The problem is the job market has basically priced in exaggerations on resumes. People exaggerate all the time and don’t get punished for it.
If you don’t exaggerate, you may even miss out on opportunities and hamper your career goals whatever they may be, because they already assume you exaggerate and already account for it when reading your resume. And if you don’t exaggerate? Well, they’re happy to pay you less than they would’ve.
Certainly at least in tech in the Bay Area, fake it till you make it is the norm. I’ve met plenty of people with amazing resumes and references just to see them not be as good as advertised.
A job I applied to a year ago made me do a general logic test. It’s the only job that’s ever made me do one. I think I spent like half the time on one question because I was so confused. I genuinely believe there was a typo. Anyways, it’s the closest I’ve come to putting my foot down and asking for accomodations because holy shit.
So, I ace the part relevant to my job but failed that part bad. Get this: they say they want me to retake it before giving the results to the potential client. HUH? If the test is bullshit, why make me do it at all? AND GET THIS. I retake it. I’ve now wasted three hours of my 2023 holiday season on this. The client rejects me because I didn’t have experience with some random technology. WTF??? I think I even asked before all this why don’t they show my resume to the client before the test and they said because they like to give a full file. I was so angry. It’s probably the most unprofessional email I’ve sent, but I literally sent one saying something like “Then why didn’t you show them my resume before making me waste three hours???” Seriously. They didn’t even talk to me. Which is fine, I’m not saying they should have to, but for the contracting company to make me waste so much time… And to make me retake it (proving the whole thing is BS). Wow.
Anyways, I’m employed now, thank goodness.
My boss’s boss said everyone should be happy on Friday because it’s bonus day. I’m my boss’s only contracted employee. I think I don’t get one. I’m very tempted to just send him an email like “was I supposed to see a bonus in my paycheck? Blah mentioned it.” But I don’t wanna seem passive aggressive.
I took a job as a medical assistant. I was not certified. It was during COVID, and the manager was woefully understaffed. I had zero experience or training. They still hired me, because in her words “we can teach you everything you need to know, and your resume demonstrated you were a good learner so that’s all that matters.” (I had taught myself Chinese and coding, and put that on the resume).
I worked my butt off, and after two years when I had to leave to go back to school they offered me a massive raise, more training to get me a promotion as an actual technician to start making 80k/year, and they even said when I finished grad school I could be taken on as a partner and own the business (it was a small clinic). They wanted to do anything to get me to stay.
All these companies these days care too much about certs. They don’t know how to hire. They should look for resume’s that demonstrate learning, initiative, responsibility, and commitment. Because at the end of the day: almost anyone can learn any job that isn’t a PhD-level.
Like, having managers be required to have a college degree is moronic.
As someone who has read a lot of cvs, i wish more people thought like this. We didn’t list the requirements just for fun. Quit wasting people’s time by applying for stuff when you don’t match the requirements
Blame all the companies with ridiculously high requirements just to hire people who don’t meet all of them. It’s a common advice to apply even when you don’t meet all the reqs, because it works out so often.
As someone who has applied to a lot of jobs, I wish more job posters thought like you. It would take me 1 minute to find you a job posting for an IT position where they ask for a minimum number of years using a technology that hasn’t even existed for that many years.
I think this happens because some manager says “we want an expert in this technology” but then the job poster slaps some arbitrary number on that like “oh 5-10 years should be enough for an expert” with no awareness that it’s a brand new technology.
It would take 15 seconds to look up “<technology> release date” and use that as a reference.
I mean to be fair, it’s a struggle between terms like “expert” or “senior” being too ambiguous and a time interval of experience being a poor indicator of actual proficiency. The corporate world doesn’t care though and ties the two together as a general rule because middle management isn’t smart enough to tell the difference. Thus, it boils down to “we’re hiring a senior level, it takes X years to reach that at our company, thus we expect someone to have that many years of experience at any other company doing a job similar to what we do”. Some HR peon then words it like “you need X years of experience using [exact technologies we expect applicant to use]”.
To tie this back to the OP: Most (?) people understand this is what is happening in basically all job postings where they list years of required experience to match their expected proficiency (i.e. I’m as good as someone who has been doing this for X years), but there are people who interpret this literally and think that if they have X-0.1 years of experience in that exact thing that they will be automatically rejected because it said X is required and they do not have X.
Thank you for your valuable insight.
Bro… Your asking HR. Curb your expectations.
Yeah, don’t ask me my opinion of HR. Biggest boot lickers in the entire universe, change my mind.
