Browser Choice May Affect Your Job Prospects 374
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."
Re:Loaded language? (Score:1, Interesting)
...
Yes, because this is another transparent attempt to find pretexts on which to declare all US job appplicants to be "unqualified".
Re:Loaded language? (Score:2, Interesting)
how many are there Mac users?
Its mostly aimed at windows user most likely.
If you happy with IE under winXP - you are probably lazy to educate self, ignoring a lot of facts and dont have or dont listen to friends with IT background. It can all say something about you. All of that is negative. pretty simple, right?
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
You can't rule out a direct correlation - like staying in the same job makes you bored enough to start pissing about with different browsers
I seriously disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
Do we really want to eliminate all human judgment? (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
What about job seekers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Gosh, it's nice to know that my employer sees me as a good bet to stick around after I was hired. But I can remember having to resort to using my wife's Windows laptop to even apply for jobs at many companies because their damned web site would not render properly unless you used IE. I had found that company's jobs sites that employed a popular (*cough* Taleo *cough*) to run their job listings and application process were pretty bad with Firefox compatibility (making you re-enable all the add-on toys that many FF users turn off due to their annoyance factor and their security holes). The absolute worst, though, were the "homegrown" HR pages.
Aside: let's not even get into the requirement for a Word version of your resume when applying for a UNIX- or Linux-heavy position. Again, the wife's Windows laptop was handy since all the other computers in the house have been Microsoft-free for the last ten years or so. Saved me from having to schlepp over to the local public library with my resume on a USB drive just to make Word versions. The Word/Office files that are created from LibreOffice/OpenOffice are considerably larger than the same file created directly from MS-Word, sometimes larger than the company's upload limit. (Clever means of filtering out older, more experienced UNIX/Linux people with longer resumes?)
Re:And if you run Lynx (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, man. That drove me crazy. I had gone out of my way to convert my resume to a very nice and organized and readable and attactable format using LaTeX. Maybe I could have done better if I'd paid one of those services $1000 to tell me how to subtly color and place things better. But this beat the hell out of my earlier Word version.
Then some head-hunter INSISTS that I give him a Word version because that's all his database will take. Sheesh. There's just no quick and easy way to do this, so I had to start with the original LaTeX source and make a new one that still looked lousy compared to the finished PDF.
I'd like to think that my 16 years of industry experience and excellent research record in grad school were deciding factors. But I can assure you that the appearance of my CV make a big impact. Mind you, part of appearance is making it pleasant to read and easy to interpret.
Your knowledge of basic psychology and a minimal familiarity with cognitive engineering IS TRULY an important factor in hiring and long-term job performance in many professions. Even if the employers don't realize they are considering this, they are considering it. You're screwing yourself if you don't consider the human factor in how your appearance on paper is going to be interpreted.
Re:Honest salesmen less effective (Score:5, Interesting)
It' prevent the sales people from getting to technical.
Once that happens, the costumer will ask more technical question he can't answer.
For example: If you go to buy a car and the sales man talks about horsepower and torque: Ask him what the difference is. then watch him squirm. Afterwards you can drop another 1000 form what you where going to offer.
Re:Loaded language? (Score:5, Interesting)
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...).
Re:And if you run Lynx (Score:5, Interesting)
In this market? Are you serious? I didn't leave any stone unturned. Not counting the various head-hunters, I applied for nearly 150 different academic positions. And probably around 50 industry positions. I got maybe a dozen responses, a few phone interviews, six real interviews, and four offers. (In retrospect, if I got 4 offers out of 6 in-person interviews, I'm actually kindof impressed with myself there. And I didn't even think my presentation was the most polished I'd ever seen.)
I came into this knowing that I'm trying to get a new job in a horrible economy. My CV had to stand out in both form AND content. I had to apply for absolutely everything out there, academic and industry. And head-hunters are just another way of looking for jobs. Why would I want to cut off that avenue of search? Sure, the probability of getting a good job that way is LOW, but it's not zero, and I'd been dealing with nothing but low probabilities the whole way along.
Oh, and one benefit to contacting multiple headhunters is that I DID get really useful constructive feedback on my CV that I took seriously and implemented.
People want to bitch about the effort involved in applying. What choice do we have? You have to at least slightly customize every application. I spent several hours a day for weeks and weeks, in two waves, applying for jobs. It's a statistics game for the employer, and it's a statistics game for the applicant, and I was under no illusion otherwise. I consider myself very fortunate that the move was only 500 miles away and the university (my new employer) paid for the move.
BTW, there are some things that really suck about moving to Upstate New York. Weird laws, lag payroll, waiting period for medical insurance. My wife was denied a drivers license for changing her name when we got married, until I got the local legislator involved (this is sexual discrimination). I have a long laundry list of things that really irritate me about being a NYS employee. But I try not to bitch too much, because I'm EXTREMELY FORTUNATE to have a job that I REALLY LIKE in an economy this horrible. Although I do want to take SOME credit for it, because I worked really damn hard to get here. A lot of people who bitch about problems finding jobs really just haven't worked very hard.
Re:Loaded language? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.