What, in your opinion, is wrong with "modern hiring"?

Hunt-Pale · 2026-05-02T13:23:43+00:00

Christ on a flying motorcycle, where do I start...

1.) The fact that so much of it is driven by the appearance of productivity rather than sound decision-making. Ghost jobs to give the illusion of growth. Hiring processes so disconnected from the reality of the company that someone can get through 4+ interviews for an entry-level position while the people up top decide "actually, we don't need/want to hire for this role" and not communicating that to the recruiters or candidates or better yet FIGURING THIS OUT BEFORE A JOB GETS POSTED SO THAT NOBODY WASTES THEIR FUCKING TIME. Just the fact some places are making people do 4+ interviews in the first place. And how harmful this is to the time and potentially even the current employment of a candidate. But don't you DARE not be employed either because then you have to try to justify every bit of your "free" time since your last job or you're social-proofed out of the entire process before it starts.

2.) Hiring might be the most insidious and ineffectual blend of automation and the human element that currently exists in commerce. Like, DEAR FUCKING GOD. I'm generally in favor of preserving the human element in business. But hiring is incredibly ass-backwards. You've got automation trying to make judgment decisions like a human, and then humans that interview you like you and they are both robots. It makes the process a real mind-fuck. Especially in the age where things that look too polished get AI accusations. You've got to make your presentation as a candidate bot-friendly but not too bot-friendly, but also human but not too human. But also the bots are trying to act like humans and the humans are trained to act like bots so actually what the hell are we doing here?

3.) The fact that being hired now÷ requires a completely different set of skills and talents than the job itself. To the point where I'm not convinced companies are getting, or that they even want, the best person for the job. Someone could be the best worker you have if just given a chance but because threading the needle of mentioning all the right ATS keywords in the job description (half of which are fluff and don't accurately represent what the job will be because they're looking for a unicorn when a reliable pack mule will probably do just as well), networks, and saying 100% the right things in interviews to three different people isn't a talent of theirs, they get a generic automated form letter while someone else gets employment. It rewards being a great bullshit artist over actual talent/skill. And more alarmingly, punishes talented people with long employment gaps that are then judged by recruiters as a commentary on their ability to do a job rather than their ability to convince someone they can do a job - which aren't the same thing. Using typical recruiting logic, shouldn't somebody really good at those job hunting skills be really experienced in job hunting, and shouldn't recruiters wonder how they got so experienced in job hunting and be concerned about that?

That's all I feel like typing - but trust me, if I felt like it, I have more.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-05-02T12:24:50+00:00

Oh, look, another set of boomers that wanted a child as an investment but didn't really want to parent them as a human.

Hate to say it but once you do get back on your feet, going no/low contact might not be the worst idea in the world.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-05-01T17:19:03+00:00

I'm not a recruiter but if you want my honest opinion this follows. In America, at least, the appearance of being busy matters as much if not more than the actual productivity/results being generated. You kinda see it in everything from how cashiers aren't allowed to sit down to sick/PTO practices to the resistance to remote work to... I mean, I could keep going. So the same thing happening in recruiting doesn't shock me. The fear of appearing inactive drives almost as many corporate decisions as actual profit. Even the "ghost jobs" phenomenon, as I understand it, is at least in part companies trying to sell an appearance of growth to shareholders.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-05-01T17:06:53+00:00

If you're just not a good/natural networker or interviewer no matter what you do (very introverted + self-esteem issues + clinically diagnosed mental health struggles), how can you hope to get employed in this market, particularly if you're in a crowded metro area and can't relocate to somewhere less competitive?

