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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."
Specifically, both being able to install a browser and staying in your job longer could easily be caused by a third factor, namely not being an idiot.
I am officially gone from
From the article "A study of 20,000 workers showed that more honest people tend to perform better and stay at the job longer. For some reason, however, they make less effective salespeople."
Anybody surprised by this?
retire or are overdue for retirement...
But now that this is out, people looking for jobs are all going to switch to firefox and chrome. They probably still won't have whatever quality makes them good at the job, but they will have lived up to the expectations of the HR algorithm.
Did you really feel you had to defend yourself?
They'll only hire you as a sysadmin
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I use Lynx you insensitive clod!
Can I come in for an interview?
Actually, the IE developer toolbar (F12) is as effective as FireBug and the Chrome developer tools. Chrome is the only one that shows local storage (Indexed DB, WebSQL, etc.) easily, but they all show the loaded files, the network timing, cookies, allow breakpoints, inspect CSS, etc. The developer tools were an add-on in early versions, but has been integrated since version 8 I think.
What, Mosaic wasn't good enough for you?
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
most dev people have to do cross browser debugging so they install at least 4... do they get extra points?
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Well, the saying is "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft software" (which is a variant from the original "No-one gets fired for buying IBM software (alternate reference here ). That might have to be modified to reflect this new reality: "Nobody ever got hired if they're still buying [or running] Microsoft software" ! :>)
.
Or, as many other posters have pointed out, being able to replace the stock software installed on your computer means you've got some smarts at least. IMHO, installing a full GNU/Linux distro on your system must make you a genius (not that Apple "genius bar" kind of genius either!)
Time for HR to take Old Yeller out back and "process" his application.
If your browser string looks like this:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0
You're not a corporate believer and should never have a job... ever...
-- your typical H.R. idiot.
...
Yes, because this is another transparent attempt to find pretexts on which to declare all US job appplicants to be "unqualified".
Or, to an H.R. drone, unqualified because there isn't a "Microsoft" in there somewhere.
Yes... they think that way. If they can think this way because you don't use Office and DARE to send your resume out in PDF format, they can easily think this way about an Open Source distro.
I had a recruiter dress me down about this before. He had never heard of "Open Office" and I am not sure he had ever heard of Linux, either.
Unless you mean Navigator 9, get back in your http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Tub_Time_Machine>Hot Tub Time Machine and tell your past self to buy shares of Apple and NOT to buy any shares in Netscape. Oh, and Pets-dot-com will tank too, though that cute sock-puppet-doggie will live on. And hoard Hostess Twinkies: they'll stop making them someday!
upon the type of work im doing. if i need access to a wiki article or something at work, netcat is fine. other times i might need to download the latest version of some software to test, so ill defer to curl (i understand its a resource hog, but im getting lazier as an admin in my old age.) One of the most frustrating things ive had to deal with at work however is sharepoint. Ive submitted several bug reports for the software but frankly, i cant get it to render properly in anything i use. even a full-featured monster like lynx cant handle it! For now ive worked around it by taking dd snapshots of the sharepoint san and parsing them using ed for the relevant articles.
Good people go to bed earlier.
He does have a point. Just because IE is the mother of all evils does not mean that the premise of the article is true in all cases. Having said that, the latest version of IE is not the spawn of satan as it used to be but more of a me too browser. And on the Mac, well Safari just has a better browsing experience in general.
"Did you really feel you had to defend yourself?" ...
Yes, because this is another transparent attempt to find pretexts on which to declare all US job appplicants to be "unqualified".
Save it for the interview .... if you get that far
how many are there Mac users?
Its mostly aimed at windows user most likely.
If you happy with IE under winXP - you are probably lazy to educate self, ignoring a lot of facts and dont have or dont listen to friends with IT background. It can all say something about you. All of that is negative. pretty simple, right?
And job candidates who customize their user agents are smart asses who will probably hack all of your systems.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
Why is it that in every field you always see a jackass like that coming up with totally unrelated methods to weed people out. Why not have them do the actual job you want and see how they perform. Even if you have too many applicants you can just have a first come, first serve policy, and based on the test of the first group, the best person gets the job.
He won't... that's the point.
This is just another arbitrary way to "weed out" candidates. You wonder why the screeching that "the U.S. has no qualified candidates" to do jobs... this is one of the reasons. We have H.R. people that roundfile applications because of their own lack of knowledge.
When I use Chrome, I can right click and inspect an element. How do I do that in IE?
Google ie dom inspector revealed a whole bunch of add-ons that provide similar functionality.
And even if I bear with the buggy and slow default browser, it still means I'm a better candidate for some jobs: the hard shitty jobs with no benefits and bellow market pay - I will not shop arround for a better job because I don't know better jobs are available. Sounds like the perfect candidate runs IE6.
get back in your Hot Tub Time Machine
But be careful not to set it to the 803rd millennium unless you want Morlocks stealing your hot tub.
And hoard Hostess Twinkies: they'll stop making them someday!
But by that time, you'll be able to download Twinkies from the cloud.
What are we measuring here? Which browsers are best or whether people who care enough to take an extra step and fit themselves with the browser of their preference also care enough to do a better job?
They probably brush their teeth more often too and are more considerate lovers, if only of themselves.
I think we should be able to vote on what gets called a "study".
You are welcome on my lawn.
...you find yourself stuck with IE6 on XP, and installing Firefox is a sackable offence.
I wouldn't hire you because you are a Mac user. I need people with morals and values, and a concept of the value of a dollar. Why would you buy what is effectively just a dell for 3x the money with near useless software? Not what I'm looking for.
Anyone stupid enough to fall for browser advertising or co-installers has Chrome. Those people would NOT be allowed at my company. At my repair shop, 99% of people with Chrome claim they don't know how they got it. They usually also have a ton of malicious plugins in all browsers.
Ha, beat this:
For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.
You can't handle the truth.
