Job growth has slowed, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed are growing. It makes the indignities of the modern hiring process even more frustrating for those in the market.
Job-seekers are navigating a gauntlet of automated application systems intended to winnow down hundreds, sometimes thousands, of applicants, only for many to never hear from a human.
We spoke with one, Jackie, who’s been in the market for about a year. We’re not using her full name because she’s worried it could hurt her chances with potential employers.
At the moment, she’s trying to make ends meet with dog-sitting gigs while looking for permanent work as a recruiter in Oakland, California.
So far she’s submitted 529 applications, which she tracks in a Google Sheet. Of those, only 39 led to any human contact. The vast majority of entries went nowhere.
“That’s the dehumanizing part, where you don’t even get an email saying ‘thanks, but no thanks,’” she said.
That’s despite an application process that’s longer and weirder than ever. Hiring platforms don’t just use keyword filters for resumes, they often use automated systems that analyze extended questionnaires, grade work assignments, assess personality, or — Jackie’s favorite — conduct interviews with bots.
“Do you think they heard me roll my eyes?” she said. “Hard pass. I will never do one.”
Technology has increased the number of jobs applicants can reasonably apply to. It started with digital job boards, then came remote work. Now, artificial intelligence helps applicants tweak their resumes and cover letters in a matter of seconds. But widening the application funnel comes with tradeoffs, said Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Because the bigger the pool you’ve got, the more variation you’ve got in it,” he said. “And that falls then to your selection processes to sort that out.”
Hence all those added layers of algorithmic filtration. Cappelli said the odds of getting an interview are only about 3%, though applicants are jumping through more and more hoops.
“At some point they just learn that this is not going anywhere, and why keep banging my head on the wall,” he said.
Digital application portals seem like a lost cause to Oliver Golden Eagan.
“I have not gotten traction on any applications that I have not had some sort of personal connection to,” he said.
Golden Eagan graduated from Pomona College on scholarship last year. After interning at Harper’s Magazine he’s been looking for full time work in publishing. He usually tries to cold contact an employee of his target company so he can send his resume via email. He’s even thought about delivering application materials on paper in person!
“I don’t come from a background that’s necessarily replete with those kinds of connections,” he said. “My mother’s a housekeeper.”
AI application systems are often sold as fixes to the traditional biases in hiring. But Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan said they introduce new unfairness.
“The experience that we put these job seekers through, right, being interviewed by a robot, essentially, I think it’s kind of a violation of basic dignity,” he said, noting there’s little evidence AI can accurately predict who will excel at a job in most cases.
Narayanan suggested if the systems are no better than random number generators, perhaps we should explicitly use random number generators: choose candidates by lottery after they fulfill some minimum requirements.
“You’re not pretending to go through this opaque process that somehow magically picks out the best candidates,” he said. “And so it’s understood by everyone that it was just the luck of the draw.”
If dog-sitting could pay the bills, Jackie said she’d gladly leave the job boards behind and stick with her pet friends.
“I don’t feel ignored. I don’t feel like I’m just kind of disappearing into the void,” she said. “Yes, they need a lot of attention and affection, but they give it right back.”
In some ways, the perfect antidote to a dehumanizing hiring process.
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