I don’t understand why op thinks they are special for going through this workflow. Women are way less likely than men to ignore job requirements when applying for jobs and many many people have to be reminded that job requirements are fluffy. Are all these people “neurodivergent”? We seem to want to apply this term everywhere for some reason.
I don’t think that op thinks they’re special by going through the workflow. I think op thinks that the workflow lands differently on them because of their condition. I think op thinks that it’s related to their condition because no one else seems to be complaining about this and so maybe neurotypicals aren’t as bothered by this.
I think most people are like this but neurodivergent people have trouble coming to terms with breaking the rules. As in they see an incongruity between the stated rule and the way everyone behaves. What OP is talking about is textbook neurodivergence behavior though I’m sure other people experience this to some degree.
As a neurodivergent, this. Exactly. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I literally cannot because I’d quickly ramble on and talk about seemingly unimportant things for like, three sentences, but only use commas, so that it looks/reads as a single sentence, then ultimately say what you said, but I would say it worse somehow.
I’m ADHD. AMA?
I used to do that with elipses until I was scathingly mocked on a BBS when I was a teenager. It takes me longer but it did make me better at writing for others to read on the internet.
Yeah, this is an oddly common sentiment amongst those that make neurodivergence their personality; which is funny because it’s more common to be neurodivergent than neurotypical. While it’s usually said that 20% of people are neurodivergent, it’s actually more than 50% when you include everything that constitutes neurodivergence and even account for significant overlap.
I think “neurotypical” by now means “I wanna say ‘normie I look down upon’, but I don’t want to sound like an incel”
Nope. I’m neurodivergent, I know a lot of neurodivergent people. We all kind of gravitated to eachother over time. Some are ADHD, like me, some are on the spectrum for autism, and there’s a bunch more that I simply cannot list because the list is pretty long.
I can tell you that zero of the neurodivergent people I know use the term “neurotypical” to mean anything like what you suggest. In every context it’s meant to exemplify the lack of mental struggle that some people have in their daily life in contrast to what most neurodivergent people experience.
Eg, anxiety and paralysis when contemplating or engaging in anything remotely social. For some neurodivergents, such activity evokes a very strong reaction. Some neurotypicals also experience something similar, usually less severe at least; but the experience is not unique to us.
The most common derogatory use of “neurotypical” that I’ve seen is regarding empathy, or the lack thereof, from people who have not experienced a major mental health event, and are so neurotypical that they cannot even fathom the struggles of people who are neurodivergent.
You all don’t understand, then victim blame us and call us lazy, when our brain chemistry literally prevents us from making any useful progress on stuff. Then there’s a whole swath of you that shames us for using meds to help correct the discomfort of being wired differently in a world that isn’t designed to accommodate, or even sympathise with us.
Now we’re being, more or less, accused of using “neurotypical” as a slur to hide that we’re incels?
Seriously?
What if they meant it from the perspective of a neurotypical?
If they want to take offense at what is essentially a synonym for “normal, societally accepted brain function” the sure lol
are y’all actually gatekeeping diversity?
It’s not lying as much as it’s advertising. If they’re asking about your greatest weakness, tell them. Just don’t neglect to mention how you mitigate that weakness too, and are improving. Don’t let your answer end on “I’m a disorganized mess”, end it on “so in the last year, I’ve started building and using checklists and it’s been really effective”.
In the same way, be up front if they ask about the criteria you don’t meet. But consider your entire answer, again, you can say something like “I actually haven’t worked in that language before, but I’ve done lots of work in Python and Java, so I’m confident I can pick it up quickly as needed”. If they don’t ask, then it probably wasn’t really that important of a criteria to them, so you shouldn’t waste your interview time talking about it either.
Don’t volunteer all your worst traits, you only have an hour, so focus on describing your strengths as often as you can. Nobody expects to completely understand you as a person in one hour, they’re specifically asking you to come in and advertise yourself. Instead, read between the lines in the listing (I.E. Things mentioned in the job description or title are likely more important than something in a single bullet point. Look for repetition, or how much they talk about each requirement.). Figure out what the “customer” wants that you’re good at, and ensure you emphasize it, repeatedly. Define clear takeaways and make sure they know what you’re offering, and will actually remember it too.
And practice your answers to many questions. Come up with your best anecdotes for “a time you resolved a conflict with a coworker” and all that nonsense in advance, so that you can confidently segue into those stories that best emphasize your takeaways when asked. Do some research on the company to come up with a good answer to questions like “why do you want to work here?”. The answer doesn’t have to be your top priority, which is obviously “a paycheque”, but just append an unsaid “instead of somewhere else” and answer honestly, because people are good at detecting insincerity. You likely haven’t applied to every company on earth, so tell them why you chose them.
