Why is the job market so brutal? Because it’s RIGGED AGAINST you!

If you have been job hunting for a while, you know what I mean. You submitted tons after tons of job applications, only to be rewarded with automated rejection emails if you are lucky. Most of the time, you will not even hear anything back. If you are luckier still, you may score an interview, only to fail to pass the final hurdle.

Job hunting sucks. It is soul-destroying. It crushes your confidence. It makes you question your self-worth. For some, it ignites outrage in their heart against the ethically-challenged recruitment ‘industry’.

Why?

Because the job ‘market’ (if we can call it a “market”) is a dysfunctional system that is rigged against you. It is designed to be cheap and convenient, in opposition to the interests of best outcomes.

So, how does this rigged system work?

Complexity of modern jobs

Before you understand how the rigged system works, you need to understand this: the Information Age has led to an explosion of meaningless job titles, narrowly-defined job functions, jargon-filled job descriptions, incomprehensible specialisations and puffy what-I-do-for-my-work explanations.

There are many jobs that exist today, that do not exist 15 years ago. I guarantee that in the next 10 years, a lot more jobs are going to spring into existence that does not exist today. For example, 15 years ago, jobs like “Social Media Manager” did not exist back then.

Worse still, as changes in the Information Age accelerate, what you do in your current job is constantly changing. Your responsibilities for the job title that you signed in the employment contract will be different in a few years’ time, even though you are supposed to be doing the ‘same’ job. After a few years, you may find that your job description no longer reflects what you actually do.

So, what does this mean?

Basically, nobody understands what the other person does for a living. Your boss may not even understand what you do every day at work. HR is most probably completely clueless about what your job is all about.

In my case, there was a restructure in the company I previously worked for. My job title was changed and a new employment contract had to be signed. When I read the job description for the new employment contract, it was laughingly obvious that whoever (in HR) ‘wrote’ it, has completely no understanding of what that job is all about. I could tell it was an awful copy and paste job. My colleagues with the same job title had no idea what some of the elements in the job description meant. But I knew what this meaningless mumbo-jumbo meant. That was because I was in that job the longest and had the benefit of understanding the historical context of where these meaningless words came from.

Deluge of job applicants

Modern technology makes it extremely easy to apply for jobs online. In the LinkedIn platform, the “Quick Apply” button allows you to apply for a job with literally a few clicks.

Unfortunately, this blessing of convenience has turned into a curse. Nowadays, every publicly listed job advertisement is inundated with millions of job applications. Some job-seekers even use software to automatically submit job applications on various job platforms en masse indiscriminately. Other candidates see this as a numbers game and use the spray and pray strategy in their job search. They apply for as many jobs as possible. A tiny minority do that even to the point of complete lack of discrimination.

After all, since the job market is so brutal, the likelihood of rejection for each job application is extremely high. Therefore, the only way for job seekers to compensate for the high rejection rate is to increase the number of applications substantially. Hence, the spray and pray strategy.

Complexity clash with deluge

So, what happens if you put complexity and deluge together?

HR and recruiters are faced with a nightmare. They have to somehow find the best candidate for jobs that they are completely clueless about. And they have to wade through a mountain of CVs in which they are also clueless about the content too. And they do not have much time to do that!

In a real-life example, I have a friend who was part of the selection panel for a role. After reading through the CVs of all the candidates, he and his fellow panellists were confused. There was no way that the selection panel could fulfil its purpose of finding the best candidate.

So, there is an urgent need for HR (or outsourced recruiter) to find a way to rapidly cull and filter the deluge of CVs to present to the hiring manager with a manageable list.

So, this leads to an obvious question.

If HR (or recruitment agent) do not understand (a) what the job is all about and (b) the content of CVs, how on earth can they be the right people to tell who is the right or wrong candidate?

The fact of the matter is, they cannot.

Indiscriminate keyword matching

HR (and recruiters) are under a lot of pressure. They have to rapidly cull as many CVs as possible. They have to come up with an efficient process to do that.

I was told by a recruiter that the HR Manager is usually given a list of keywords by the hiring manager to look for in CVs. So, the culling of CVs has descended into a meaningless keyword matching exercise. There is no need to understand what any of these keywords mean. In reality, this exercise can be rapidly done by computer software. That is why you will find that recruiters insist that your CVs are saved in Word format so that their software can read them.

So, this leads to another obvious question.

How can mindless indiscriminate mass-matching of keywords with CVs lead to the desired outcome of finding the best candidate?

