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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?
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
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.
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.
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.
"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
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.
...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.
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
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
Do you mean "know-it-all"? If you used Safari, you probably would have caught that.
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 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.
Short answer: because the people doing the screening have absolutely no idea of the skill set that's actually required to perform the job. All they know is that the hiring manager supplied them with a laundry list of things that Joe did for the company before he left -- likely because of boredom and there being no chance for career advancement.
Long answer: Because they'd have to actually hire you, run you through the onboarding process, and put you in the position to evaluate your performance. In the meantime, the recruiter has been paid 25-30% of your salary as a fee. If you don't work out, the company would have to fight to get their fee back. My understanding is that many -- most? -- recruiters agree to refund that fee if the candidate turns out to be a complete bozo, it's still a hassle and the employer would, I'm sure, prefer to avoid if they can, hence the ridiculous requirements with insane years of experience, specific software versions, and so on. The downside is that the hiring manager winds up going through a much, much longer hiring process -- along with all the other staffers who participate in the interview process who are, frankly, getting more than a little pissed off over how long they've been doing Joe's job while the hiring process drags on and on. For some reason, nobody at the company seems to notice this. Or they realize there's a problem but don't give a damn because it doesn't affect the HR person's job.
I saw an open position at a company where a friend's ex works advertised for over a year. Imagine what that's doing to the workload of people who are filling in for that open position. I never did learn from my friend whether they actually filled that position or whether they just divvied up the work for everyone else to do and saved the company the salary/benefits. Personally, if someone has all the years of experience and broad exposure to all the hardware and software that employers -- or HR people -- are demanding nowadays, I'd be wondering why they aren't looking for a higher level job and not a simple parallel move where the only thing that's changing is the company that's paying them. "Wow! We're impressed that you did X, Y, and Z for your employer for 5-8 years. How would you like doing the exact same thing for us?" Doesn't sound so tempting to me.
But I sense we're drifting off the topic of browsers, aren't we. (heh heh)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
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.
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.
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
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
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
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?
What's wrong with tight dresses :)
They're hard to reach up under to scratch your balls.