The problem is that HR is the first line of entry, and if you're not keyword stuffing every possible technology under the sun, they'll pass you on, because they don't know that being a python expert is fine for a Ruby job. So you have to put both down, lest the HR screen say "well they didn't specify Ruby, they don't make it through!"
Yeah, I've actually had this happen before. I keyword stuffed my CV, then when I got to the interview stage, the actual tech lead quizzed me on it. I just replied honestly that while I had passing knowledge, I didn't actually know these things in detail and I did it just to get the interview. I think they appreciated the honesty, or at least could just relate to it. We tested the stuff I actually knew and got the job in the end.
It probably helped that I was just bullshitting the fringe cloud stuff, the actual languages/framework everyday related skills were all true.
I don't get to see the fat stack of resumes they get, only the stuff HR has already approved and passed on to me to further review. I asked them about their process, and they basically prioritize anyone who has the exact keywords on the job listing, and they more or less straight up ignore anyone who doesn't.
We had a lot of frontenders that HR filtered out because they only had React on their resume, but not Vue or Svelte (both of which are much simpler than React, so even a complete Vue/Svelte novice would do fine if they were good at React). Similarly when we were looking to fill a Ruby (NOT Ruby on Rails) dev, they filtered out people that didn't have specifically Ruby and instead had `Ruby on Rails`.
You can't even blame them, half of the stuff in the job listings sounds like complete mumbo-jumbo to anyone not directly involved with the stuff. After they told me about the Rails thing I sat down with the HR team and gave them a high-level overview on this stuff, but it still happens from time to time, especially when the job requirements/description changes every once in a while. Plus, the edge cases here (is someone good at Python OK to let through for the Ruby job? What if they have an Elixir background? Or just JS one? etc.) are basically infinite, and you can't educate them on every single possible variety of technologies out there.
The only real system would be to have the devs evaluate every resume that comes in, but that comes with its own set of problems, too.
I'm actually somewhat anti-AI given my domain, but this sounds like the exact kind of issue a LLM can be trained in a few weeks to do for the hiring manager. Not that braindead ATS keyword matching that's happening as of late. Actually language processing.
It was pretty much made to sift through bulks of data and idenitfy similar concepts, so it's kind of funny in this AI gold rush that I haven't heard of a proper example. The application and impact is obvious, and it's not like HR's only job is resume grokking so minimal displacement.