You can't do it from the right click menu, but you can do it with the developer tools open....
http://support.janova.us/entries/20181293-how-to-inspect-an-element-in-internet-explorer
You get 100+ qualified applicants for every job. Of course statistics are going to be used to narrow down the pool. If you share a characteristic with others that have a higher than average chance of being problematic, that is going to be a factor of whether or not you get considered for the position. If they do find another qualified candidate without any of those factors, it doesn't matter to them that you are also qualified. If they don't find another one, you're going to get a call anyway.
They simply do not have the time, opportunity, or justification to hold a magnifying glass up to every candidate that applies for a position. It's up to you to ensure that there are no silly reasons for them to discard you out of hand.
That said, though... this one is a little silly on their part.
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
Gosh, it's nice to know that my employer sees me as a good bet to stick around after I was hired. But I can remember having to resort to using my wife's Windows laptop to even apply for jobs at many companies because their damned web site would not render properly unless you used IE. I had found that company's jobs sites that employed a popular (*cough* Taleo *cough*) to run their job listings and application process were pretty bad with Firefox compatibility (making you re-enable all the add-on toys that many FF users turn off due to their annoyance factor and their security holes). The absolute worst, though, were the "homegrown" HR pages.
Aside: let's not even get into the requirement for a Word version of your resume when applying for a UNIX- or Linux-heavy position. Again, the wife's Windows laptop was handy since all the other computers in the house have been Microsoft-free for the last ten years or so. Saved me from having to schlepp over to the local public library with my resume on a USB drive just to make Word versions. The Word/Office files that are created from LibreOffice/OpenOffice are considerably larger than the same file created directly from MS-Word, sometimes larger than the company's upload limit. (Clever means of filtering out older, more experienced UNIX/Linux people with longer resumes?)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I know damn well I would never hire or keep someone if they insisted on using IE 6.
Also, I have no tolerance to work for a company that forces IE 6 on me, so chances are I would quit before they get around to firing me.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
There's also the point that, in my opinion at least, IE has closed the gap with the other browsers quite a bit in recent years. I'd been using Firefox since 2004, but had grown increasingly irritated with a number of its quirks and foibles.
Got a new PC a couple of weeks ago and decided that was a good spur to check around and see how other browsers measured up. Having done so (and slightly through gritted teeth), I actually settled on IE.
Five years ago, somebody who was using IE was either ignorant or browsing from an office PC where they had no choice. I just don't think that's the case any more.
I think it's prudent to use IE at most job sites. I've had difficulties in the past using Opera. The last thing a job applicant wants is to have the resume submission process go haywire because of a non-standard browser. Since company job boards are likely designed for IE, why not use it, especially if it reduces your chances for errors ?
Considering that some of the most brilliant engineers I know still use some VERY antiquated technology and software, but have customized and adapted it over the years to integrate with newer technology to do things that no off-the-shelf software can do.
That this is absolute bullshit.
"Among other things, its analysis found that those applicants who have bothered to install new web browsers on their computers"
How do they distinguish those who installed a new browser from those that let their boyfriends, brothers, friends, etc. install a new browser?
Chrome is the only one not named Safari or Opera showing local storage etc. easily, you mean ;)
Safari has the menu with the boring name "Develop", and Opera has Dragonfly.
They simply do not have the time, opportunity, or justification...
THIS. THIS A THOUSAND TIMES
If someone doesn't know many employers use arbitrary methods to weed out hundreds, even thousands of applicants to something manageable that they can look at properly, they need to come back to reality
From a single typo to Times New Roman font, anything that has (and some have that no) statistical value (like, say, literally taking the second half of applicants and rejecting them), can and will be used. Only now I'm seeing companies use the "if you don't hear from us in X days, you were unsuccessful/ignored" in response to how bad it is you don't even get a 'no' these days
As long as applying will be as simple as emailing a CV/resumé/application and a human has to look at it for a response, there will be a huge bottleneck in business resources in responding to them and will do things like this
"as effective as FireBug and the Chrome"
okay so i never figured out how to track ajax activity with IE toolbar the way firebug and chrome does. there is also nothing available for the toolbar that works like firephp does with firebug and chrome. Is this still the case? The data management applications i work on are nothing but a div fed with a stream of content and interactions from the server fed through ajax so its kind of important.
The last time i tried to use IE toolbar for this the most it would let me do is look at styling issues on the initial source loaded - that one div - and it was unaware of all the changes taking place in dom from minute to minute. Firebug and chrome are great for this sort of thing though i prefer firebug. But sometimes IE has quirks that i need to analyze. Would be nice if that toolbar could help.
Do you mean "know-it-all"? If you used Safari, you probably would have caught that.
Interviewer: You know I really enjoy interviewing applicants for this management training course. (knock at door) Come in. (Stig enters) Ah. Come and sit down. Stig: Thank you. (he sits) Interviewer: (stares at him and starts writing) Would you mind just standing up again for one moment. (stands up) Take a seat. Stig: I'm sorry. Interviewer: Take a seat. (Stig does so) Ah! (writes again) Good morning. Stig: Good morning. Interviewer: Good morning. Stig: Good morning. Interviewer: (writes) Tell me why did you say 'good morning' when you know perfectly well that it's afternoon? Stig: Well, well, you said 'good morning'. Ha, ha. Interviewer: (shakes head) Good afternoon. Stig: Ah, good afternoon. Interviewer: Oh dear. (writes again) Good evening. Stig: ... Goodbye?
Interviewer: Ha, ha. No. (rings small hand-bell) ... Aren't you going to ask me why I rang the bell? (rings bell again)
Stig: Er why did you ring the bell?
Interviewer: Why do you think I rang the bell? (shouts) Five, four, three, two, one, zero!
Stig: Well, I, I...
I take it you haven't dealt much with the type of people most companies hire for the Personnel department.
From the 3 gov't agencies, two non-profits and half-dozen private companies I've worked for as evidence, it seems that looking good in a tight dress is the major qualification.
You misunderstand. Throwing out resumes submitted using IE, despite the fact that the sites only work properly in IE, is a test. You need to work around the flaws, so it's a demonstration of your abilities.
