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.
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.
Maybe they have a ton of different machines and need an app that works in any environment?
You don’t lie, lying will get you into trouble. You just don’t mention it if they don’t ask. And if they don’t ask it’s probably not important anyway. Most job descriptions are like Christmas wishlists anyway, they will be happy if they get half of it.
These days you’re called different with a sexy word neurodivergent when you tell the truth.
Like this person I also find this strange. And like this person I also have problems during job interviews. I mean, I’m not bullshitting you and I expect you to do the same. But alas, it’s often bullshit and lowballing all the way.
You are looking at job applications from the wrong perspective. You are seeing the job description and seeing minimum requirements, when in 90% they are describing the ideal candidate that will probably never show up.
And I want to emphasise, you shouldn’t lie, you shouldn’t pad your résumé, but you should also not volunteer to testify against yourself.
My wife is super bad at not volunteering information.
She’s partially deaf and a few other issues that make phone conversations hard, so she often asks me to sit in and listen to explain anything she didn’t catch, and make sure she heard everything correctly.
I’m often making the neck cut “stop talking/mute mic” motion to get her to stop saying things the other people don’t need to hear.
For instance, she quit a previous job over an employee basically stalking her while she was on the property, and screaming in her face over any imagined sleight. This employee was a problem with others as well, but who you know is more important than how you work in some places so nothing was ever done.
The other places she interviews with don’t need the whole back story of why she quit. “Safety concerns” is completely correct, and leaves out the possibility that the new job might think you don’t work well with others. She does. The other guy didn’t.
So every time she starts telling the potential employer about it, I cut her off to remind her of that.
I’m very much the “ALL my information is need to know and you don’t need to know” kind of person when it comes to things like that, and she just kind of vomits words all over the place when she feels uncomfortable.
i’ve heard the first rule of negotiations is don’t answer any unasked questions.
That’s good advice, but my problem is that my line of thought is connected to every other line of thought. It’s quite the task to know where an answer to a question ends.
answer enough to finish with a good question.
Oh, hey, see now that is something I may be able to do. Instead of following the stated answer of least resistance, keep a mind out for a question on that path.
Yes, minimum requirements are not actually minimum requirements. So silly for people taking things literally.
They’re not usually labeled “minimum requirements”
That may be what you’re interpreting, but they’re usually titled “ideal applicants will have the following” which isn’t the same thing
It feels like the same thing to people with rigid views on the world, but they are not the same.
It’s not people with rigid world views, but people who don’t know the social cues/“legalese” of job speak.
AKA local bullshit.
I frequently see a list of minimum separate from preferred. Here’s an example.
Entirely!
But not all systems have that feature.
That’s the thing, they aren’t minimum requirements. They’re a form that HR fills out based on what HR thinks the job is, not based on what the actual job is.
i often see a list of minimum and preferred.
That doesn’t mean anything, unless you’re in a field with government mandated certifications. If you know someone that already works there, ask them to submit your resume to get around the automatic rejections.
I know that’s not the whole job listing, but but none of it specifies a minimum requirement for the job. The ‘minimum’ qualification just indicates that they’re not going to take note of lower qualifications, or those without an appropriate Major, not that having one is a minimum requirement. All things being equal, they’re certainly going to prefer someone with that qualification, but if you can get past the screening and show aptitude with the skills they actually need, you’ve got a chance.
I know that’s not the whole job listing, but but none of it specifies a minimum requirement for the job.
“Minimum Bachelor’s Degree with major in Accounting, Finance or Economics”
“Prior audit or relevant accounting experience preferred, but not required.”Strikes me as “This job can be done by anyone with a high school education that knows how to open Excel, change a cell value, and send an email. Other duties as assigned.”
Then the job listing should say that instead.
People here expecting a bureaucracy to behave not only like a person, but like a honest and transparent person with simple and plainly stated goals…
If s not a requirement if it is optional or noce-to-have!
Which means the company is lying. Respond to them with this knowledge in hand, any way that you see as appropriate.
Lying by omission is still lying. And if they weren’t hard requirements, they should say so. So many job listings I’ve seen word it like those are the minimum requirements.
In my case, early in my career a contracting company lied on my behalf without telling me.
So I’m in the “skills assessment” meeting and I’m confused when they started rattling off experience from my resume that I didn’t have. I asked if I could see their copy of my resume and said “ok they made this section up, but the rest appears the same, here a printed copy of my resume unmodified”.
