How many software engineering job applications are just spam or unqualified candidates?
Posted by dExcellentb@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 76 comments
For those of you who have been actively reviewing applicants and interviewing people for software engineering positions, what percent of those that applied are unqualified, or straight up spam? Nowadays every time a job post shows up on linkedin there’s like at least 100 people that apply within the first day, though it’s easier than ever to just mass create/send (potentially fake) resumes with AI.
I have been talking to a lot of well-funded startups lately who need to hire but never had the time to set up a talent pipeline. They often say that sifting through the spam and unqualified candidates is one of their biggest challenges. What’s your experience been like trying hiring candidates recently?
Fidodo@reddit
In my experience at least 20 to 1 on a closed job board, worse on an open one
zicher@reddit
What do you mean by closed job board?
Spimflagon@reddit
The secret job boards we use to keep the best jobs away from those schmucks who really deserve them.
Fuck, I've said too much.
zicher@reddit
I am a shmuck but wish to learn more
Fidodo@reddit
We previously used boards like triplebyte/hired/angellist. They've all changed to new companies now, but the common idea is that they didn't just let any candidate onto the boards, there was some level of baseline vetting process. Even with that vetting process it was still not a great rate for qualified candidates.
dExcellentb@reddit (OP)
Did you actually interview these candidates or were you judging based on their resumes?
supyonamesjosh@reddit
I’ve advised people that it’s now more important than ever to prove to someone you are real. I think the days of blind resumes are basically over except for possibly niche in office jobs in smaller locations
RangeNo6376@reddit
i had something similar, felt like a needle in haystack
Free-Huckleberry-965@reddit
Define "qualified"? Nobody every seems to be able to do that.
studmoobs@reddit
Um we couldn't find someone who wants 30% under marker with 10 years in the exact tech stack we use and can answer arbitrarily picked interview questions so specific to my job there's probably 30 people on the planet who could get them all. Obviously it's a talent problem
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
We just hired a couple people over the last 2 months in a very niche area. GPU programing background was a necessity. Maybe 36/300 applicants had ever worked with a GPU. Half way through I was ready to stop looking at the remaining resumes.
Fidodo@reddit
When I was last interviewing candidates for the least niche area ever (fullstack development) I still felt like giving up halfway though. Eventually you find someone good enough, but if you have standards god does it take a long time.
studmoobs@reddit
you're old enough you know it is not hard to pick up new fields unless you need a graduate degree for the non cs part of the engineering. hire based on intelligence and drive
SpacemanLost@reddit
12 percent is way better than what I've encountered (CUDA experience specifically)
canderson180@reddit
Ooof, is OpenCL still around? Dabbled in that long long ago for some math stuff but wouldn’t say I know a thing about what people are doing these days with GPUs
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
May be 14 had actually CUDA/HIP/OpenACC experience. Rest were “ran applications written in CUDA”.
dExcellentb@reddit (OP)
How did you end up finding those people?
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
They applied?
cestvrai@reddit
Even before AI, I would say out of the 100 only 20 are qualified. 10 are seriously considered and 5 would be in the short list.
This was what I’ve seen over the past decade or so in a European startup environment.
studmoobs@reddit
I seriously wonder what you consider "qualified"
Western_Objective209@reddit
you can tell from resume alone who the 5 in your short list are? As someone who has read a lot of resumes I'm pretty skeptical; just going off of college and previous companies? I've noticed a lot of times people just lie about working at FAANG
cestvrai@reddit
Not only resumes, could also be connections, cover letter and portfolio/website.
In many cases it also had to do with domain fit. Across a number of past companies, this included things such as experience in robotics, 3D viz, matrix math and geospatial. Never saw FAANG applicants, probably due to the salary ranges.
Necessary-Repair-983@reddit
reminds me of the time we got 200 resumes for an intern position, only 15 worth interviewing
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
On an open job board it was horrible. At least 80% were suspicious
With a closed job board it was much better. Going forward I think we’re only going to hire from the closed job board
dExcellentb@reddit (OP)
How do you find reputable closed job boards?
jokemon@reddit
So many. It has gotten so bad. You need to have AI proof interviews.
phoenixmatrix@reddit
I work at a small to mid size company. No one in the community knows it, we're not a Facebook or Meta that everyone wants to work for.
