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The Brutality of Online Job Hunting
How technology promised to connect talent with opportunity but created a dehumanizing maze instead.
Meredith stared at her screen, it’s glow illuminating the room as the clock headed towards midnight. This was her 48th job application of the month. She’d found the opening on a job site, which clicked her through to the company’s hiring portal. It had taken her half an hour to fill everything in. She’d hit submit, but it didn’t save. It took her 3 tries. Then the cheerily worded email saying thanks. She wondered if anyone did feel thankful at the company.
She’d even spent an hour beforehand researching the company, looking on company employee reputation sites, tweaking her resume. Using an answer engine to help her with keyword stuffing. Checked a few subreddits and discords to get tips on how to work with AI screening tools to “game the system.” For one job application she’d spent 3 hours.
And Meredith knew that the front-end of applying is all about the ATS (Applicant Tracking System), that the likelihood of even getting her resumé in front of a human was probably less than 5%. A few weeks later, she discovered through an acquaintance that the job had never even existed. It was a “ghost Job” for the company to project to competitors it was growing.
