Let’s Be Honest: Companies Don’t Respect Job Seekers
Picture 100 eager contestants, each with a freshly tailored resume, all vying for the grand prize: a job that pays slightly above market rate and offers “pizza parties” as a substitute for real benefits.
The challenge? Each hopeful must write an essay-length declaration of love (otherwise known as a cover letter), proving their lifelong passion for an industry they may have learned about two days ago. Next, they’ll complete an unpaid skills assessment, aka free labor, before enduring five rounds of intense questioning about their strengths, weaknesses, and hypothetical escape plans from burning buildings (because, apparently, “problem-solving under pressure” must be tested in the most absurd ways possible).
And yet, despite all this effort, 99 out of 100 contestants will leave empty-handed, receiving either a cold, automated rejection or complete and utter silence. The sole winner? Someone who miraculously guessed the recruiter’s preferred buzzwords and displayed just enough fake enthusiasm to appear “culturally aligned.”
Congratulations, you’ve survived the hiring process! Please report to HR for your mandatory excitement reprogramming.
The Hiring Process: A Brutal, Unpaid Internship in Corporate Rejection
Once upon a time, in a world where common sense still existed, job applications were straightforward. You sent a resume, had a conversation or two, and either got hired or moved on. Simple. Efficient. Humane. But those days are long gone; buried beneath corporate bureaucracy, hiring software, and the unchecked ego of hiring managers who think they’re casting for the next Avengers movie.
Today, applying for a job is a full-time gig in itself, minus the paycheck. Companies want applicants to prove their worth through a series of trials, as if they’re selecting the next ruler of a medieval kingdom.
Step 1: The Application Black Hole
First, you spend hours tailoring your resume and writing a poetic love letter about your passion for something you previously had zero passion for but now must pretend is your life’s purpose. The job? Well, it might not even exist. Some companies post listings just to "gauge interest," which is recruiter-speak for wasting your time while they “assess the market.”
Step 2: The First Interview
Surprise! You’ve received a response, only to realize your interviewer hasn’t read your resume. Instead, they ask you to “walk them through it” while nodding like they aren’t secretly scrolling through their emails.
Step 3: The Culture Fit Round
Now, it’s time to prove you’re not just qualified, but that you "align with company values," which, in practice, means pretending you love things like collaboration, agility, and "work-hard, play-hard" environments (which is just corporate-speak for “we overwork you but have beer on Fridays”).
Step 4: The Unpaid Test Assignment (Free Labor, Rebranded!)
Next, you receive a "quick skills test," which turns out to be an actual project requiring hours of unpaid work. If you're lucky, they'll only "evaluate" it. If you're not, they'll use it and never speak to you again.
Step 5: The Panel Interview
Now, you face a panel interview, because why have one interviewer when you can have six? Each panelist will take turns asking the same three questions in different wording, while you pretend not to lose your will to live.
Step 6: The Final Boss Battle
For some reason, the CEO (who will never directly work with you) must now personally approve your existence. This is mostly a vibe check to ensure you don’t blink weirdly or breathe too loudly.
Step 7: The Silent Treatment
After weeks of emotional labor, you are met with absolute silence. No email, no call, not even a carrier pigeon. You refresh your inbox obsessively, wondering if they forgot you existed.
Finally, if you’re lucky, you’ll receive a generic rejection email months later. If you’re really lucky, they’ll include the classic closer: “We’ll keep your resume on file.” (Translation: We absolutely will not. Please stop hoping.)
And so, one lucky winner gets the job. The rest? Back to Step 1. Because applying for jobs is now a full-time job.
The Fake Enthusiasm Requirement: Why Job Seekers Must Become Corporate Poets
Gone are the days when competence and experience were enough to land a job. Now, job seekers must also be emotionally devoted brand evangelists, prepared to profess their undying love for every company they apply to.
Wanting a job isn’t enough. You must yearn for it. You must ache for it. Your cover letter must read like a long-lost love letter to a company that, ironically, might not even acknowledge your existence.
