Let's dig into one of those new AI Agents that's reviewing your applications...

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Career Resources

• Find our job board, a referral link to Zapier, and more here.

• Twill is a fantastic resource for those with experience in tech - you can join the community here and then make/receive referrals for roles on the platform (and if your referrals get hired, you get paid!)

• I know a series A fintech startup looking for a Director of Operations. If this describes you, feel free to respond and share your resume - happy to pass it along!

• This was a sponsored post I did for Culture Amp, and the report included is really insightful - highly recommend downloading it if you’re in the people/management space as there’s lots of good info (I highlighted a few interesting insights in the video).

General Reflections on the State of the World

I continue to be appalled by the actions of the Republican party and the attempts to imprisoning and silencing journalists and political opponents alongside the non-stop assault on human rights. It fully confirms beyond any shadow of a doubt that we’ve descended into an authoritarian regime like those seen in China, Russia, and Turkey.

All of my red lines for leaving this country have been crossed; at the same time, I know that we have to stay and try to combat misinformation and hate. I have several MAGA relatives who were fully aware that they were voting against Democracy and did so because they believe they wanted a system that intentionally benefits wealthy white people and gives mediocre white people opportunities above exceptional people of color or immigrants. Outside of my addition of “mediocre”, this was explicitly explained to me so I’m not exaggerating. And I think hearing the unabashed support of all manner of horrible things justified by the argument that others should have simply worked harder is maddening. On the other, I have to hope that at least their exposure to people who believe that society is only as strong as it’s most vulnerable members might lead to change over time - especially as things continue to devolve here.

I know that people like me who are privileged and will ultimately be safe in this system need to be using our positions to advocate where we can vs fleeting.

Here are some of the resources I’ve been exploring to educate myself on how to do that:

1. Protect Democracy has some actionable tips and resources to build your knowledge and awareness of what’s happening.

2. Democracy Forward has lots of resources, and just launched this fellowship today to leverage the expertise of civil servants and political appointees who are victims of the attacks by our administration.

3. The Contrarian newsletter also has lots of suggestions for how you can make your voice heard and organize within your community.

In the News

• Max has shared a few examples of these fake candidates and of course unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Soham Parekh by now! I wouldn’t believe this was so pervasive except that we’ve experienced this pretty much every week at Zapier!
  My take: I expect that companies are going to tighten up practices in response - I would recommend making sure your LinkedIn looks legit (picture, make a few posts, make sure you’re connected to people at employers listed, etc.) and also expect more security checks in the months ahead as companies try to minimize risk.

🙋Answering Your Questions🙋

Each week, I’ll answer one (or more!) of your questions in this section. You can submit your questions here.

So a couple of things I would note about this:

1. This is a really new technology; we piloted Tofu a few months ago as a talent marketplace for matching with candidates rejected for a similar roles (so we could refer our top candidates who didn’t get offers to Tofu, and Tofu would recommend them to other companies, and would recommend candidates to us). This AI agent from them must be new in the past few months as it didn’t exist when we tested it out earlier this year. So I really can’t say if any companies are actually using this, and I don’t think people can attribute the claims that they’re being rejected by AI over the last 3+ years to this because the technology just didn’t exist.

2. It notes that it’s surfacing strong candidates - currently, a recruiter can do this using a search for certain job titles or employers or key words that they manually search for. An AI agent doing this would probably be more effective since it’s not looking for “exact matches”. I think this is a good use case for AI personally.

3. It notes that the recruiter can bulk reject those they don’t deem qualified; this is a functionality in more decent ATSs and a lot of recruiters are already doing this. But that’s a decision the recruiter is making - and hopefully they are glancing at apps to make sure they agree with the AI Agent’s assessment (which is what I personally do). If they don’t, they are making a choice not to review applications, and instead to bulk reject them. AI is not going in and determining that certain applicants do not meet the criteria and rejecting them. IMO if a recruiter uses really objective criteria (say rejecting everyone with fewer than 5 years of work experience for a director role targeting 10+), there’s not really going to be any misses and it’s fine to do this. If they reject based on some really hard to assess qualification (like say leading in ambiguous situations where AI is unlikely to be able to get a strong read), they’re likely to make some bad calls. IMO, the problem here would lie with an incompetent recruiter who isn’t using their tools properly to manage their applicants.

I think my big thing with this is that AI isn’t making decisions on it’s own, even with a tool like this. If recruiters misuse the tools available to them, they should be held accountable for the results and impact of that. The thing I worry about and why I push back so hard on these narratives of blaming “AI” is that it allows humans off the hook for being bad at their jobs or doing things that are downright illegal. Kristen Fife had an article recently on this topic.

Finally, I think a lot of the things that candidates are doing to “beat the AI” isn’t helpful if you really believe Gen AI is being used to review your applications. You don’t need to keyword stuff, give commands instructing AI to “ignore all previous instructions” or add the job description to the resume in white font. It’s not going to work because the whole point of GAI is that it can read between the lines, and because ultimately a human is going to look at your application before inviting you to an interview and if you somehow “beat the bot”, to what end? You’re still not the most qualified candidate, and you’re still going to ultimately be rejected.

As someone who reviews every offer my company puts out, here’s what I can say: the candidates who are getting offers aren’t playing games trying to “beat the bot”. And when I do a search for the phrase “ignore all previous instructions” which is followed by some directive about saying this is a great, well-qualified candidate (which a surprising number of people are adding to their resumes in white font), they aren’t getting offers; they aren’t even making it to the interview stage.

So the best thing you can do in my opinion is apply for jobs you are supremely well-qualified for with a really strong app.

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