Company A publishes an ad for a position.
Prospect B replies to that ad.
Months later
Company A sends email to Prospect B, “Are you still interested? If so, Respond ‘Yes’”
Prospect B responds “Yes”
Company A sends email containing several pages of screening questions to be filled out in essay format.
I found the instructions telling.
Use acronyms only after you’ve explained them.
Use correct spelling and grammar.
Really? They had to specify the blindingly obvious?
Neither parties have actually spoken to each other, human to human.
Next will be a phone preinterview
Then a Zoom meeting and attendant group interview.
Then there will be no word at all for another few weeks or months, because the candidates are hung up in committee. A Committee it should be noted that is made up of people who will likely never set foot in the Engineering wing of the corporation, (if they even know where it is).
Just when Prospect B has forgotten about it, Company A will reach out with additional questions from the group interview.
This is what passes for “Efficiency”.
God I miss the old days!
This shit was so simple and direct. By step three, Prospect B had been interviewed by the hiring manager, a decision had been made, offer letter was in the mail, (as were “Thanks but no thanks letters”,) and the hired candidate already had their company access badge.
Here we are in 2025, communications at the speed of light, more email pumps across the ‘net in a minute than “Snail Mail” in a week.
We have cheap, to the point of being almost free, global telephone & video conferencing on a scale that was only the fevered dream of futurists 20 years ago and we have “Leading Edge” companies (because all companies are “Leading Edge” right?), being hobbled by…
Human Resources? Lawyers? Fear of hurting someone’s feelings?
This process should be faster, not slower.
Additionally, because of so many bogus headhunting agencies play similar games I’m always wondering if I’ve got some kind of scammer phishing for information.
So I’m perhaps unduly cautious and suspicious.
In on-line dating, the scams are played out exactly like this too.
“Hey.”
Hello
“You’re really good looking.”
Thank you
“Do you work out?”
Yes
“At a Gym”
Yeah, one here in town.
“What’s it called?
Gold’s
“Really? That’s my gym too.”
Nice, maybe I’ll see you there sometime
“What city you live in?”
Northeast LA
It’s after 30 more inane messages. You find, the person has no car, can’t afford their rent, and wants you to pay for a Gold’s membership but would prefer a premium Equinox gym package that includes monthly massages & pedicures. Then they send you a “Picture” of themselves which is clearly a well known (possibly deceased,) porn star, and ask you to Venmo them “just a little” cash to keep their phone on.
When you say “Thanks but no Thanks” they get nasty and report you to the moderation council of the dating app and you’re under investigation for not being “inclusive” in your dating preferences. At this point you can infer this person is making their living scamming people on various dating apps.
Job seeking at its basic level isn’t very different from dating.
One difference is that in technology, typically the best folks have zero patience for bullshit. Hmm, that might not be a good example.
I can speak from personal experience when I say the best technology people I’ve ever worked with, had difficulty connecting with other people. They didn’t understand social niceties, and were very easily bored or confused by human behavior. They felt that the reason a company should hire them was self evident based on their resumes and the choice was obviously clear.
A company hired them for their abilities, to fill a particular need, and that was literally all that mattered. They preferred the ultimate meritocracy, in fact they thrived in environments where feelings had no place. It was simply a matter of getting the job done.
I very much lean toward that same philosophy in working environment. I had an advantage in that I had just enough comprehension of normal humans, that I could be an interface between people who didn’t do emotion or feelings, and those who were a bundle of contradictory impulses, desires, goals, manipulation, and feelings.
My function was to provide a window into how normal humans interact with machines and software, test software, and represent Engineering / Development / QA in meetings with people, my less socially adapted colleagues considered rabid chimpanzees.
After particularly difficult meetings with normal humans, it was bliss to return to emotionless labs where all that was required of me, was to analyze binary logic. Something worked or it didn’t, there were no shades of grey.
Reporting a defect to a really good developer had zero emotional charge. It simply was a fact and the developer would accept it as such, perhaps ask clarifying questions, then put it on their “To-Do” list as a high priority to fix after they were done with the feature they were currently implementing.
Most of the developers I worked with, appreciated my ability to stand in for them with the “Normies”. Equally, they understood that dealing with the cacophony of “Normie” feelings and demands in meetings was exhausting and could intuit my status with a glance. They kindly let me be after meetings until I’d recharged in the protected and rarified energy of the engineering labs.
Engineers and developers aren’t ignorant of emotional cues, they simply don’t live every waking moment in emotional discord. They’ll come across as not caring. That’s not strictly true. They care, but are choosy about what and who they invest their time in.
They’ll generally protect one of their own or someone like me. It’s not about friendship, or Machiavellian plans. Protection is extended because persons A or B serve a vital function. Clean, impersonal, simple, direct… Binary.
As HR departments have become more interested in psychology, employee engagement & happiness, they’ve alienated developers and people like myself who lean more toward a non-human mindset.