I stopped reading after "THIS."
It's juvenile. Please stop.
This.
I throw out half of all applications without reading them.
I don't want to hire someone that's unlucky.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
How did "U.S." get into this and NickGnome's comments? It isn't present in the context at all, unless you're saying that people in the US have an unusual bias toward keeping distribution-default browsers, whereas non-US people are more likely to install something else.
"Scientists claim to have discovered a new species of pterodactyl, but this claim is really just a thinly veiled attempt to undermine OS/2." Such a statement would be paranoid unless you've got evidence that OS/2 was written by people who are also paleontologists who have published papers saying they already discovered all of the pterodactyls. If that's what you're saying and you can back it up, then ok, the new-pterodactyl claim is maybe an ad-hominem attack on OS/2. But without the OS/2-pterodactyl link, it's bullshit.
Just as your the anti-US conspiracy theory is obviously bullshit, unless you have a US-defaultbrowser link. Do you?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Even on the Mac I prefer to use chrome.. The way it handles tabs, plugins and such are better.
mod me funny
I'm using Lynx, whose the power employee NOW?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
And I've gone to the employment page on a number of web sites that didn't play well with chrome and/or Firefox. I'll reject any potential employer who can't even find the talent to build a website that's compatible with most browsers.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
I am currently applying to jobs and what I noticed is: ...). Employers most commonly use MSIE and therefore assume that everyone else does; why would they pay their webmaster/designer to ensure compatibility for other browsers?
- Chrome is often properly unsupported, leading to display glitches (calendars not showing up for dates, erratic formatting, misalignments,
- Numerous companies use Taleo and even more do not configure it properly. Only yesterday was I unable to complete an application because when picking up the Country, I was prompted to pick up US states only, regardless of the said Country I chose.
That's easy: buy a refurbished Dell Latitude and install Linux Mint (with GIMP) on it. Total price around $250-300. Plus you get a very good (for a laptop) keyboard, unlike the idiotic mushy keyboards that all Macs and other consumer laptops have.
If an employer required me to use IE to apply, I'd think long and hard whether it's really worthwhile. My current employer has adopted a new HR system which will soon require a Java applet to apply and if I wasn't already employed that might be enough to dissuade me. (Already working here, I know Java is non-existent internally, but as a new applicant, I'd assume it was a Java shop).
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
Yes, becasue everyone can afford the latest computer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
console.log behavior is rather different for objects. Seeing the string "[object object]" is nowhere near as useful as a tree-rendered outline of the object.
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
Having more than one browser should NOT be a deciding factor on your productivity. For all we know, using more than one browser maybe a forced issue simply based on the incompatibilities of some websites towards a preferred browser.
And for all we know, more than 1 browser, could also mean, less work, because being at your desk and producing isn't synonymous with being at your desk and browsing websites.
It's exchanging one person's personal prejudice for another's. However, it's really a good thing: the personal prejudices of recruiters are stupid; if they can replace those with the personal prejudices of hiring managers, the companies would be much better off. The problem in hiring, for many companies, is that hiring managers (the guy you end up working under every day if you get the job, the guy who actually knows what you do, and probably did something similar when he was more junior) is separated from candidates by know-nothing recruiters and idiotic HR staff, who know absolutely nothing about the job except for some buzzwords they don't understand like "C++". So hiring managers end up getting presented with tons of resumes from useless candidates who are totally unqualified for the job.
Anything which reduces the influence of recruiters and the morons in HR has got to be an improvement.
IMHO, installing a full GNU/Linux distro on your system must make you a genius
Which would not be a good thing. First, geniuses know more than their manager. Then, geniuses get bored easily and will spend their "work" time on more interesting things... And finally, geniuses know how to set up a VPN or ssh tunnel from work to their system at home (or their system at whatever association they volunteer "their" time for sysadmin).
I'm half-owner of a small business. We recently had to go through the grind of hiring a new front desk person, a yearly task it seems. After a few days with a Craigslist posting, we had 70 or 80 resumes which we each had to read in our spare time. The first to go are those who can't follow a simple instruction (e.g., we get a resume only, but asked for resume and cover letter), then the ones with egregious grammar or spelling errors, or "WEIRd" capitalization patterns, and so forth. Sometimes it is rather arbitrary, such as: lives too far away, or uses an unprofessional sounding email address (for example: hotkitty@aol.com). But arbitrary choices work the other way too. This last time, after picking eight people, I put the whole stack of remaining applications together, shuffled them, and picked two at random. Only one of the randoms didn't show, but the other one almost made it into the final pool.
Anyway, this article makes me glad I'm not an applicant: my selection of a browser is well considered and goes beyond merely selecting Firefox, despite the fact I'd end up not using Firefox to fill out an application. On my Linux Desktop and Mac laptop, I use Firefox with the No Script and Self Destructing Cookies plugins. If the application process relies on javascript and cookies -- there's a reasonable chance it would fail despite temporarily allowing this or that, and rather than take that risk, I'd fire up Safari like I always do when I need to visit a site that requires javascript and cookies. But that would make it appear to HR that I just used the default browser without giving it any consideration, which is exactly the opposite of the truth.
There are lots of ways self-employment sucks, but the amount of arbitrary decision making (*) in hiring is one reason why I'm glad I'll never be on the other side of an interview.
(*) and yeah, I realize I make arbitrary decisions and I can understand why that happens. The number of people looking for work is huge and there is only so much time in the day. It's a thorny issue.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I take it you haven't dealt much with the type of people most companies hire for the Personnel department.
From the 3 gov't agencies, two non-profits and half-dozen private companies I've worked for as evidence, it seems that looking good in a tight dress is the major qualification.
I have no doubt. Working closely with HR and the like, I have seen them have plenty of time to go through 100 applicants per position with a fine toothed comb. Thing is, it isn't their job to do it. Their job is to look pretty and get as close to outright seducing the upper management as they dare. Anyone in that profession that actually does useful work for the company is replaced by someone that spends less time talking with nerds and more time letting themselves be seen as eye candy.
