Ask HN: How do you handle application spam via Who's Hiring?

3 points by lumens 229 days ago | 3 comments

I'm asking specifically for people who post in the Hacker News "Who's Hiring" thread. But anyone who is a hiring manager dealing with this problem, I'm very curious about your answer as well.

I'm sure most of you have seen, as I have, spam applications skyrocket over the last few years with aid of LLMs.

High-intent people applying to your company should be a great pool and incredible signal. But the low signal-to-noise ratio, given the amount of spam, makes the juice almost not worth the squeeze.

Do you have any mechanisms in place to handle this? If so, what are they?

nnurmanov 227 days ago |

Nowadays, when I post a job for our openings, I get thousands of applicants, which is much higher than 2–3 years ago. Over 90% are irrelevant. To limit the applicant count, I ask for references. For example, just the other day a candidate reached out directly, I asked if he could provide references, and then heard nothing back. It’s the quickest way to filter out irrelevant candidates. Now I am employing the same tactics and building an ATS where references make you stand out.

gwbas1c 226 days ago |

Not sure if this will help, but you can try something like:

1: Make an email inbox just for the job opening.

2: Make a silly rule that the applicant must have a specific word in the title. It could even be random characters. For example, you could state "To apply, email applications to gdfhtrd@sgtfg.gr with 'ghubv' in the subject."

Then, make a rule that forwards emails with that specific word to your real email box and ignore the rest.

heldrida 228 days ago |

Can you share some examples of spam you've been getting?