I was shocked and figured that was a way to tank any chance I had at the job, but they “hired” me and said people and contracting companies did it all the time, so it didn’t phase them, but admitted my resume as it was from me wouldn’t have even gotten an assessment.
Also, if you think enough about what a lie even is you can rationalize a lot. Am I a self motivated and highly organized person? Well, nobody’s ever described me that way before, but maybe I could start being one right now, stranger things have happened. And if it all blows up a few months down the line because I couldn’t manage to get my shit together, I’ll take my couple of paychecks and tell myself “well, I meant to do better” and that will be at least 51% true and I will have a couple of paychecks I wouldn’t have otherwise.
Alternatively, just find a way to sell your weaknesses as strengths. e.g. “I’m not always super organized, but I’m real good at dropping in to a chaotic situations on short notice and getting the essential things straightened out quickly because my disorganized nature has forced me to learn those skills. I’m not self motivated, so you don’t need to worry about me undermining your plans and vision for this place with my own, making decisions makes me nervous so you do that stuff and I will see that your decisions are carried out.”
It’s only wrong if you get caught!
I find it entertaining that the criteria for neurodivergence includes telling the truth.
I find it concerning that lying is apparently always an option for NTs.
I’m autistic and lying is always an option for me too. I’m extremely good at it. I just don’t do it, because it’s wrong and harmful.
Isn’t it annoying that the majority of time when it is pointed out that an entire system is based on lying and misrepresentation that the excuse is either ‘that’s just how it is’ or ‘everyone does it’ as if that makes it right somehow.
Neurotypical just seems to be going along with everyone else’s bullshit to avoid conflict.
I think when people say “it’s how it is” or “everyone does it”, it’s more of a pragmatic way to cope. End of the day, we gotta have food, shelter, and entertainment. If only shitheads lie, they’ll be the only one to be successful. One person on the bottom being honest won’t change a system with ages of momentum
The calculus is if I value truth telling over my mortgage? Vast majority of the time, my mortgage wins.
Many people mistake cowardice for wisdom.
That’s the whole communication gap. When allistic people talk they will almost always lie or say something other than what they mean, which gives the other person the opportunity to lie or ignore what they meant if it suits them. This is what’s known as being “polite.”
…and the rules change at a whim, it is never consistent…
Plus they vary massively from culture to culture and region to region, but are all treated as the right way to behave.
That’s an intentionally rigid view of the world.
The communication gap is that rigidity.
For example, it may say “minimum requirements” on the web form, but let’s put ourselves into the shoes of the person filling it out. Are they SUPER strict on these minimums? Or are they just filling out the form the best they can?
Usually it says sobering along the lines of “ideal candidates” and not “bare minimum” but you likely won’t see that due to overly rigid views on the world.
What if they made a mistake when filling it out, and added things to the “bare minimum “ that aren’t really that harsh a requirement?
It’s a grey area, it’s not a direct lie and you know that, you just don’t like it.
Saying it’s a lie assumes you know the intention of the person writing it, and that they intended to deceive you. And you can’t possibly know that either.
It’s Not a lie and you’re misrepresenting your knowledge of the scenario when you say that.
As an autistic I resolve this in my head by reminding myself that words can have different meanings.
For example
(“How are you?” -> “I’m fine how are you?” -> “Doing well, thanks”)
actually means
(“hello” -> “hello”)It’s code. The meaning is precise, and it’s not a false question. It’s a symbolic question.
It’s an equivalent meaning in the same way that:
(“hola” -> “hola”)
means the same thing as
(“hello” -> “hello”)English is, therefore, not just one language. English is many languages using the same set of words.
Beautiful and thoughtful response.
I’m peak ADHD, and I often use the same type of thing
Wait hold on.
Are you saying NT lie all the time or ND lie all the time?
Because neither of those is true?
Or if it is, it explains my ex a whole lot better
NT people lie and or talk around what they mean rather than say it directly. Neurodivergent people, especially autistic people, are not like this and find it taxing to deal with.
That doesn’t make any sense. Yes, I have ADHD and not ASD, so yes I have a slightly easier time with social interactions, but NT don’t lie or avoid direct language. They try to minimize the harm of their words.
That’s like me stating that ND people lack empathy, and they are insulting because they don’t care about the other person’s feelings.
I think if you look for it you will see it more often. I also think most NT don’t notice when they do it because it’s second nature. Sure there are white lies, small lies, and then more nefarious lies. It’s still a core part of “normal” communication. Add in the indirect speech and every meaningful conversation is like a game where no one says what they actually mean.