Note: I have seen this phenomenon happen with both sexes and arguably some in between.
That's exactly my problem, STATISTICS are used instead of fuckin' ASKING the guy that wants to hire. Because HR doesn't have an effin' clue what they're looking for. Not their fault, I don't want a security expert to work in HR, I want them to work here in MY crew!
I'm currently in exactly this spot. I want, need, crave, (insert word meaning "more than a 35 year old virgin wanna get laid") a good security person. I wrote down my requirements, then I heard what the sheik (ok, the CFO) is willing to part monthly with, lowered my requirements and handed them to HR. You know that I'd by now be willing to spend my spare time hiring, but I must not. HR is defending that turf quite vehemently.
So what I get for the interviews (where I may thankfully be present at least) is what remains after statistics butchered down my applicant pile. I want experts at assembler and networking protocols, and I get experts at Javascript and webdesign.
What the fuck?
By now I'm at the point where I spend more time down in HR than doing my job to keep them from tossing out candidates for some random reason that has NOTHING to do with the job that could at least qualify (it's not easy I tell you, people tend to know their worth when they're worth something...).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That!
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Sorry, but if a company cannot be assed to at least write you a "no sorry" letter TO AN EMAIL APPLICATION, they have problems. I make sure that every applicant gets an automated reply when they write to us, thanking them for their effort to mail us their resume. That's trivial to set up, an autoreply does that. It's equally easy to collect the bunch in a database, pick away the few that you want to interview then hit the red "reject" button sending a "sorry you didn't make it" reply.
A company that can't get that together is probably not a company you want to work for. You'll be dealing with more problems than just your job, they got serious issues in the procedures department.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From the 3 gov't agencies, two non-profits and half-dozen private companies I've worked for as evidence, it seems that looking good in a tight dress is the major qualification.
What does that say about you? Personally, I think it would be distracting to work in an environment where all the guys run around in tight dresses all day.
It seems like there could be a lucrative opportunity for HR people (or the techs who wrote the automated roundfile routines) to sell a list of all the stupid, irrelevent "mistakes" that are frustrating job applicants and clogging the HR system (yes, I understand HR is inundated with hundreds or thousands of applicants for each position and have to have a quick way to weed them -- but the problem is exacerbated when the system mandates that most applicants have to submit, say, a hundred resumes to get one pair of human-operated eyeballs to look at them).
find me a 13" laptop with multiple wifi antennas and photo editing software included for less than $1000
the metal case and better screen quality are just icing on the cake.
Most laptops have two antennas (it's actually a MIMO system in engineering terms ;) ). You could grab the HP ProBook 4340s for about $600, top it with Photoshop Elements or GIMP and call it a day.
The counterargument to that is the danger of increasing uniformity. If everyone is using the same algorithms then they're all sensitive to the same potential biases and mistakes, whereas individual recruiters' biases will tend to cancel each other out over the population of a large company. If all companies were using the same algorithms, then any mistakes in the algorithm would mean that certain people might not be able to find a job anywhere.
Recently I came across a Siebel/Oracle CRM (Customer relations management) system that required IE7 or IE8. Who has these versions? On Win 7, Microsoft has pushed out IE9 as a default update.
So here is a company requiring its customers to use an old version of IE that few people will actually have. While it wasn't the largest company in the USA, it is in the S&P 500 list.
I tested using FF with the User Agent plugin, but the website uses ActiveX, so it definitely required IE.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That seems a bit harsh...I mean what if Lister hasn't had his lucky virus injection for the day yet?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
since IE9, it has been quite good but you should also check out the new and fast growing improvements in FF. Specially if you use nightly-builds.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
What is funny is that Both Chrome and IE 9 are faster on itunesconnect.com than Safari.
By Far.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
it seems that looking good in a tight dress is the major qualification.
Are you trying to tell me that it is not supposed to be THE major qualification?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Why would all companies use the same algorithms? Do all companies now get together and discuss how they hire employees? Of course not, because they're competing for those employees, and frequently trying to steal them away from each other. Why on earth would all companies decide to suddenly cooperate and share their hiring-discrimination algorithms? If anything, that information would be considered a highly-protected trade secret.
Ummm...
So for anybody that's ever worked in IT, we know that people who tend to run out of date browsers do so for two reasons: they are too non-technical/computer incompetent to upgrade their browser, and the other reason is nobody wants to touch their computer because they are probably unpleasant to deal with.
However, there are exceptions to this and they can be as simple as a client having a website that needs to run on IE7 cause that's what the client's company still uses (not good, not your problem). My job runs on IE8 as per business requirements, etc...
Having said that, I totally agree, this is not a good way to screen out candidates, and ironically people in HR tend to have some of the most poorly managed machines in some of the companies i've been in, so by this logic, they'd easily weed themselves out, and I'd have to say good riddance in most cases.
It's hard to get qualified applicants. Especially when you're in a field that is crowded and filled with snakeoil peddlers. Everything you say is quite true for my problem at hand.
But you at least have a few things you can rely on. Try that in ITSEC. Aside of CISA, there's very little you can hold onto. And people who hold anything that even remotely says CISA on it usually ask for payment above and beyond anything I'd consider sensible. Problem is, of course I could use someone holding a CISA cert (hey, who couldn't?) but aside of being simply not affordable, he's far overqualified. And there's precious little in between of "nothing" and CISA when it comes to certification. Especially when it comes to actual knowledge of current security problems, less governance and procedures.
I'm honestly considering doing the old "hack this server and find the app file inside" spiel. I just don't really like that kind of "hiring procedure", aside of feeling juvenile, do I really want someone who goes and hacks a server based on a flimsy suggestion from someone they don't know, without written consent and other CYA papers?
So what I'm down to now is hiring based on self assessment of applicants. It's mostly a "think you got what it takes? Hand in your resume" thing. Yes, I'm sure you can imagine the number of apps I get per day. Right now I spend more time down with HR than in my ivory tower, I just hope I find someone and get out of it before it gets hot around here, I really miss my air condition.
