, “to fairly and accurately measure cognitive and emotional attributes in only 25 minutes””, or as I put it, there is no fairly stage, you are set against others and the lower scores are basically cut off, a game does not measure emotional I attributes and any test that is set to seconds can never not now, not ever fairly measure emotions. I am not even touching cognitive, as I would see it, in the case of Pymetrics, it is like watching a slide ruler judge the precision of a calculator. It is the new way of HR divisions to set scores to the needs of bosses and it will backfire in the most disastrous of ways. 

This all gets to be worse when we look at “The audio of this is then converted into text, and an AI algorithm analyses it for key words, such as the use of “I” instead of “we” in response to questions about teamwork. The recruiting company can then choose to let HireVue’s system reject candidates without having a human double-check, or have the candidate moved on for a video interview with an actual recruiter”, it is a system where the older fail, they are not accustomed to zoom style interviews, a stage that is, as I personally see it, a way to legalise age discrimination. There is also the stage of the questions and how impersonal edged questions wash out even more people, people that would for the most be great candidates. And that is not all there are signs (unproven ones) that these systems are also used to categorise people, fake jobs and the creation of rainbow results, a fake version of something that does not even exist at present (AI that is).

Yet the article is still good, when we get to the latter part and we are given some issues by Prof Sandra Wachter, a senior research fellow in AI at Oxford University we see that there is a larger stage and the stage is debatable. It is seen in “All machine learning works in the same basic way – you go through a bunch of data, and find patterns and similarities. So in recruitment, looking at the successful candidates of the past is the data you have. Who were the chief executives in the past, who were the Oxford professors in the past?” In this we see the first issue ‘machine learning’ is a part of AI, it is NOT AI, and those relying on machine learning will lose a lot. To see this, I found an image by Daniel S. Christian, I believe it is incomplete, but it is a larger stage we see and optionally you will see how those claimants of AI are just wrong. You see the image misses, Datapoint Creation, category creation, new data comprehension and verification of data (new against old old), this is essential because if that I not done it is not AI, a person will always be in the mix to make calls making the data arbitrary and obsolete (read: useless) from the get go.

And all that is before we consider that those with a bad webcam will be judged unfairly, so the poor with indecent equipment will not be judged correctly against those with much better webcams, if that is not the case there can be no AI, because face recognition would be essential in emotional recognition, or not?

The worst part in all this is all these sources going on about ‘AI’, I wonder what kind of cool-aid they are drinking, it’s a set of fake values and as such the entire setting is fake, it is fake for all kinds of reasons, yet I personally feel it is so that these ‘wielders’ can indiscriminately discriminate the pool of applicants, it is merely my view on the matter, and there will be plenty of greed driven players calling my view foul, I will let you decide for yourself.

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