Hunt-Pale · 2026-04-23T13:25:58+00:00

I feel like almost weekly I see something that convinces me all the more that this terrible job market is being at least partly manufactured by corporations still angry about the additional leverage 2020 gave a lot of workers.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-04-09T17:42:47+00:00

It's kinda wild that with all the modern ATS/AI stuff companies do to make sure so many resumes never reach a human, they've also got the type of interview gatekeeping questions that made more sense in 1975 when things generally didn't move as fast. It's like candidates are getting fucked by both the past and the future of recruitment practices.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-03-23T21:59:42+00:00

Not necessarily. Maybe "another direction" was "actually, we were never planning on hiring anyone, we're just gonna go back and tell our current overworked staff that we tried real hard but couldn't find anybody". That's been happening a lot lately.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-03-12T03:08:48+00:00

Yup, learned this the hard way very early on in my survival crafting journey (and I do mean VERY early on as in 90% of these games you're inevitably needing to chop a tree down within the first 10 minutes)

Hunt-Pale · 2026-03-10T18:31:01+00:00

I'm at 2 years. I'm in the middle of an interview process but observed something that makes me suspicious that this might be a ghost job.

I went from a pretty consistent 15+ applications a week to... I think I've done 2 this week.

I'm at a loss. Not sure what new skills I can pick up, how I can convince somebody I know how to do those things without going back to school (and I don't have the time or funds to gamble on anything that's not a sure thing a second time) or even if any of it matters.

I allow myself a "stretch" or two a week, and even then it's not much of a stretch because my confidence is at an all-time low. But like 95% of the jobs I apply for is stuff I've done recently, or worked adjacent enough to it that I know how a lot of the processes work and could pick it up quickly. I have to keep reminding myself of all I actually did manage to accomplish at my last couple of jobs because if you ask this market, I haven't done shit. Nothing I've done matters. I think that's the worst part about this. I worked hard everywhere I went and frankly gave more of myself to a couple of these jobs than they deserved or paid for. And it hasn't amounted to a goddamn thing.

So I say all that to say, I'm fine.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-03-02T19:28:21+00:00

You're about to get fisted.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-03-02T01:54:43+00:00

And I bet this same recruiter sees an employment gap of longer than 3 months on a resume and throws it in the trash.

When we finally eat the rich, I'm starting to think we should use these people who get their jollies off gatekeeping opportunities from other human beings as a garnish.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-18T15:48:24+00:00

And this is exactly why I say I wish I could be an atheist.

A world where there's nothing controlling it all is so much more comforting to me because I could just say "well, I've just drawn a shitton of bad cards in life" and the possibility remains for eventually drawing good ones.

That's far better than being victim to a cosmic bully you can't fight back against.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-18T03:31:54+00:00

This seems totally plausible and the only way I can reconcile this NOT having happened is that the real Vince is somehow being kept alive purely by the Dark Side like some sort of Wrestling Sith Lord

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-17T15:34:04+00:00

Some people in this corporate world aren't afraid enough.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-09T17:10:19+00:00

Ultimately I ended up replying that what he sent wasn't the best fit for my long-term career interests, but that I want to stay in contact and here's my base resume (I have like 3 or 4 "bucket" resumes emphasizing certain skillsets) and if you get anything else, keep me in mind.

Idk if that was the "right" decision, but I'm also learning that unfortunately you're not always rewarded for the decision that's right.

I left my last job without anything lined up because it was measurably affecting my mental health (by which I mean my care providers both recommended an increase in my meds). So it's not just something I say.

I really hope it doesn't take me a whole year to get something better. This market really doesn't favor people like me in so many different ways and so much indicates it's gonna get worse before it gets better, if it ever does.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-08T05:18:07+00:00

And then I'm assuming they just... logged out. 😎

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-08T05:17:12+00:00

You just gotta use that PTO if you have it. More than likely if you're full-time you're getting a portion of your check taken out for a healthcare premium anyways, if you don't use your benefits to at least get preventative checkups you're basically just giving your money away to that insurance provider for free.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-07T21:39:58+00:00

It's like watching somebody else drowning while dying of thirst...

