The (Not) Working Man's Blues
I want to gripe about job hunting.
In spite of my literary ambitions and ocasional creative writing, I’m a Front-end Developer by trade. Ironically, writing code is what gets my bills payed and gives me resources to do all the things I actually like to do in this world, like writing. Recently I've found myself without a job and on the hunt for something that might get my bills payed and my bank account alive. I've applied for multiple jobs, but one specifically stood out among the dozens I've been trough the last month. I found it on a job board specialized in remote positions. The job description was well within of my of capabilities and it had a good compensation. So, I filled in a huge form, attached my updated resume, clicked the big send button at the end and hoped to get a reply from them, which rarely happens. A couple of days later, I received an e-mail from the company. They sent me a list of tools that I assumed were within their tech stack and asked me to grade myself from one to ten in each and write a short paragraph about my experience with each. I was supposed to send it attached along with my resume.
I thought it was strange to ask me for my resume when I already had it sent to them, but did it anyway.
Writing the thing wasn't time consuming, I did it in less that fifteen minutes. A couple more days passed and they replied me again. This time sending me a number of questions. What I felt about AI and if I use generative AI as a productivity tool, some basic questions about coding languages and testing and even what software and extensions I use to write code. "We want to know you better", they said. They didn't ask for my hobbies, what music I like, about my cats. No, they wanted to know me better by asking what I use to work. At the end of it was a coding challenge. I was supposed to write something pretty basic and they wanted to see how I wrote it.
I'd like to point ou that I hate coding challenges. I really, really, hate coding challenges. Almost every time a recruiter sends me a coding challenge, I immediately drop out of the process. I believe they are lazy, dumb and are never useful. Or it's some absurdly complex algorithm that has no real world applicability or it's something that you fear they are using you as free labor. To me it's absurd to ask a professional, no matter their background for them to do actual work to show if you can perform the job in question. No one asks for a surgeon to perform brain surgery as a test for a position at a hospital the same way no one asks for a landscape professional to mow their lawn to see how are their lawn mowing skills, that's simply absurd. Nonetheless, this is standard practice in the IT industry. You may have years and years of experience and they'll ask you to take a test the same way.
But, anyway, I'm out of a job right now, so I did the stupid challenge and replied all of the questions. This took me some time, but I sent it within the time frame they asked and attached, again, my resume.
Yes, they asked me yet again to send them my resume.
I waited patiently for their reply, which came in a reasonable time. And then my blood started to boil from an overwhelming rage. The kind of rage that makes you want to throw the controller at the TV when you get shot by a preteen with pimples from Korea while playing Call of Duty. The kind of rage you get when someone schedules a meeting at 16h30 on a Friday. The kind of rage of stumping you pinky toe on the corner of a table while it's still sore from someone stepping on it with a pointy shoe.
"We'll get in touch once the Management Team has reviewed your work; we expect it within 20 working days."
Twenty business days.
Almost two weeks passed since I sent my application. I had not yet spoken to an actual person. I spent quite sometime answering their questions, doing the challenge and attaching my resume, and no interview was scheduled. No actual human contact was made. It's been ten days since their last reply and I already know I don't want to work for them.
Why I am telling this story? Because I think it encapsulates perfectly what it is to be job hunting in the present day.
I have spent countless hours filling in questionnaires, recording videos, sending applications, doing odious coding challenges, while someone who has never seen my face, not even through my LinkedIn profile photo, sorts around applications and sends me an automated e-mail with that thanks me for my interest in the company, but unfortunately they have decided not to go ahead with my application, or some other bullshit. That is, when the actually go through the applications. Many, if not most, appear to be using AI to filter the pool and give them back the "best" results.
To me, it all comes down to recruiters and HR staffing companies not wanting to spend any of their precious time with the candidates and having the candidates do all the actual work for them.
Browsing through LinkedIn I can see that this is an almost universal experience. Countless professionals share the amount of jobs they've applied to, interviews they've had and for how many months — or years — they've been looking for work. The situation is bleak, but what makes it even worse is how unseen and unheard we feel. We are treated as discarded old toys. We gave our best to the places to the Corporate World™ at and then, when we we're needed anymore, we were thrown away and left aside. I give recruiters a lot of shit (deservedly so), but it's not entirely their fault. They and how recruitment and selection function nowadays is just a symptom of a larger issue that has only gotten worse in the corporate world: Most companies don't really care about the people who work for them, or the people who want to work for them. This is so true that every once in a while I see a recruiter on the same boat as the rest of us of the infoproletariat, posting something lengthy with the #OpenToWork hashtag.
Job hunting was never easy and always has been a tedious and stressful affair. You spend more time waiting and hoping than actually looking for work. You try to compensate and use your free time the best you can. Maybe improving your portfolio, studying or working on a personal project that was left aside because of whatever reasons you may have. But there's no running from the tedium and the anxiety of the seemingly eternal wait. We're always waiting. Waiting and hoping that, in spite of everything seemingly working against us, that we'll soon get an e-mail that says "Congratulations!" instead of "Unfortunately…".