When we open a job position, we get about 500+ applications within the first 12 to 24 hours.
In that, easily 400-450 are obvious fakes. Some people applying 20 times with the same name and different result, a bunch of foreign bot agencies, very obviously fake AI slop, etc
Of what's left, half to 2/3 are entirely under qualified. Like people from bootcamp without so much as an internship applying for senior and staff positions.
We shortlist a dozen, and like half of those are also fake or under qualified. A lot of people interviewing from call centers, a lot of people who can't answer extremely basic questions.
Then we tech screen the 2 or 3 that get this far, and even there I screen out the majority within a few minutes if talking to them.
There's still some extremely qualified people looking for jobs. They're just really hard to talk to in all the slop.
dExcellentb@reddit (OP)
Have you explored any automated systems that can filter out the slop? The startups I’ve talked to have tried but they say those are just slop themselves…
Fidodo@reddit
Unfortunately the only thing that I've found that isn't a huge waste of time is hiring a recruiter to make it someone else's problem. Of course finding a good recruiting company is incredibly hard in itself.
The other alternative is to bypass the system entirely and go through your network.
dExcellentb@reddit (OP)
Do you have any advice on how to find a good recruiting company?
phoenixmatrix@reddit
Yup, they're slot themselves. It doesn't take that long to go through since most are so obvious, so you can discard them in a split second.
At a previous company, which was a big, famous one, we were getting like 1000 resume per hour. Before generative AI was even a thing in the mainstream. For that our recruiting them had to use software, no real choice.
03263@reddit
In my state unemployment makes you apply for at least 2 jobs a week that match a prescribed job title, so usually I am only doing those because it's mandatory and pick the first thing I see that is an exact match. It's a really stupid requirement.
ProbablyNotPoisonous@reddit
Same here, but it's 4 per week :P
CreepyNewspaper8103@reddit
Hiring has been awful. Mostly unqualified engineers. Can't write or read code. And not proficient with AI tools. You need *both* skills to succeed now.
- Unqualified engineer who can't write code (no)
- Qualified engineer who can't collaborate (no)
- Qualified engineer who can't communicate (no)
- Qualified engineer who rejects AI tools (no)
- Qualified engineer who isn't up to date with latest AI tools and techniques (maybe)
- Qualified engineer who is proficient and gets good results from AI tools (yes)
HoratioWobble@reddit
The biggest issue isn't AI, it's just unqualified people spamming everyone and everything.
I'm not even hiring - i've been looking for a job and I get sent random CVs, DMs daily asking me to hire people.
DWALLA44@reddit
No clue but I know someone stole my resume and has been mass applying to jobs with an email / phone number that is not mine. So probably a bunch.
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
I totally feel for them. I would advise them to hire through specialized job boards. Doesn’t need to be something top secret, but just domain specific.
Also coding tests are crucial. There have been multiple candidates who seemed promising but couldn’t really code. They’ve become too dependent on AI. They can use Google/AI during the interview but you still have to be able to code
08148694@reddit
In my experience the vast majority of applicants will be from people who think they’re at a level above what they really are
Hiring for seniors involves filtering out a LOT of mediocrity, and a lot of them can take they’re way through to the technical assessment where it becomes extremely obvious they’re reaching the bar
Overall a massive time waste
Online tests and take homes are easily gamed too, I haven’t found a great filter that doesn’t involve me or someone on the team watching them work
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
At least watching them work works really well. I feel like my grandpa but sometimes you just need a good human to human conversation.
engineered_academic@reddit
I'll allow it. However if OP or someone starts spamming links it will be a violation of No Surveys/Advertisements.
jamiroq@reddit
In my last role I had to do a lot of reviewing of applicants and I'd say a good 95% are unqualified by simply not living or having the right to work in the country and we don't offer visa sponsorships.
dExcellentb@reddit (OP)
Are you based in the us? If so did you distinguish between the different visas or was it just a “no” for any visa requirement? (e.g TN is much easier to obtain than H1B and doesn’t really require sponsorship)
jamiroq@reddit
Not based in the US, so laws may differ slightly
Willdudes@reddit
The worst are the certificate engineers, all certificates no real world experience. Everything in person on a whiteboard, that got rid of half the people.