I was taught that lying is a sin and if I do it I will burn in hell for all enteeity. Also, that it is expected that I lie on basically every form I’m provided, mostly by ommission but other ways too.
There’s a reason I rarely feel hopeful.
I’m my experience, even if you get caught. The exaggeration to get your foot in the door is expected, and everyone is expected to represent themselves deceptively well. Honesty in the interview when everyone can deal with nuance can work and might be appreciated, but definitely a little exaggeration in the resume unless you have ungodly actual credentials/connections.
I’m not telling you not tell the truth, I’m telling you to consider that list of skills on a job description is a wishlist and only answer what is asked in the interview.
I’ve interviewed more people than I can count, leading to more hirings than I can count, and I don’t remember any case where the candidate met all the checkboxes on the ideal skillset. Because what goes in the job description is the perfect candidate not the minimum.
When I found out the list of qualifications could be filled on the job it made applying a lot easier because I was no longer worried about bring ‘found out’ for not being fully qualified on day one. I blame the position wording making it sound like day one requirements and HR treating them as day one requirements
So you’re saying that you’re the one doing the lying when you fill out the job description?
a friend once got me a job interview with his company. he listened into the interview, and i could hear him audibly gasp when the interviewer asked, “why do you want to work for us?”. I replied plainly, “To make a living so that I may pursue my real goals.” I didn’t get the job…
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Oh? I am not supposed to take a question at face value? I need some form of, wink wink, unspoken knowledge of human interaction that was not specified in the job offer? jfc
You’re supposed to lie. Because everyone who is not a true believer in the cause - of the product, the company, the industry, the economy, capitalism, whatever it may be, is also lying. Because the whole system depends on everyone going along with it, otherwise it all falls apart. That you have to slave away at your shitty job with shitty managers so that one day you can become the manager and be shitty because it happened to you, all in service of the exploitation of natural resources and people and society to make line go up and make the people who managed to step on the most amount people on their way to the top that much richer.
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I’m not technically NT but I have ADHD and I don’t have problems picking up this sort of neurotypical social cues.
When I interview people myself, I’m extra wary of catering to ND people, and for questions like this, I phrase them very carefully to mean what I want to ask:
“Why do you want to work for us? I’m sure there were other jobs out there that would result in a salary, but what made you apply for this one specifically?”
I make clear in the conversation that I want to know their motivation, their alignment to the specific role, and not the fact that they need money to live. I already know that! So I tailor the questions to give me exactly what I need even if the person is, say, autistic and takes things in the most literal way.
This post has, however, made me realise that in the job posting I have open right now, I’m going to add a note in the vein of “this is a wishlist of all the things the ideal candidate would have, but we acknowledge nobody is ever a 100% perfect match - feel free to apply even if you only meet some of the criteria as you might be more qualified than most applicants”.
I have always appreciated the listings that divide the list between the “must haves,” even soft ones (e.g. 4yr degree, knowledge of X tool, Y years of experience, solid communication skills), and “our ideal candidate will have most of the following” (e.g. Y+3 years of experience, prior role in management, knowledge of Z regulation).
The 4 year degree one is still never a must have. The only things that are true must haves are certifications for federally regulated jobs, like requiring a PE.
There are things they actually care about enough to throw out your resume on pre-screen though. That’s de facto required for that particular job.
Hit them back with “why do you want to hire me?”
Or even better: “why should I pick your offer?”
Half of the requirements listed aren’t even actual requirements; they’re just listing their tech stack. For example, if I see NodeJS, I know I’ll be deploying web apps, not coding them. I don’t even read the requirements most of the time. If the title matches and there’s no security clearance required, I’m applying.
I swear my company has one list of requirements for all jobs. Every time I am part of the hiring process I have to correct it
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I wouldn’t like to be a bird. If a bird gets sick it will probably die. If a bird is injured it will probably die. If a bird is born disabled in some way it will probably die. Not to speak about all the predators just waiting to eat you.
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Yes it is really different from human society. You yourself admitted it. In all those cases the bird has almost no chance of survival while we do. I don’t say humans would survive 100% of the time but it’s a fighting chance. I don’t say it is fair. Nature is also unfair.
Like you stated in many places in the world even a disabled person can survive on the labor of society, even if it is a struggle. In many sane places medical care is relatively affordable i.e. socialized. I once spent a month in hospital paying around ~200€ total. And while that is an extreme privilege some access to healthcare even if poor can be found all over the world.
Humans are capable of extreme cruelty but humans are also capable of great compassion. Especially in smaller groups.
