tangentially, i was discussing linkedin and job applications with a couple of friends, and my takeaway is that the hiring process for most firms is actually paradoxically making itself worse. consider how a resume/cv is required in most cases but a cover letter is not. this just results in a flood of applications for which you struggle to establish any sort of context on why a person would be a good fit. even worse are applicant tracking systems which downrank you for not using specific keywords

like, okay, congratulations, you’ve drained the soul out of the whole thing. good job!

imo the ideal is that a firm should describe accurately and precisely what it is trying to do, and a candidate should describe convincingly how they can fulfill the responsibilities. the “application form” attempts to normalize this into structured data, but it also normalizes out the human factor. it would almost be more effective to shoot them an email or something… if not for the massive volume of noise.

having a database of potential candidates that you can query for leads is useful, but it would be interesting to consider a model where you basically swap the application requirement around so that the resume/cv is optional and the cover letter is required. like, as a thought experiment.

maybe i have no idea what i’m talking about, but it is incredibly demoralizing to get filtered out by automated systems to the point that i have had more relative success with direct messaging than in applying.

@trwnh

Seriously, second post of yours in some days where I wonder if we are the same person: https://raphael.lullis.net/job-sites/

The problem is that cover letters are also easy to game. Any LLM nowadays can take a job description and write a convincing cover letter that is suitable for each different application.

The whole job application system is broken. One of the things that I'd like to build on https://cupid.careers is a system to fit between people and their skillset.