The modern cover letter is less a summary of your qualifications and more a creative writing exercise in corporate worship. A typical template reads as follows:
Dear Hiring Manager, I have admired [Company Name] since I was a small child, staring longingly at your LinkedIn page and dreaming of one day leveraging my “strong communication skills” in your “dynamic, fast-paced environment.” Your unwavering commitment to [insert vague corporate value] deeply resonates with my soul. Please, grant me the honor of an interview, so I may further prove my worthiness to join your noble quest of selling software-as-a-service.
And let’s not forget: this performance cannot stop at the application stage.
Once in the interview, neutrality is not an option. You must radiate an almost unsettling level of enthusiasm, as if your entire identity hinges on this one job. If your excitement level registers anywhere below "borderline fanatical", you risk being labeled “not passionate enough.”
Yes, this is the job market. Authenticity is a liability, and manufactured enthusiasm is currency.
The Ghosting Epidemic: The One-Sided "Relationship" of Hiring
Before LinkedIn, companies possessed a rare quality: basic human decency. If they decided you weren’t the right fit, they would tell you. Politely. Promptly. Like civilized adults.
Fast forward to today, and hiring has morphed into the world’s most one-sided relationship, where companies expect impeccable manners, unwavering enthusiasm, and immediate responses, while offering absolutely none of that in return.
You could spend weeks preparing for multiple rounds of interviews, crafting a tailored cover letter, completing an unpaid test assignment, and mentally preparing for the inevitable “What’s your greatest weakness?” question, only for the company to vanish into the corporate void the moment they lose interest.
And the worst part? It’s completely normal.
Let’s flip the script for a second. Imagine if job seekers treated internal recruiters the same way recruiters treat them:
Recruiter: “Can you interview Tuesday at 3 PM?”
Candidate: [Silence.]
Recruiter (a week later): “Following up! Are you still interested?”
Candidate: [More silence.]
Recruiter (after a month): “Hello??”
Unacceptable, right? How unprofessional! Yet, when a company does the exact same thing, it’s just business as usual.
Even better? When they suddenly resurface months later with a beautifully impersonal rejection email:
“We have decided to move forward with another candidate, but we appreciate your time.”
Oh, do you? Because it sure didn’t seem like it when you ghosted me for six weeks.
At this point, job seekers should start sending invoices for all the time they wasted on this circus.
The Emotional Toll: The Aftermath of "Loving" Companies That Don’t Love You Back
If applying for jobs were a relationship, it would be a toxic one. The kind of relatioship where you write heartfelt love letters, plan elaborate date nights, and pour your soul into proving your worth, only to be met with radio silence or a half-hearted “it’s not you, it’s us” text.
Every job seeker, at some point, has played this cruel game:
You tell a company how much you love them.
They reject you.
You do this 100 more times.
You start questioning your own worth.
Now, you never actually loved these companies. You were just performing love, because that’s what they required. You were forced to write fake love letters about how deeply you connected with their vision of disrupting the cloud-based accounting industry.
But after rejection #47, the cracks start to form. You wonder: Am I actually unhirable? Am I saying the wrong things? Maybe I should have expressed my deep passion for agile workflows more convincingly?
The reality? It’s not you. It’s them.
Corporate courtship is an endless cycle of emotional manipulation, where companies expect 100 people to fall in love with them, then discard 99 with zero remorse and act shocked when workers are burning out, quitting en masse, or deciding that freelancing is less humiliating.
If companies truly want “passionate employees,” maybe they should start by treating job seekers like people instead of disposable audition tapes.
If hiring is truly a two-way street, then why does it feel like candidates are stuck in traffic while companies cruise through toll-free?
Employers love to talk about “finding the right fit” and “building a great team,” yet their hiring process resembles a one-sided talent show where job seekers must juggle, tap dance, and recite poetry, while companies sit back, arms crossed, nodding judgmentally.
The result? A mass exodus of talent. People are quitting, freelancing, or flat-out ghosting recruiters in return. The system is collapsing under its own weight, and companies are left scratching their heads, wondering why no one wants to jump through their 12-step hiring obstacle course anymore.
People are tired.
Until hiring managers stop treating job seekers like contestants on an unpaid reality show, they’ll continue to lose the best talent to burnout, apathy, or, worst of all, competitors who figured out how to hire like normal human beings.
And honestly? Who can blame job seekers for walking away? Because at some point, it’s not worth the emotional investment when the only thing waiting at the end is a “We’ll keep your resume on file” rejection email.