There is very little I can actually put in the app requirements that don't rely on self assessment of the applicant. I don't care for degrees. More than half of my crew never saw a college from the inside, and what's worse, they're the BETTER half of the people. They are, granted, also the older half of the people. So asking for a degree is certainly out of the question. It's hard to ask for "samples of work", either they're under NDA or they're something I do NOT want (like, say, hacking a server without consent of its owner...). So any kind of sample would probably only work as a KO-crit, where they either break an existing NDA to impress me (big nono) or where they admit they don't give a shit about legality (almost as big a nono).
So what's left is that people themselves tell us whether they think they're qualified. And that takes a lot of weeding out. You have to move a lot of rubble to find a gem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I take it you haven't dealt much with the type of people most companies hire for the Personnel department.
From the 3 gov't agencies, two non-profits and half-dozen private companies I've worked for as evidence, it seems that looking good in a tight dress is the major qualification.
That's because, historically, personnel departments have been staffed by women and managed by men. And, surprise surprise, the male managers chose attractive women when given a choice.
Nowadays, of course, personnel departments are mostly managed by lesbians, so you still get the most attractive women being given preference.
It's just so unfair.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Multiple wifi antennas? Really? Every laptop model I've ever worked on (and that's a few dozen) that came with wifi out of the box had at least two separate antennas. Usually one goes up one side of the screen, and the other goes up the other side.
Photo editing software can be had for free.
Since you said sub $1,000 and the closest a 13" mac gets to that is $1,199 I'll use that model for comparison.
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD101LL/A?#hardware
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834100228
And here is what you asked for.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230262
It meets or exceeds the specs of your $1,199 13" Macbook Pro in every way and costs just $749 - regular price, not on sale. Your Macbook costs over 50% more.
You're welcome.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Depends on the job. I couldn't use you. Part of what I'm looking for right now is someone who can optimize procedures and streamline processes. If someone cannot be assed to do it for himself, I certainly wouldn't expect him to do it for the company.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't need multiple wifi antennas. If your argument is based on something I don't need but looks impressive, go over to marketing, I heard they're hiring as well. Bring your Apple with you, they'll love you for it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's a thorny issue.
No, it's not. Not at all.
I was tasked to review CVs for a Helpdesk position at a desirable corporation; as expected, my manager has thrown 121 CVs at my lap. That's nearly a whole stack of paper (500 pages) to look at.
But I read them ALL. Of course, I filtered many of them out. Of course, I had to take half of those home and work overtime to weed them out. And I spent my free time doing that. Why? Because I've been an applicant before and I know how much it sucks to not even get a "thank you, you're rejected" message back, and dealing with retarded HR personnel, and having your CV thrown to the garbage can only because it's the 11th entry and they will only look at first 10, etc., etc. And I loathed becoming part of that problem.
Looking at hundreds of CVs is a daunting task and there's nothing funny about it (well, apart from the occasional weird CV that makes you laugh), but the applicants have handed their trust to whoever reviews those CVs and I feel obliged to raise to their expectations.
My filtering methods are pretty simple: font doesn't matter, as long as it's not overly flashy (e.g. Chaplin Type); e-mail address is unimportant (I'm not hiring an e-mail address and a "professional" e-mail address can be interpreted as a sign of duplicity); 1-2 typos are acceptable (everyone makes mistakes). Unacceptable stuff: weird photos attached to CV, blatant lack of basic spelling (unless we're talking about a pure developer opening). Most important: whether the skillset fits the job requirements.
It's quite ironic that the expectations are that a CV should be extremely professional, but the methods used to weed out candidates are as unprofessional as it gets. Double standards, anyone?
As an applicant, I am weeding out responses from hiring companies. The person contacting you is an image of how the company works. If they impose a meeting time and date (especially on a very short notice), if their response is riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes, if they send you a message intended to someone else (yeah, that happened quite a few times), then I wouldn't feel right working for such a company. Unless, of course, their salary offer is outrageously large.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Whose luck are you measuring? How do you know you are not throwing away your best candidate(s) because you are unlucky?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
double double that that
double this
double that
double double this that
(My daughters' handclapping song.)
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In your case, it'd not be the browser choice disqualifying you, it'd be the spelling and writing rules knowledge, or its lack thereof.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Sometimes it is rather arbitrary, such as: lives too far away, or uses an unprofessional sounding email address (for example: hotkitty@aol.com)
Is it the hotkitty or the aol part you find most unprofessional?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Programming is a job to these people, not a career. A career requires constant effort to stay on top of your chosen field of expertise.
No, a career requires abandoning the things you started off doing and moving into the more profitable areas of networking, self-promotion and arse-licking as soon as possible.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This. :)
I'll teach THAT to my son
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
...although Safari's integration of the address and search bars is really pissing me off...
This alone is why I'm still using 5.whatever. Is there no way to downgrade from 6, or install 5 alongside it?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
how many are there Mac users?
Its mostly aimed at windows user most likely. If you happy with IE under winXP - you are probably lazy to educate self, ignoring a lot of facts and dont have or dont listen to friends with IT background. It can all say something about you. All of that is negative. pretty simple, right?
How about if you're at work and forced to use IE with winXP?
Or are you so holy that you don't ever apply for other jobs at work?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm going to submit my resumes using netscape navigator 4.0 from now on to weed out any employers who would do this from even considering me.
Last year I have applied for a job (albeit in a much better market) and I made sure that my application looks nice, my cover letters have no gross grammar or spelling errors (even made a few friends proofread them) and are actually relevant to the information in the job offer.
So, LaTeX ftw! In the end I got four offers of five interviews I've agreed to take (and have rejected countless other interview offers). The hiring manager on a job I took is actually a LaTeX fan himself so he had immediately noticed my resume :-)
Even if I were to accept that at face value, my point is: WTF does it have to do with a browser test? A browser test is going to filter out the same fraction of US applicants as non-US applicants.
