Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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
Nothing. Because you couldn't have gotten your online application put into their proprietary system.
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.
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
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.
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)
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