Lastly, like an advertiser, don’t be afraid to segue from other questions into your prepared answers. “Yeah, I’ve always loved X, that’s why I wanted to work here actually, I’d heard a bit about how you were getting involved with X, but with this interesting twist, and thought that sounded like something I’d really enjoy working on”. The interview questions are designed to get you talking about yourself, it’s not a survey where the strict questions are all that matter, and you can simply joke about it if the question comes up later.
A lot of this is tied into rhetoric. Rhetoric is a skill. You don’t need to lie. You need to tell the truth good.
saving this for future reference. I’ve told this to many of friends over the years, but you’ve laid it out more beautifully than I ever did
As an autistic person I relate to this so hard it isn’t funny.
As a non-autistic person, it’s also incredibly annoying. Job hunting has always been a really stupid system with lots of really stupid rules of thumbs.
I have a stable job that I like.
Sometimes I think I should go to interviews just to make recruiters feel insecure, “your business is not up to my expectations” “what do you mean you don’t provide flexible remote working?” “Your paycheck is just too small for me, sorry”.
I would get a laugh of of it and probably would help some fella by lowering this fuckers ego.
I do this all the time. Keeps my interview skills sharp. Plus you never know when somewhere will wind up making you an insane offer.
How do you do something like this when most interviews happen during work hours?
Your motives are horrible. Hiring managers in any org larger than a few hundred people have very little control over anything you mentioned. So you’re just taking time away from other applicants and time away from the needs of the people who already work at a place in order to satisfy your pettiness.
If you actually did this rather than just wanting to, you would be the bad guy in the situation.
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In every instance where I’ve been reading cvs for a job, the requirements have always been requirements. If we had nice to have features, they were listed as nice to have.
I work at a university. When hiring, if someone doesn’t have one of the “Required Job Qualifications”, they are immediately disqualified. We can wiggle a little if we can infer one of the qualifications from other experience, but that is pretty frowned upon.
If we have things that we’d like to have but are not required, they are listed as “Preferred Job Qualifications”. We then create a rating scale for each based on their relative importance and grade candidates one each of the preferred qualifications. We use the resulting rankings to determine who we will interview. We MUST interview every candidate above the lowest ranked candidate we interview.
When I have hired people, I rarely find someone that meets all the requirements. I think a wishlist is a good way to look at it. If someone hits 9/10 things at best and I need someone for the job, then they get it.
Ultimately, there is no standard way to do this as it is up to the person doing the hiring.
I’d also add that someone once specifically applied in a way that I said not to apply, but I was wrong and receiving the application through those means was actually very helpful and they met the other reqs so I hired them.
So much of this stuff is just based on intuition and your ability to demonstrate certain technical skills.
Those HR people who make the listing don’t understand most of it anyway.
“I’m looking fora Data Analyst”
“Gotcha, we put up an ad for Data Science”
“No, Data Analyst, that’s diff-”
“Here, we already got some applicants”
“They’ll be very disappointed to learn that I’m not interested in their AI skills”
I’m learning how many names there are now for “person who can shoot and edit video” since I last needed to look for a job in my field. To the point that I suddenly find a new keyword and there’s like 10 more jobs I can apply for.
Oh lord, as a 25 year industry vet in everything audio and video, that’s been with my current company for a looooong time, this bothers me. Out of interest what kinda whacky names are you seeing for this kinda roll?
Weird-ass shit like “Lead Creative” and “Social Marketing Executive”
It’s also ridiculous how often I see „Java“ instead of „JavaScript“ in job listings.
Edit: Not trying to judge Java here, this is purely about recruiters not knowing the difference, posting jobs for Java devs when they need JS devs
Agreed, why haven’t we killed java off? It’s terrible and there are replacements. At least with JavaScript it’s terrible but a monopoly.
Maybe they have a ton of different machines and need an app that works in any environment?
I dont know why they do it and I dont care to find out. I just know I apply even if I dont match the complete criteria. If I tick off 60-70% of what they want, I’ll apply. We are people, not machines. If something doesnt match but is close to it, we try and make it work. This is how the real world works. There are multiple factors at play and they can work in your favour.
I got my first job which required a college degree and some experience. I had personal (non-professional) experience and no degree. Showed an interest in the work they did, told them I work on my own things from time to time and got hired. What probably worked in my favor was a lack of other applicants showing the same degree of interest. I even told them I’d graduate in a year and we made it a requirement. Never got my degree and worked there for 7 years. No lying, some luck and showing an interest. Same strategy worked two more times (out of two), 1st interview and “wanna come work for us?”. Its easier the second time since experience is built up already. And im not some extroverted silver tongued devil or anything. The right interviewer at the right time.