Suppose I'm an employer in your fantasy bearded-Spock universe, with an agenda of hiring non-US workers. 5 US workers apply for my position, and 5 Indians. I want to hire the Indians and I'll use any excuse I can think of, to justify it. So I say, "Aha, let's look at the browsers they used. People who use IE on Windows, Safari on Mac OS, or Firefox on Ubuntu 12.04, I'll just cross off the list of applicants because they're dumber-than-average for not installing a different browser." Are you saying this is going to change my resulting pool to have more Indian applicants than US applicants?
I would understand you argument, if the "test" involved (ok, I'm about to reach into my jar of stereotypes and make an ass of myself, but this is the Internet so let's just do it) ruling out people who don't like spicy food. Then I'd have 2 US applicants and 4 Indian applicants. A spicy food test works for my anti-US agenda. But how the fuck do browsers help my agenda?
Show me the stats, where non-US people are more likely to install Chromium on their Ubuntu system than Americans are, or that they'll install Firefox on their Windows more than Americans do, etc. Because that's what you're saying, right? If that's not what you're saying, then explain how the bullshit test does help their secret agenda of not hiring US applicants, because I don't get it.
To me, your conspiracy theory doesn't make sense even within your paranoid reality. It's like a 9/11 truther going on about how we know the US government blew up WTC and the evidence is .. OS/2, man, OS/2!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Bullshit yourself. Correlation is not causation, but it is still correlation. Whether you believe it or not is independent of its truth.
And it ought to be possible to include the reason why your application did not make the cut. Failure to provide that is, IMHO, unreasonable. The logic is already in the filtering software. All that is lacking is the automated reply code. Maybe the employers already have this feature but they disable it in order to avoid being seen as spammers. I mean if they're getting as many applications as they claim... maybe they're afraid of running afoul of some clause in their ISP's ToS if they send out automated rejection letter. (Aside: in a previous job, I helped automate an email process that sent product/pricing changes to customers. There were times we'd be sending out 1000s of emails a day. (We included a batching function to only send "N" at a time before waiting a few minutes to avoid clobbering the corporate email servers. Part of the concern from the messaging team was that these emails would all be headed outside the company.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If they do find another qualified candidate without any of those factors, it doesn't matter to them that you are also qualified. If they don't find another one, you're going to get a call anyway.
That only holds true in cases where an actual human is reading the résumés which have been submitted. Many businesses, particularly large multi-nationals, rely on software to reduce the pool of 100s of applicants down to a handful, not allowing even an unqualified HR person to make a call whether to move a résumé forward. The last time I hired an assistant, the automated HR system eliminated every highly-qualified candidate that I had personally recommended for the position, leaving me with 6 candidates who had no real-world qualifications but were capable of putting the right buzzwords on their application. I ended up in a protracted fight with HR that was resolved by a VP granting permission to hire out-of-scope, just to get a qualified candidate for the job.
FrontDoor 2.02; Noncommercial version Press Escape twice for...
Sometimes it is rather arbitrary, such as: lives too far away, or uses an unprofessional sounding email address (for example: hotkitty@aol.com).
You should at least check whether someone living far away did apply _because_ they were intending to move to a different place.
You get 100+ qualified applicants for every job.
Or perhaps they're actually not all-that-qualified.
Ezekiel 23:20
I stopped reading after "THIS."
It's juvenile. Please stop.
Is it more or less juvenile than HR stopping reading resumés?
Ezekiel 23:20
While I agree with the sentiment, this is a cultural thing. As an applicant I want to know if I made it or not, because while waiting for reply from what I believe is a good position, I might end up rejecting or delaying my application to other not-so-good opportunities.
Where I live, however, most companies just never reply if you are not selected, and that is seen as normal. (There are other differences, like requesting a recent photo to be added to the CV, where in other places that is illegal)
And what about ajax calls, firebug and chrome show send and receive in the console, does ie toolbar do that now? I'm not seeing it work still.
The aol would do it for me. We used to call AOL the American Organization of Lamers. Coming into an IRC channel with AOL as your ISP was sure to get you kick banned.
Something that may be even more important is if they read your resume on Monday morning or on Friday afternoon. Or if they gotten any at home or had to give it up at home. Or if the HR persons kids are sick.
It will depend a lot on the job. The best advice I have gotten is to be yourself. If they do not want to hire you because you use the wrong browser, you are better without them. If you just want the job for the money, there are other ones that pay better. (OK, some might not be legal or at least not socially accepted, depending on the country you live in.)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A+++++++++++++++++++ Comment, would read again!!!!!!!!!!!
Personally, I always found the ebay ratings much worse.
Including the reason why you were rejected means considerably more overhead, I can well see why this isn't included. Hell, I couldn't include it. Or at least word it in a non-demeaning way when you're the 100th applicant with "years of javascript experience" for a job position that requires intimate knowledge of networking protocols on a low level base. What should I write? "Sorry, but I can't use people who probably think TCP is the abbreviation of the name for the Chinese secret service?"
Since companies usually fill their job offers with insane requirements (like one I saw, "10 years of professional experience, not older than 25" and the like), people don't know which one they could not fulfill yet still be considered, so they send their resume. It's not like it's a big effort anymore, what's the price of sending me your resume? One email. And about 5 minutes to come up with a nice address so I don't toss it on the "to read if I'm really bored" pile automatically.
I know first hand, I've been guilty of the same. When I was looking for a job, I carpet bombed everyone who remotely offered a job that I was willing to take with my resume. There were days when I sent out literally dozens of applications, and not only to companies that were actively hiring. You have a company? Hey, you sure are interested in IT-Security after the whole anonymous blunder, can you afford NOT to have a CISO? Here's my resume, you want me!
Of course 99% of those apps were probably not even read by a human being and were tossed out. I was, essentially, spamming companies with my resume. And just as with ordinary spam, it worked. Just with a few companies, actually, but that's all I really wanted and needed. After all, I only needed ONE job. So when spamming a million companies, a return of 0.0001% is already more than I need.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why delay or reject? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, they hire and fire you, so why not up and go when the better option actually works out?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ask the CFO to order the HR people to hire new HR people as their replacements.