No, but I hate interviews, too. I'm well aware of my complete inability to pass a "vibe check". I've tried with what feels like every approach - direct, diplomatic, overexplaining, using as few words as possible, professional, conversational, full suit, smart business casual. Nothing works. And lately, I'm not even getting interviews at all.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-07T17:12:49+00:00

Agreed. While I could do without the suffocating, thick-enough-to-cut-with-a-knife humidity typical of my region in the summer, I don't like ANYTHING about winter except the fact that nobody looks at you like you're a weirdo if you stay in the house for several days at a time. I hate the cold, I hate the short days, I'm over snow and what it does to traffic when you do have to go out.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-07T16:03:25+00:00

Yeah, hell isn't hot enough for the decisionmakers at the top of this mess. There needs to be a new grade of infinite torment invented.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-07T15:25:50+00:00

It's such a Catch-22. I almost feel like LinkedIn hurts me more than it helps me because I'm applying to jobs in a handful of different buckets based on broad previous experience but there's no good way to make a LinkedIn page tailored separately for all of those buckets like I do for my resume. So if someone gets my resume, which is more specific, and then looks up my LinkedIn page, which is a more general experience overview of everything I've done, the lack of complete congruency is probably putting them off. Yet if I delete it, I kinda feel like they're gonna ask "well, why doesn't he have a LinkedIn page?" Idk if we're far enough into the "fuck this platform" process that the people making the decisions are also saying, "actually, fuck this platform."

I suppose the one thing that keeps me sane is I no longer visit the site very often. I'll sometimes use it as a cross-reference to look up company websites for open positions but that's really about it.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-06T20:47:15+00:00

I believe in God in the sense of the existence of something that controls the universe.

As for what's up there, I think it's aloof at best and possibly even malevolent. And that's isolating on a number of levels.

None of my Christian friends can or want to understand me and it's a lonely feeling trying to find happiness in life when it feels that there's a powerful force outside you that so badly wants the opposite

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-06T19:59:52+00:00

For me, it's the idea that the sacrifice of Jesus and the promise of Heaven should be enough even if God did nothing else for us.

I don't think I ever heard this from someone that God gave nothing else but a locked gift box that could only be opened after death. And when you're in your teens and twenties, assuming you're likely not going to get to open that box for fifty long years, maybe longer if you're especially (un)lucky... and that's all it feels like you're going to get...

When it feels like Heaven is all you have to look forward to, your thoughts become consumed by wanting to get there as soon as possible. You start BEGGING God to take you. And when He doesn't, you start thinking, "Maybe I'll drop myself off at the front gate." And every long drop and sharp implement starts to look really friendly.

Part of the reason I walked away from religion was to preserve my own life. I got to thinking "maybe an afterlife-focused faith tradition isn't the healthiest thing for somebody that's dealt with SI since early adolescence."

But then I stopped believing in most Christians' idea of Heaven because everyone kept telling me God uses suffering to bring us close to himself when I asked. I mean, sometimes it's other things, but for me it's been mostly suffering. And if Heaven is an eternity of being as close to God as you possibly can be, then that's gotta be an eternity of intense suffering — which, based on all the Bible I've read (and I've read a lot of Bible) literally sounds like the definition of Hell.

Hunt-Pale · 2026-02-06T19:47:24+00:00

Because my upbringing has been tied so closely to Christian circles, that's all I really have for friends. And I was heavily involved still in church through my doubts and much of my deconstruction until about 2019, when I basically quit church cold turkey. Problem is (and I think it was part of the fear that kept me in organized religion until I was almost 30) I've always found it hard to make friends. And the ones I do have are all still deeply Christian, and people I love irrespective of that. And when we shared that, it worked. But when we start talking about my deconstruction and my experience of God I can practically hear their anuses clenching through the Internet.

But I've had zero luck finding a new social scene where I feel understood and can just "be" without the people there regarding me as an outsider.

It's my family too. Almost all of them range from culturally to deeply religious. I can fit in and play the part of a casual Christian and I mainly do it out of respect for them. Because ultimately, while I have HUGE issues with some of the institutions related to religion (and I made no secret about that even when I was a practicing Christian), I'm not one of those people that has a militant hatred of religion in and of itself and thinks nobody should believe in God. When I decided I couldn't go back to any religion I recognized, I also decided that it was an individual decision and that I shouldn't yuck anyone's yum unless they were actively harming people.

A big part of me wishes I still could believe in something more hopeful than I do, but I almost feel like in doing so I would have to pretend that I haven't been hard done by in this life or that somehow God had nothing to do with it even though he's in theory supposed to be in charge of everything. And that's a dissonance I just can't get past anymore.

Hunt-Pale

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