I will give you a real-life example of my experience. Years ago, I applied for a role. In that role, it required experience with a piece of technology called “A”. In that organisation, they do not use the keyword “A” for that piece of technology. They called it “B”.

I knew “A” is synonymous with “B”. The hiring manager knew it too. But HR had no clue. My CV was peppered with the keyword “A”. But HR was looking for the keyword “B”. The end result was predictable. It was hiring stuff up. The indiscriminate keyword matching process culled every CV in the system. There was no suitable candidate. None.

A couple of months later, I received an email inviting me to reapply. That email acknowledged that “A” is “B”.

In real life, the best candidate may not have all the right keywords in his or her CV. A smart recruiter will understand the relationships between keywords and what are the transferrable skills between different keywords. A software algorithm (or mindless HR process) cannot understand such nuances because it does not understand the meaning of keywords.

That is why the job market seems too brutal. You may be the best candidate. But if your experiences do not match up exactly according to the keywords, you are out.

Discimination and prejudice disguised as heuristics

I suspect that over time, candidates start to learn how to game the algorithm (or mindless HR process) by peppering their CVs with strategic keywords. So, even the indiscriminate keyword matching process cannot cull the CVs to a manageable level.

So, what can the HR manager (or recruiter) do?

They (or the software algorithm) have to resort to the heuristic. You can think of heuristics as rules of thumb that allow rapid decision making. So, what are the examples of heuristics that they use for mass-culling CVs?

University degree

A few years, I read about a recruiter letting the cat out of the bag. Do you know why some roles require a university degree when you know it is not really necessary for the job?

The reason is recruiters can quickly eliminate candidates without degrees, thereby reducing the number of CVs to wade through.

Job history

If your CV does not have a nice job history, it will be culled. For example, if you worked in too many temporary and casual roles in the past, you may face the axe in the recruitment process. Or the gaps in your work history may result in your CV being sent to the trash can.

Spelling errors

If you have spelling or grammar errors, you risk being axed too.

No matter how you look at it, heuristics are basically discrimination and prejudice based on generalisation.

Now, here comes a problem. A lot of these prejudices and discriminations become self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, a gap in your employment history may result in you being eliminated from consideration. Your reduced job prospect will further increase the gap in your job history, which further prejudiced you against future job applications.

Employer laziness

If you made it through the gauntlet of indiscriminate keyword matching, discrimination and prejudice, there is one more further hurdle to cross.

Your experience.

Risk aversion

You see, employers are extremely risk-averse. When considering a candidate, how can they know whether he or she will perform in the job?

For internal candidates (or someone they already know), they truly know that person. They know whether that person is trustworthy, conscientious, willing to learn, skilful, knowledgeable, and so on. They have a good idea of whether that person can perform in the job.

But if you are an external candidate, you are like a blank piece of paper to them. So, what can they do? They simply look at your past experiences.

Have you done exactly what this job requires in your previous job? If yes, then they can be assured that you will continue to do at least as well as in your previous job. And they can easily verify that by asking the HR in your previous company.

This hiring process is quick and efficient. There is no need to analyse the candidate and job role to find out if both are a good match. There is no need to know that candidate as a person.

What about potential?

What if the candidate, although may not have all the experiences aligned and configured perfectly, has great potential? Sorry, potential does not count. They have no time to figure out what your potential is. They have no time to train you on your shortfalls in order for you to reach your potential.

They do not care to see your potential. It is too abstract. They rather stick with known facts. That is, what you had already done in your previous job. They only hire you for what you can do for the company the very second you sign above the dotted line. Not what you may possibly do for the company in the future. They cannot even wait for a few months. They want to hire you to start work at the deep end immediately.

Basically, if you have not done exactly what this job requires in terms of experience, you are out.

That is why the job market is so brutal. The hiring process is done this way because it is convenient and cheap, not because it produces the best outcome for both the company and the candidate. That is the reason why the world-renowned marketer, Seth Godin, wrote this:

Great people shouldn’t have a resume.

Here’s why: A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, “oh, they’re missing this or they’re missing that,” and boom, you’re out.

Nowadays, businesses automated their dysfunctional hiring process with mindless software algorithms. That is why, as this news article reported,

Companies Need More Workers. Why Do They Reject Millions of Résumés?

Automated-hiring systems are excluding many people from job discussions at a time when additional employees are desperately needed

In the next article, I will write about the consequences, both socially and economically, of this kind of sub-optimal hiring process.