The “endless” quotes are “really” jarring and make this “comment” really hard to read.
the hiring managers, senior executives, and especially the owners-- don’t give half a flying fuck about the
worker dronesemployeesas such, you’re only hurting yourself if you’re not telling them what they want to hear out of “principle.” fuck that. “principle” won’t stop them from tossing you to the winds the instant you become any sort of liability, e.g., prolonged sickness, otj injury, pregnant, etc
Before I graduated I was encouraged to apply for a job that required a four year degree.
Don’t worry about it - we know you, they said.
When I submitted my application online it was automatically rejected because the application program correctly flagged that I didn’t meet the requirement of having a four year degree.
So, what do you do? The problem is it’s also difficult from the hiring side. Every opening has dozens to hundreds of applicants, most of whom are not qualified. No one can keep up with that, and recruiters/hr are horrible at it. Automation sucks, but it’s the quickest, easiest, fairest way to identify a smaller group that you hope are the ones who are qualified
We can put someone like an intern at the top of the pile because we know them, officially.
Sounds like you need to rotate your technical staff into the recruiting process.
Do they spend any time speaking with recruitment/hr?
Its systems like that forced me to get an expensive qualification that I don’t need simply so humans will actually see my resume. I don’t need the qualification, I have industry experience going back over a decade but because I don’t have a magical qualification, that is recognized by the entire industry as being utterly useless, that didn’t even exist when I started in the industry I had to fork out £600.
But how do they know you don’t need the qualification? I’m sure the people who know you could say, but what makes you qualified to a stranger?
It’s the same problem as standardized testing for school. Everyone seems u to understand it’s a bad idea except that you need something
This is when you call them directly and tell them that. They can override the automation.
and if they won’t/can’t, then there’s an easy answer as to whether it’s worth working there at all
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That whole routine doesn’t magically make sense to neurotypical people either.
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.
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
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.
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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 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.
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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.
I too am VERY special.
What did he mean by this comment
Why would you assume “he” as a default pronoun?
A woman wouldn’t post something so dumb
That’s also sexism, even if true
And yet you have no idea what the comment meant, and so how could you know it’s “dumb”?
That seems pretty… dumb, TBH.
What could he possibly have meant
Why yes, I do thrive under pressure. It’s why I use a weighted blanket.
I’d like to be
Under the sea
In an octopus’s garden
in the shade
This entire comment section is a mess of people who apparently don’t understand that companies are just listing out the things they want. If they find someone that meets those requirements, then fucking awesome…otherwise, they will still take people in for interviews that meet a majority of those requirements. You think they’ll really pass on someone that has only 7 years experience in this hyper specific role when they are looking for 10?
You don’t have to meet every single requirement.
Point is neurodivergent take things more literally. That means the job requirements along with the some possible difficulty in guessing what an interviewer wants when they ask a question. A “normal” person would probably be fine with creatively arranging a resume to look like it matches the job requirements, schmoozing and making small talk with an interviewer, and the follow up courtesy emails. A person say who is ASD/ADHD could find the interactions difficult, especially schmoozing/small talk, and while telling “lies” isn’t foreign at all to non-normative people, being told you kinda have to “lie” on a job app and then creatively explain that lie is gonna be problematic.
That’s not what requirement means
Literally means figuratively, nothing matters.
Even better I’ve had an interview for a company that listed a insane list of skills, spanning front-end to backend over 3 different tech stacks… Turns out your application gets sorted into very specific teams by HR, with a much more limited tech stack. They had a whole online platform for testing before I even spoke to a real human…
Being ‘locked’ into a limited tech stack wasn’t what I was looking for at the time, so all in all a huge waste of time.
The post has “as a neurodivergent person” right in the first line. Who do you think is in the comments?
I think the issue is that it’s called a **requirement** and not an “appreciated characteristic”
Get this all the time in software development, being given “requirements” and most of them are pretty stupid wishlist items.
I constantly argue that that will not get a good outcome if they just call everything is equally a “hard requirement”.
What they want to do is negotiate and start from an unreasonable anchor point. In my case I find it super tiresome because my stance is always the same, make a priority list and we’ll get as far as we can. But escalating and tying us up in meetings to try to argue for stuff you are just using as a negotiating tactic only gets in the way of us doing what we can. We are going to do what fits, and people are not going to work unpaid overtime or holidays just to meet some arbitrary deadline. If it doesn’t fit, well it won’t be long until the next window.
My team has a very long history of ultimately exceeding the hopes of the folks asking for stuff and yet they continue to try to get us to commit to stuff we never will.
