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Browser Choice May Affect Your Job Prospects
krygny sends this quote from The Economist:
"The internet browser you are using to read this blog post could help a potential employer decide whether or not you would do well at a job. How might your choice of browser affect your job prospects? When choosing among job applicants, employers may be swayed by a range of factors, knowingly and unknowingly. ... Evolv, a company that monitors recruitment and workplace data, has suggested that there are better ways to identify the right candidate for job. ... Among other things, its analysis found that those applicants who have bothered to install new web browsers on their computers (such as Mozilla's Firefox or Google's Chrome) perform better and stay in their posts for 15% longer, on average."
From the article, "Collectively, such findings suggest that algorithms and analysis of "big data" can provide a powerful tool to help employers sift through job applications. They might also make things fairer, by taking the personal prejudices of recruiters out of the equation."
In other words, forget about applying individual judgment regarding the fitness of an applicant, let's use cookie-cutter search patterns instead. It'll be fine, you see, because it's done on "big" data, which everyone knows is way better than "little" data.
The idea that this somehow takes "personal prejudice" out of the process is just laughable, of course. Following this program would do just the opposite: set the one-size-fits-all personal prejudices of search pattern writers into concrete, and then amplify it 10,000 times over with the aid of a computer.
I am daily astounded by the tenacity of the idea that using a computer to do something somehow makes it less "personal".
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
In this market? Are you serious? I didn't leave any stone unturned. Not counting the various head-hunters, I applied for nearly 150 different academic positions. And probably around 50 industry positions. I got maybe a dozen responses, a few phone interviews, six real interviews, and four offers. (In retrospect, if I got 4 offers out of 6 in-person interviews, I'm actually kindof impressed with myself there. And I didn't even think my presentation was the most polished I'd ever seen.)
I came into this knowing that I'm trying to get a new job in a horrible economy. My CV had to stand out in both form AND content. I had to apply for absolutely everything out there, academic and industry. And head-hunters are just another way of looking for jobs. Why would I want to cut off that avenue of search? Sure, the probability of getting a good job that way is LOW, but it's not zero, and I'd been dealing with nothing but low probabilities the whole way along.
Oh, and one benefit to contacting multiple headhunters is that I DID get really useful constructive feedback on my CV that I took seriously and implemented.
People want to bitch about the effort involved in applying. What choice do we have? You have to at least slightly customize every application. I spent several hours a day for weeks and weeks, in two waves, applying for jobs. It's a statistics game for the employer, and it's a statistics game for the applicant, and I was under no illusion otherwise. I consider myself very fortunate that the move was only 500 miles away and the university (my new employer) paid for the move.
BTW, there are some things that really suck about moving to Upstate New York. Weird laws, lag payroll, waiting period for medical insurance. My wife was denied a drivers license for changing her name when we got married, until I got the local legislator involved (this is sexual discrimination). I have a long laundry list of things that really irritate me about being a NYS employee. But I try not to bitch too much, because I'm EXTREMELY FORTUNATE to have a job that I REALLY LIKE in an economy this horrible. Although I do want to take SOME credit for it, because I worked really damn hard to get here. A lot of people who bitch about problems finding jobs really just haven't worked very hard.