If it reliably screens out the idiot recruiters who didn't read anything, the odd false positive is probably worth it.
Remember - manual filtering has a failure rate just as much as any automated approach, the trick is to balance out the false positive/negative rates so that they're acceptable for your purposes.
In any case, if you're a startup, you probably don't want anybody who doesn't have enough of a sense of humour to enjoy the odd silly game in the middle of the mind numbing toil of a job hunt. If I was looking and saw an ad like this I'd probably take a few minutes off to learn about italian sonnets whether I was planning to apply for the job or not, and be glad that I'd been inspired to look.
You don't need to ask for Italian sonnets. I have found that just asking for a cover letter and asking them to address one simple relevant question is enough to screen out most people that don't read the ad. I do it mostly because I want to see a little writing sample along with the resume.
Why should the job applicant waste his time reading the job description of every one of the hundreds of jobs he will try to apply to? I think the best thing to do is to just send the resume, and if they'll want you they'll contact you.
I think an explicit purpose of this strategy is to avoid people who are resume-bombing to hundreds of jobs.
In all cases that I've seen, the companies are small (5-15 current employees) startups where hiring a candidate with the right personality and attention to detail is just as important as having the right skills on paper. These companies seem to want people who have spent some time looking at the posting to make sure they want to be part of the startup experience, as opposed to people who will take anything.
It's a way to start to filter out people who want a job from people who want this job, which is something the hiring company wants to do.
The fact that a job applicant doesn't read through the entire job posting doesn't mean he doesn't have attention to detail - it can mean he decided that reading it thoroughly is just not worth the time.
Just because someone sends his resume without reading the ad doesn't mean he'll take the job. He may just want to know whether the company finds him interesting before he will think whether this job is what he wants.
The idea is to hire someone that's best for the job, not someone who is best at getting the job.
Granted, not reading the posting thoroughly is not a good indicator, but it really is an extremely minor one. If the candidate is poor there will be plenty of other reasons to disqualify, and if it's an otherwise good candidate it's really not worth getting too worked up over.
I always read the entire thing to see if there's anything special that the company's interested in -- "Familiarity with X, Y, and Z (all rare things) desired but not necessary." Let's say I happen to know a lot about Y, but it's hidden mid-way through my resume. I'd adjust my email w/ resume to highlight what I know.
My first reaction to this was "why would this guy need to send off more than half a dozen resumes to get a job?", followed shortly by "my god, how much damage is this guy doing to his career?"
One thing you'll quickly notice if you have to do any hiring in this industry is that there's a vast pool of unhirable developers out there. These guys have very little chance of landing a job, so they're forced to apply for every single job out there in the vain hope that they'll be able to fool somebody into hiring them. Because they don't have time to craft good cover letters to each of those shops, they are very easy to detect, and their resumes tend to go straight into the trash.
By emulating their tactics, the Parent is essentially placing himself into this "untalented pool" voluntarily. Dude, if you're listening, please stop. All you're doing is blacklisting yourself out of the industry.
That's the kind of person that will never work for our company. If you're applying to hundreds of jobs and just sending your resume to everyone our process will definitely filter you out. When we advertise online for a job we're usually looking for one or two key skills and we're very careful to spell out exactly what we want (e.g. a relevant university degree and at least X experience with Y technology) and still we get HUNDREDS of applications from people with no degree and no experience with the technology we're after.
More recently we've begun to filter applications like this, and now instead of 200 applications in the first 48 hours we probably get 6 or 8 - but all of those match our requirements. Sure we could be missing out on some awesome person but it's not worth my time looking through 200 applications to find him.
It is possible that my strategy is mistaken and that I should change it. I'm thinking about it.
Amusingly though, in the example that you brought my strategy would have been pretty good. Instead of reading through your ad until I got to the place I am disqualified for the job, I would have just sent the resume and not wasted any more of my time. Since I'm not getting the job in either case, I have only saved myself time.
Additionally, there is always the chance that because of other accomplishments mentioned in my resume, the company will still hire me.
I'm not saying my strategy is the best one. I'm starting to think I should change it. But this is an example of when it is beneficial.
That's where you're mistaken. In this example, because you didn't craft a meaningful cover letter, you disqualified yourself even if you were a perfect fit.
Had you read the posting and spent a few minutes explaining why you were good at the two things they asked for, you would have been called in for an interview.
Exactly - I think this is what they were going for. Another posting asked for a definition of a specific term from Star Trek, which you could find by putting the term into Google and reading any one of the first 20 results.
For the record, I included a sonnet that I found on Wikipedia, cited it, and got a call-back - so they're clearly OK with poetry being outside of my skill set.
Comments
How is screening out people who don't read the listing going to lower the quality?
It also screens out people who read the ad and don't want to be bothered with your silly games.
If it reliably screens out the idiot recruiters who didn't read anything, the odd false positive is probably worth it.