Neurotypical people are more “morally flexible.” Which sounds like hypocricy and corruption to me. Assume NT’s have ultirior motives and it becomes a easier to read between the lines.
That’s a rather uncharitable, and frankly conspiratorial, way of viewing things lol
“This is my experience.”
“You’re wrong.”
If directed at me I’m very curious where you got the impression that they said it was their opinion considering they literally said “Neurotypical people are more morally flexible” and at no point in their comment indicated this was an opinion.
Here’s an opinion: it’s generally good to read a comment in it’s entirety before fighting other people‘s battles and being a useless contrarian.
Hypocrisy and corruption are easy to breed from that, true. But the NT is also get a nice set of useful tools from it as well, like choosing their battles, and not painting people into corners.
How those tools are used are basically down to core morality and how you want to apply it to your subordinates, co-workers, and management.
I suspect I’m not fully ante and a lot of those lessons were difficult to figure out.
They’re just made of better material.
explanation
…because material as in resource and as in genetic code…
…I’ll see myself out.
And for the record, I’m on the spectrum as well.
I think this is more true than most would like to think.
Reality is more nuanced than the words with which we describe it. A lot of NT “flexibility” is about recognising that. But, it often spills over into what is, really, lying.
Or we understand that a lot of the criteria is just a wishlist, and as long as you meet a significant chunk of it, the rest can be learned in the job.
I can see where you’re coming from. Some people do have ulterior motives or misaligned morals, so it’s good to stay aware of that possibility. At the same time, assuming that’s true for everyone might not be necessary. Instead, it can be more effective to recognize that bad actors exist and use that knowledge to look at situations from multiple angles when needed. This approach helped me to stay critical and aware at (mostly) the right times, without jumping to conclusions too soon.
So far, the other comments have failed to realize that this is actually some of our thought process and way of adapting to neurotypical norms.
I will say that after I get used to a person’s body language and speech patterns, I tend to ease off of assuming ulterior motives (which has bitten me on the ass once or twice).
It’s because they’re actually lying about the criteria, its more like a wish list than actual requirements. In the interview just say oh I only know a little about criteria x but I’m keen to learn or whatever
Also if you lie on the application, aren’t they able to use that as an easy out to fire/lay you off without needing anything further?
If you actually lie, sure. But since you seem not to have applied for a job before: Typically you provide a resume. Your resume is supposed to be a true representation of your career focusing on what they say they want but without lying. Then they compare their wish list against what you have and see if the match is close enough then they talk to you. There is no “lying on the application” unless you lie on your resume.
And if you lie on your resume in a provable way (ie not “I said I knew this tool but really I just watched someone use it once” but more “I worked at this company and decided voluntarily to leave when in fact they fired me”) yes it could be used to get you out, but that’s well into stupid territory.
Most every job I have applied to in the last 10 years tries to auto import data from my resume into their preconfigured forms. Then sites like monster/indeed/Glassdoor etc usually have check boxes signifying if you have or have not possessed certain skills and if you do not have them checked it flags your application and you have to tell it to send them on anyways. 7+ years with such and such, for instance. It’s always a pain
You’re giving the people handling hiring way too much credit and assuming they are way better about documentation than they generally are lol
A lot og questions can be answered diplomatically and show that you are able to handle yourself:
Q: do you like the colour red?
A1: I hate red
A2: I don’t like red
A3: Not my favourite colour
A4: I prefer blue
In this entirely made up and pointless exercise you hate red and are asked if you like it. Real world applications converging on zero.
On a scale of lie to truth, where are you comfortable with representing your thoughts of red in an interview?
And remember, only Sith deals in absolutes🙃
*Edited layout
The thing is, they are treacherous with their questions. Because the question itself doesn’t matter, what you answer is not the question itself, but the hidden question behind.
This means they don’t trust you to answer honestly, and yet, once you know how the process goes, they actually encourage people to be treacherous too.
This is a lose-lose strategy that they’re using. They are selecting treacherous people instead of qualified people. Probably because they are not qualified themselves, and because qualifications don’t matter to most companies. What matters is appearances and selling an idea.
Whaaaaat are you even talking about?
What’s an example?
And for context are we talking “applying to the best buy” or are we talking “applying to a professional or trade-type career”?
What does “best buy” mean? I’m talking applying to a job, from my perspective of engineering, but I’m comfident it applies for most jobs anyway.
I don’t consider myself neurodivergent but I do consider this issue one of the greatest barriers with my finding employment. I was raised to despise lying, and enough bad experiences have made me consider ‘massaging the truth’ to be the exact same thing.