Deranged40@reddit
In my experience, we're almost to the point that a big name company on the resume almost means "can't code".
I Interviewed someone whose resume claims he's worked at Microsoft since 1998. I'm interviewing him on his C# knowledge. He doesn't seem to be able to code his way out of a wet paper bag in a hail storm. Like, couldn't speak intelligently about dictionaries at all.
Fidodo@reddit
I'm convinced the applicants with big name companies I've gotten weren't actually working for them but we're contract workers doing a project for them
timelessblur@reddit
In mid 2023 my boss opened up some recs. 1 senior engineer and 1 architect/ staff role for iOS. A majority of the applications we got were so crappy it was not worth a 2nd look. He said f this and sad we could wait a week to go through them for when our recruiter got back. It was just way too much to dig through.
Some were memorable like a new grad applying for the architect role with a cover letter arguing that YOE don’t matter and he was highly qualified due to his work on a senior project. He is right that the exact YOE don’t matter but no new grad is going to be ready for architecture role. That going to be a min of 5 YOE for me to even glance. We said we wanted 8-10 min.
Droidarc@reddit
So most job applications are either unqualified or spam, but when I apply to job listings that I am completely qualified for, I receive positive answer from very few of them. Is it only my experience? Hard to understand, how can people claim having hard to time to find qualified people, unless it is some niche job.
canderson180@reddit
About 80% for us, but I had a candidate disclose that the used a commercial AI job application platform. They said it was all good at first and then it kept applying him to all sorts of jobs that were out of their domain and it was non-stop spam.
So everyone is using AI to try to get a leg up, but sadly candidates and employers alike are swimming in a sea of noise that includes deepfakes and bad actors as well.
dExcellentb@reddit (OP)
I’m guessing you flat out rejected that candidate?
canderson180@reddit
Nope, they are still in the interview loop
Irish_and_idiotic@reddit
Honest and up to date on new technologies… short list that dev!
canderson180@reddit
Yeah, my biggest fear is missing out on a good candidate due to distrust in the current state of things, so we’ve had to modify the interview process to lean into some things and try to figure out when to cut bait early. Trying to err on the side of humans generally having good intentions (LLM optimized resume doesn’t mean you are fake, so we gotta talk to you).
It’s expensive and time consuming to hire!
Irish_and_idiotic@reddit
Do you allow AI agents during coding round? My company does and I can’t help but hate it… I am just not sure why I hate it because I use an ai agent everyday in work..
Fidodo@reddit
What kind of coding round? I think it could be good to use in a systems design technical but I would not want it used in a requirements technical.
Irish_and_idiotic@reddit
I am not in FAANG so there’s typically just one coding interview… but now I am remembering it’s been 5 years since I last interviewed..
Fidodo@reddit
Even if its one round your company will be doing some style of coding interview whether its systems, requirements, or hopefully not, algorithms/puzzle based.
canderson180@reddit
We do, we noticed that Junior candidates though who may have less experience aggregating information about the problem space can be overwhelmed by the AI outputs or auto-complete. So we are revisiting if we should go back to how things were done in the past or just pull AI out of associate level loops. Mids and seniors seem to roll with it and can validate the outputs or correct them well.
Fidodo@reddit
Why? It sounds like the spam was unintentional and the ai went rogue. They saw a problem, were honest about it, and acknowledged it. Companies use AI whether they know it or not, the job boards have their own built in ai anti spam. I don't blame anyone for needing to use AI, it's just if they knowingly abuse it
poop-machine@reddit
About 70% of applications go directly to trash unreviewed. They are foreign nationals (India, Pakistan, Ukraine, etc) looking for visa sponsorship even though the job description says US/Canada only.