Remember - manual filtering has a failure rate just as much as any automated approach, the trick is to balance out the false positive/negative rates so that they're acceptable for your purposes.
In any case, if you're a startup, you probably don't want anybody who doesn't have enough of a sense of humour to enjoy the odd silly game in the middle of the mind numbing toil of a job hunt. If I was looking and saw an ad like this I'd probably take a few minutes off to learn about italian sonnets whether I was planning to apply for the job or not, and be glad that I'd been inspired to look.
You don't need to ask for Italian sonnets. I have found that just asking for a cover letter and asking them to address one simple relevant question is enough to screen out most people that don't read the ad. I do it mostly because I want to see a little writing sample along with the resume.
Why should the job applicant waste his time reading the job description of every one of the hundreds of jobs he will try to apply to? I think the best thing to do is to just send the resume, and if they'll want you they'll contact you.
I think an explicit purpose of this strategy is to avoid people who are resume-bombing to hundreds of jobs.
In all cases that I've seen, the companies are small (5-15 current employees) startups where hiring a candidate with the right personality and attention to detail is just as important as having the right skills on paper. These companies seem to want people who have spent some time looking at the posting to make sure they want to be part of the startup experience, as opposed to people who will take anything.
It's a way to start to filter out people who want a job from people who want this job, which is something the hiring company wants to do.
The fact that a job applicant doesn't read through the entire job posting doesn't mean he doesn't have attention to detail - it can mean he decided that reading it thoroughly is just not worth the time.
Just because someone sends his resume without reading the ad doesn't mean he'll take the job. He may just want to know whether the company finds him interesting before he will think whether this job is what he wants.
If reading the job posting thoroughly is not worth his time, why should the company believe he'll think doing the job is worth his time?
The idea is to hire someone that's best for the job, not someone who is best at getting the job.
Granted, not reading the posting thoroughly is not a good indicator, but it really is an extremely minor one. If the candidate is poor there will be plenty of other reasons to disqualify, and if it's an otherwise good candidate it's really not worth getting too worked up over.
I always read the entire thing to see if there's anything special that the company's interested in -- "Familiarity with X, Y, and Z (all rare things) desired but not necessary." Let's say I happen to know a lot about Y, but it's hidden mid-way through my resume. I'd adjust my email w/ resume to highlight what I know.
Wow.
My first reaction to this was "why would this guy need to send off more than half a dozen resumes to get a job?", followed shortly by "my god, how much damage is this guy doing to his career?"
One thing you'll quickly notice if you have to do any hiring in this industry is that there's a vast pool of unhirable developers out there. These guys have very little chance of landing a job, so they're forced to apply for every single job out there in the vain hope that they'll be able to fool somebody into hiring them. Because they don't have time to craft good cover letters to each of those shops, they are very easy to detect, and their resumes tend to go straight into the trash.
By emulating their tactics, the Parent is essentially placing himself into this "untalented pool" voluntarily. Dude, if you're listening, please stop. All you're doing is blacklisting yourself out of the industry.
Since I'm seeing so much negative reactions, I guess I should mellow down my strategy a bit.
That's the kind of person that will never work for our company. If you're applying to hundreds of jobs and just sending your resume to everyone our process will definitely filter you out. When we advertise online for a job we're usually looking for one or two key skills and we're very careful to spell out exactly what we want (e.g. a relevant university degree and at least X experience with Y technology) and still we get HUNDREDS of applications from people with no degree and no experience with the technology we're after.
More recently we've begun to filter applications like this, and now instead of 200 applications in the first 48 hours we probably get 6 or 8 - but all of those match our requirements. Sure we could be missing out on some awesome person but it's not worth my time looking through 200 applications to find him.
It is possible that my strategy is mistaken and that I should change it. I'm thinking about it.
Amusingly though, in the example that you brought my strategy would have been pretty good. Instead of reading through your ad until I got to the place I am disqualified for the job, I would have just sent the resume and not wasted any more of my time. Since I'm not getting the job in either case, I have only saved myself time.
Additionally, there is always the chance that because of other accomplishments mentioned in my resume, the company will still hire me.
I'm not saying my strategy is the best one. I'm starting to think I should change it. But this is an example of when it is beneficial.
That's where you're mistaken. In this example, because you didn't craft a meaningful cover letter, you disqualified yourself even if you were a perfect fit.
Had you read the posting and spent a few minutes explaining why you were good at the two things they asked for, you would have been called in for an interview.
Because you'll still filter out people who can read the listing, but either can't or don't want to write an italian sonnet.
It doesn't say /your/ Italian sonnet
Exactly - I think this is what they were going for. Another posting asked for a definition of a specific term from Star Trek, which you could find by putting the term into Google and reading any one of the first 20 results.
For the record, I included a sonnet that I found on Wikipedia, cited it, and got a call-back - so they're clearly OK with poetry being outside of my skill set.