HR departments hate engineering departments. HR feels unappreciated when they create a party atmosphere for a company event, they have streamers, balloons, BBQ, and give out little trinket awards. They expect everyone to enjoy over amplified music in a corporate parking lot and they call this “Team Building”.
Engineers and Developers see it this way. Parking is not possible in our usual spot. Will be late to the morning status meeting. Free food > food in lunch bag. Cold packs in lunch bag will not last the entire day. Alternate cold storage will be required, lunch bag will serve as dinner tonight. 11:30 HR function, most of development pod will file out, grab free food & drink, then return to desks where there is adequate seating and temperature is optimal, plastic Chinese awards insignificant. Suboptimal music playing in parking lot = distraction, headphones required. Metallica playlist available. Fourth order equations for project must be programmed in C or Assembly to be effective. Consult with Alan to determine which path is likely to produce best outcome.
When the “Team Building” event begins, HR expects, and I’ve seen in some cases, demands, (HR really likes to use the word “Mandatory”), that all employees remain in the designated “Party Area”. Their “logic” is to promote interaction between all departments.
The reality, is that the engineers and developers congregate with each other, plates and drinks in hand conversing about the daily work, project issues, and do not interact with other departments. It’s not that they’re trying to be antisocial, it’s just that “rabid chimpanzees” aren’t that interesting.
Often the software QA group forms a protective picket line between the “Normies” and the Engineering / Development staff. It’s sort of a QA thing, we like our Engineering / Development colleagues and know them well enough to understand social interactions may not be comfortable or pleasant for many of them. We’re tribal and protect our own.
QA & Engineering / Development interact well with each other, but are “strange ducks” in comparison to the rest of the departments. Sales people often try to breech the QA picket line in an attempt to gain future product development knowledge that they can sell as “current product” to enhance their sales numbers for the month.
Most, if not all, are intercepted by QA and distracted with questions about the latest sports teams or how their children from various wives are doing in various sports.
The obligatory “Time Present” value expires, Engineering / Development / QA refills plates and drinks then retreats to Optimal seating and temperature inside their labs.
HR is disappointed that engineering was not engaged, but consoles themselves with handing out reward trinkets to Sales/Marketing and Executive staff.
HR is incapable of evaluating contributions from Engineering / Development / QA. Quantifiable metrics are esoteric and without a dollar value HR is unable to relate an award trinket to ephemeral concepts.
HR then begins planning next company event with further goal to force Engineering / Development / QA to participate.
In this, HR utterly fails to understand that Engineers / Developers / QA are completely different creatures. We’re the kind of people that figure out how to build atomic weapons not because we want to blow shit up or for wars. We do it, because it’s interesting and we’re curious if we can actually make it work.
As a side note, we’re also the people that are often guided by a principal loosely attributed to Robert Oppenheimer & Albert Einstein: “Yes, we can do this thing… But should we? Can we be sure that this won’t be misused or cause irreparable harm?“
I’ve been at companies where HR mandated, (there’s that word again,) Engineering / Development / QA participation at 2 or 3 consecutive corporate functions. Typically by the fourth mandated function,(It is mandatory that all employees attend,) the Engineering / Development / QA department leaves the corporate campus 1/2 hour before the scheduled event.
During the mandated corporate event, Engineering / Development / QA are all at the local microbrewery enjoying beer, food, camaraderie, and discussing resume refreshes because the company has come to appear more interested in “cross department team building” than giving them raises greater than 1% or actual completion of new products or projects.
It does not go un-noticed by Engineering / Development / QA that they’re driving shitbox cars while Sales / Marketing / HR are driving new Porsche’s, Teslas, Corvettes, Mercedes, BMW, or Range Rovers, and wearing 125K Patek Phillippe watches.
Which leads back to job searches
Company A publishes an ad for a position.
Prospect B replies to that ad.
Months later
Company A sends email to Prospect B, “Are you still interested? If so, Respond ‘Yes’”
Prospect B responds “Yes”
Company A sends email containing several pages of screening questions to be filled out in essay format.
And you wonder why, many Engineers / Developers / QA people are somewhat antisocial.
Well, I must now apply my time to answering essay questions. I wonder if I could get an AI to do it? Perhaps I could, but should I? Sure! I don’t see any irreparable harm…
Update: AI was useful. Essay test completed and sent. I chose to provide “Seed” concepts to the AI I was using, then allow it to create a high scoring draft answer. I took the draft and reworked it into my own method of speaking accepting that the score would drop a point or two. My hope is if a human ever reads the document they’ll recognize a real person was behind it.
I’ve added the completed document to a new “Boilerplate” document for future use. I suspect that no human eyes will ever read the document I submitted. I’m betting that an AI will evaluate the document, score it for completeness, spelling, and grammar, then pass those scores to another ATS AI which will compare the scores to other applicant scores then place my application in a queue ranked by score and limited in number.
Whoever created these ATS systems and their associated AIs didn’t fully understand the concept “Yes, we can do this thing… But should we? Can we be sure that this won’t be misused or cause irreparable harm?“
Sigh…
Really? 
I knew it was coming. I just didn’t think they’d move this quickly.