Why wouldn't a Javascript expert know assembly? Most Javascript is compiled to machine code these days. It's useful stuff to know anyway. Good VMs allow you to see the code they generate. I'd actually expect an true Javascript expert to have written a few simple VMs and compilers. (I know that this is one of the things I'm going to do after my metacompiler gets to a reasonable point.)
(A bit off-topic, perhaps, but can anyone recommend a good book on 64-bit assembly under Linux? (AMD64 architecture, of course.))
Ezekiel 23:20
I throw out half of all applications without reading them.
I don't want to hire someone that's unlucky.
If you work at Yahoo, you've just thrown away the wrong half!
Ezekiel 23:20
Now imagine your boss tells you that he needs 15 more positions filled. Are you really going to read all 7500 resumes?
Don't judge a book by its cover.
Here in Europe we've got plenty of women in all roles that look good in tight dresses, and most of them, including in HR, are also pretty good at their jobs. In HR, they're frequently better than men, (something to do with superior organisational and communication skills, I understand).
In my job, I've frequently had to deal with HR people for hiring. The main reason I've seen that stop them from recruiting good talent is the totally crap job/person descriptions they get from managers. The absolutely best results I ever got was when working with a stunningly-attractive lady who also had the brains to match. She asked me clear, precise questions about the requirements, which we formalised using standard tools her department had created, and within a few days her team had started to present pre-screened candidates, all of whom were a good fit for the job. This was my introduction to competency-based management, which works well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competency-based_management
At the same time, others in the organisation were complaining about their inability to recruit. Maybe if they'd stopped staring at her bust, and worked as professionals instead, they'd have got better results?
The aol would do it for me. We used to call AOL the American Organization of Lamers. Coming into an IRC channel with AOL as your ISP was sure to get you kick banned.
Hmmm we always called them an "Army of Lamers" but I suppose you did this in non-US Centric IRC channels?
#amiga_warez on Galaxynet
There is very little I can actually put in the app requirements that don't rely on self assessment of the applicant. I don't care for degrees. More than half of my crew never saw a college from the inside, and what's worse, they're the BETTER half of the people. They are, granted, also the older half of the people. So asking for a degree is certainly out of the question.
You do realize that some universities are starting to offer some courses in security?
http://www.csec.rit.edu/?q=node/29
Also, how about getting involved with something like this?
http://www.rit.edu/news/story.php?id=46016
Simply glossing over everyone who has a degree is a bit dangerous.
This is a pretty good idea. Some applications ask for a "desired salary" and if you put in the wrong number, you're rejected. One may be willing to take less than the desired, if it's a job they would enjoy doing or it's a stable company.
I prefer Safari over Firefox or Chrome.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I had a prospective employer tell me that they round-filed my original resume because I had an aol.com email address. The same resume went through a recruiter that stripped the contact details off. I got the interview and the job.
I thought that a FirstnameLastname@aol.com email address was professionally acceptable. I was wrong. Lesson learned.
So when hundreds of trainable people are applying for every one of the few job openings out there, employers and government should STFU about there being "no qualified applicants" and "low unemployment (if you stop counting the long-term unemployed)".
If I have a hundred trainable applicants and ten trained ones, the hundred are not going to be called in. Who pays the bill for training them and for lack of productivity until they are trained?
As long as there are as many applicants as there are, even small things will disqualify individuals who surely could do a good job given a chance. They won't get that chance. That's a problem with having high unemployment, not a problem with those who hire.
If my application is refused because I used a specific browser, I probably don't want to work for that company anyway. I mean, next thing you know my bonus will be evaluated based on whether or not I put sugar in my coffee.
The way I see it, installing another browser is a waste of time if there's one already installed that does the job. If an old version of IE is installed say 6 or 7, that's a different story.
What's wrong with tight dresses :)
What I mean by "too far away" is along the lines of 25 miles in a neighboring county (too much gas). People w/ addresses 100s of miles away are obviously looking at relocating so don't get the immediate discard, but really, I think enough people live here already. I'd rather not see my county's population increase.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Maybe this person's boss should hire additional HR people to help read the resumes for those 15 positions.
Of course, you'd have to wade through their resumes first....
I am a rare one! :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
10/10, would comment again
What's wrong with tight dresses :)
They're hard to reach up under to scratch your balls.
I had one do something like that but it was even worse than what you mentioned: the asshole headhunter changed my resume -- adding experience I didn't have -- and sent me off to an interview. When the interviewer picked up the copy of my resume from his desk and started asking me odd questions -- for example: "Tell me about how you used technology XYZ" and "XYZ" was not in my resume; or so I thought -- that had absolutely nothing to do with my background, I asked to see the resume and found that the headhunter had added text that indicated that I had experience in using 2-3 technologies that I had zero experience with. I apologized telling him that my resume had been significantly altered before it was sent to him and ended the interview at that point. I later called the headhunter and read him the riot act and never worked with anyone from that firm ever again.
THAT's why I prefer to submit PDF-formatted resumes. It's all to easy for someone to go messing around with your resume when it's in Word-format. (Granted it's not impossible to muck around with my PDF file but why make it easy for 'em.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I certainly hope you don't work in IT.
Whether it's one or 100 positions, chances are you'll get pretty much the same number of applications. Bluntly put: Your argument reeks of stupidity.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Just like the color of your shoes. Or it may not.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I guess it is again a cultural thing. It is not generally well seen to leave a job at the first opportunity, after a short period. It's a matter of trust and commitment, I guess (and also of government paperwork, around here that part is costly).
If I join a company, I know I am expected to stay a certain period of time, at least until the company is earning money with me. Depending on the job, that is estimated to take around 6 months. If I leave after a short time, the company probably spent more money on me than the money it earned from my work.