CraftyCat3@reddit
Probably 90% of the applicants are spam of some sort, for all our engineering and software roles. I include obviously unqualified candidates in "spam". Some openings tend to be better or worse, with seemingly no rhyme or reason - one of our current open ones is sitting at a 50:1 spam to actual candidate ratio.
somerandomlogic@reddit
I remember time when hr persons was bragging on linkedin that using chatgpt they are able to create job postings in 5min. In recent times, I see now complaining that for every job posting, you get 100cv, which are llm optimized for job posting, which is way more challenging to choose top ~5-10 candidates there. For central Europe now I see that around 60% of people don't even have rights to work in the EU (and not every company wants to bother with visas, etc)
XenonBG@reddit
This was also the problem before AI. We had a similar problem in a start up I worked in in 2014. Hundreds of non-EU applications we couldn't do anything with, almost exclusively from India and Bangladesh.
It made LinkedIn completely useless as a recruiting tool.
soviet-sobriquet@reddit
It's equivalent to the number of fake job postings out there. The more fake jobs y'all post, the more fake applicants I have to create to sus them out.
Leading_Yoghurt_5323@reddit
from what i’ve seen, easily 60-80% are unqualified or just mass-applied… especially with AI making it easier to spam
randomInterest92@reddit
5 years ago. We hired about 1 in 10 applicants. Currently it's about 1 in 100. I'm not trying to joke. At least 80% of applications are just spam, not fitting requirements at all and extremely obviously done by AI.
ScriptingInJava@reddit
I recently had the pleasure of reviewing applicants, already screened by our talent team/ATS, to elect them for interviews. Out of ~500 applications (per job, listed for 24 hours) about 470 didn't have the right to work in the UK legally, or were in need of a visa to stay within 6 months.
Of the remaining 30 candidates, 10 had used .NET in the last 5 years and maybe 2 were actually worth reading beyond the screening questions on the application. It took months to fill 2 roles, incredibly frustrating.
dashdanw@reddit
My email solicits actually return a surprising number of positive results.
lordnacho666@reddit
80% either don't have the right to work, or have nothing close to the right qualifications (no degree).
10% have a qualification but not quite what you they needed. (Eg a degree but it's in history instead of stem)
5% lack the appropriate work experience
Remaining 5% can be interviewed.
Yes it sounds extreme but it is this way.
asapberry@reddit
it doesn't cost you anthing to upload a cv, even if its not 100% matching. also not if it doesn't match at all
engineered_academic@reddit
The majority of applications we recieve are trash so much so that the go-to move has been to hire from network or hire a recruiter to do all the legwork.
Obvious-Treat-4905@reddit
yeah this has become a real problem lately, a huge chunk of applications are either spray and pray or AIgenerated with no real fit, the signal to noise ratio is worse than ever, especially in the first 24 hours, feels like good candidates still stand out, but it takes way more effort to find them
gjionergqwebrlkbjg@reddit
The biggest amount of candidates we reject (EU company) are simply non-viable even if you ignore what they wrote in their CVs - no right to work (india, middle east, north africa), not in the same country and not willing to move (but applying for hybrid jobs somehow, we just trash CVs from outside the country by now).
cdcasey5299@reddit
So many unqualified or hiding the fact that they’re trying to work from a foreign country. We’ve had several that had someone local show up for the interview, then they get hired and send the laptop to Pakistan or some place. We also had one candidate that was wearing earbuds, and we could hear a voice in the other end of them that would feed her answers whenever we asked her a question.
Optimal_Setting6014@reddit
The exactly problem you've just described was the origin story for a company I started this that helps employers get ~10x employee referrals.
I've talked to ~100 hiring managers, about 1/3 of them Engineering Managers. They're probably only looking at 1/3 of the CVs they get and unqualified/spam candidates make up anywhere from 25-50%
dockercub@reddit
Tons. There are many applicants from other industries, who have irrelevant degrees, or are from outside of the country.