I thought it looked like an interesting job: QA Automation Lead with lots of eCommerce experience. Jeez Louise, I have all sorts of flavors of that. So I applied. <\/p>\n
But the job had a wrinkle: It wanted me to write a cover letter answering questions like the most challenging thing in my life and how I overcame it, something something, and the last three books I read<\/em>. <\/p>\n Oh, yeah<\/em>. I was all on that. I listed The Space Trilogy<\/em><\/a>, The Law of Gun Barrel City<\/em><\/a>, and River City, P.I.<\/em>, the James R. Wilder book I just bought<\/a> and whose review is forthcoming, and in looking back at the blog here, I see that I’ve forgotten To Rise Again At A Decent Hour<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n Which happens. I was working from my spreadsheet list, and I’d failed to enter the title in the annual total. Sometimes, when I get to the end of the year total and start building the Year in Reading post, I’ll find that I wrote a report for a book that I didn’t put in the annual list, or I’ll have put something in the list which I failed to write a book report on. The latter is less likely, though, as completed books end up on the desk for a cover scan and a book report (sometimes sitting on them for a week or more, as the latest Wilder book indicates–I finished it on July 25 and have yet to write the report for it. In my defense, it’s sitting on the scanner glass, so it’s a little out of sight.<\/p>\n So: I have made a mistake which will undoubtedly result in my rejection. I kid! I kid! Because I’m probably already laid low by a “knockout” question.<\/p>\n What is a knockout question? Silly person who is not job hunting at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. A knockout question is where you answer honestly a question like “Do you have three years experience in Python?” or “Have you built a test suite from scratch using AI?” It’s a simple switch that lands you in a reject pile without any context or discussion. No, I don’t have three years in Python, but I have experience in numerous languages and some noodling in Python (building a functional API using Flask, setting up a test suite and writing beginning tests in a proof of concept). But, no: To eliminate the great mass of applications that frictionless applications have made possible, they knock out applicants based on meaningless binaries. Which is just as well as HR assistants screening applicants don’t know what those things mean either.<\/p>\n I actually got that second one, “Have you built a test suite from scratch using AI?” this week. It was the third step of the process: The first was the application, the second was the 50 question test with word analogies, spatial reasoning, math, and whatnot–they never tell me the score of those which is a damned shame, because I would be pretty proud of the results each time. But step 3 was three knockout questions, the third of which was one of the “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love AI? Answer 11 or higher.” questions. To be honest, it’s more work than you need because most of the modern frameworks scaffold up a project for you pretty easily, and you’re not going to get a lot out of LLMs which lack awareness of your application unless you, I dunno, share login credentials with them<\/em> which seems like a bad idea. And last year, I worked on a project where my manager used AI to scaffold up a project he did not understand and could not troubleshoot when I tried running the project on Windows (he’s a Mac, and so on). I troubleshot to the limits of LLM capability, or at least I stopped when ChatGPT said, “Okay, we’re going to have to rewrite Playwright…..” The ultimate solution was to run it in PowerShell instead of using the command line because of the different ways dependencies were resolved, or something. You see, I could answer intelligently why not, but it’s a boolean. True or false, and false is buh-bye. I said no and clicked submit, and the next screen said After careful consideration, nah, bro.<\/em> Well, not exactly, but the “careful consideration” was not.<\/p>\n At any rate, the knockout question after the hour’s effort of cover letter was: Are you in Canada?<\/p>\n The posting on the job board said Remote – Worldwide. The posting in the Application Tracking System (the winner by knockout!) said Colombia<\/em>. The application asked if I was in Canada. Was it a knockout question? Who knows? I have not been rejected yet, but it might be their policy only to hit the No button after hiring someone (After careful consideration…..) or not at all.<\/p>\n But I guess I will find out. Or not.<\/p>\n So many of the “career coaches” on LinkedIn and whatnot offer the same advice: Tailor your resumes for each job. Research the companies you’re applying to. Write targeted cover letters every time. Which might have made sense in the old days, but now you’re just wasting more time on jobs whose automated processes are seeking to winnow out the greatest number of applications they can for arbitrary reasons. So, nah. I’ll do it sometimes, and I’ll do the assessments sometimes if they’re fun practice tests for if I ever decide to take the Mensa test. But two hour screen-sharing camera on coding exercise video recording? Nah. Feesa etho.<\/em><\/p>\n At any rate, I did find the discrepancy in my book accounting, and I am pleased to say that I’m at 54 books for the year. But it’s almost August. I’d better fall upon some art monographs and poetry chapbooks, stat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thought it looked like an interesting job: QA Automation Lead with lots of eCommerce experience. Jeez Louise, I have all sorts of flavors of that. So I applied. 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