It may not be the case where you live, but here the IT world is a small place, and the chance of applying again to a job in the same company is not as small as one would like to believe. Quitting your job in good terms will most surely allow you to come back if the opportunity arises. Quitting after a short period of time will probably not be "good terms" for your boss.
Even if you hate your job, you will find out that connections matter. I worked 5 years for a big company, and then moved to a company leaded by a former boss. Now I am working at another big company, thanks to recommendations from a former colleague. If things go wrong with my current job, I know I can talk with my former bosses and see if they have any positions open.
Also, people in management positions know each other, specially if they work in the same city, and even more if they have many years of experience. Work professionally, and your ex boss will recommend you (if he's not an asshole) if he gets asked you by a friend in the company you are trying to join. The opposite holds, of course.
I don't want to imply that you should bend over to the company's requirements, but one should know how to move around in the job market :)
Impossible. If you reach 30 you become a powerful wizard and would have no need to perform petty labor.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
Ah, one of my favorite Python sketches.
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
Something like this is why I consider current anti-discrimination laws probably fundamentally flawed, BTW.
with the aid of a computer
Have you already filed for a patent?
TL;DR Life isn't fair.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I have IE 7 and Netscape 4.76 on my work computer. Not kidding. Sometime this year we are getting upgraded to IE 8. Hopefully before they release IE 11.
Well my point wasn't that something like this has the potential, if handled properly, to allow hiring managers to configure the system with their own personal biases, rather than the HR morons' biases. Obviously, your company doesn't do this: it has instead allowed the HR fools to program the system with their biases, and the result is a disaster. Well what did you expect? If you allow the HR idiots to filter resumes, it doesn't matter if they do it on an individual basis, or they make an algorithm and allow a computer to do it automatically, the result is always going to be bad, because HR people are idiots who aren't able to do real jobs--that's why they're in HR, and allowing them to screen applications will always have a bad result.
At least with a system in place allowing someone to configure it to use their personal biases to filter resumes, if a company is smart, they could set it up so that the hiring managers set up these filters, rather than the HR morons. But that would require a company that has some intelligent executives which don't allow HR to do whatever they want, and most companies I've seen aren't like this; for some reason, it's pretty normal for companies to assume that HR personnel are somehow experts in hiring people in fields they don't understand at all, and then just allow them to have all the power in this process, even though everyone complains about it.
Hi there, I'm an I/O psychologist at Evolv. To dispel a few myths and FUD:
Hope that helps!
I see multiple differences here.
.3m pixel.
No thunderbolt, no firewire, no USB 3.0 listed.
No multi touch track pad, no back lit keyboard.
720p camera, asus only says
Magsafe power adapter, longer battery life
Also the mac runs windows, linux, AND OS X. The asus does not run OS X (without LOTS of effort to install and maintain)
The mb pro looks much much nicer.
All in all, quite a few differences. Add in all that stuff you missed, and you're nowhere near $749. The only two things it exceeds is hard drive size, and video card. You can get different set ups on the mb pro, but there is not point in discussing the asus any longer since it is no where near the specs of the mb pro you listed.
And guess what? At the same price point, most people would still take the ASUS. Why? Because the stuff that matters on it is better. It's hilarious you would bring up that crap though, because only a fanboi would even try to suggest that shit is worth even remotely $450.
But none of that matters, because most people shop based on their budget; they don't decide what features they want then go buy it. And the fact is, you simply can't buy a new Macbook for under $900, with ANY specs. If you're not too picky about the screen size, you can even get a PC with the same hardware specs as the Mac for around $400-$500, like this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312087R.
For practical purposes, same capabilities, and around a third of the price.
But since you insist on being an idiot fanboi, let's see what we can get in a PC for the same price as the Mac, shall we?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834127875
Hmm... way better screen resolution, much faster CPU, twice as much ram, way better graphics, twice as much HDD space and it's ALSO faster.
So yeah.
Why would you buy what is effectively just a dell for 3x the money with near useless software?
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
All I am saying is that you could do some sort of filtering before actually sitting down and reading every one in full. ie: stop reading when you see 2 blatant typos, don't read extremely poorly formatted resumes, don't read resumes that do not meet the requirements that you requested. You probably will filter out some perfectly good applicants... but there will be a higher percentage of good applicants in the remaining pool of resumes. Interview the remaining and if nobody fits, then go back to the stack of reject resumes.
Yeah, I agree. The best jobs I've held were as a result of an end around of HR people. For tech jobs most of them are useless, as are job development and recruitment people, and I live in Silicon Valley, and they still can't keep up with it.
I think that you will find that for many categories, HR types, simply do not have reliable criteria to select candidates. Hiring managers might as well use a random function. I wonder if anyone has studied this? I bet the HR types don't do much better than random choice.
If HR does not have a good list of criteria for the position, that's the fault of who is creating or filling the position. If HR is disregarding a good list of criteria, that should be taken above their level.
I appreciate your candor, and sympathize about the time taken from useful work to screen applicants, having myself been on hiring committees in the past. Since I know that I am far from perfect, i try to avoid the HR game because I'd much rather get my next job because the person who wants what I do got to know me, warts and all, and is not going to eliminate me from consideration because of some silly criterion. Choosing candidates randomly from a stack of resumes is almost more fair. It helps, then to have a network and only use the HR game as a secondary process to legally getting a job. That has worked for me in the past.
Some of the best web developers prefer Safari (including me) while others work with Chrome. Until recently, Safari was by far the fastest standards-based browser available. Chrome finally caught up and now a days speed differences are altogether arbitrary.
And I prefer to hire people who are objective, efficient, and value their work. See, I can troll too.
No, Macs are not 3x the money. This claim has always been unsupported. I was shopping for a DELL recently. The only one I could find that compared to my MacBook Air's performance and price point, weighed twice as much, had less battery life, slower video card, and was a bulky plastic piece of shit.
I don't know what line of work you're in what software you require. As a web developer, there is very little software for Windows or Linux that helps me streamline my work. Hell, there's not even a single decent editor available for Windows.