There are certain messages you receive in life that make you stop what you are doing, stare at your phone, and wonder if the universe accidentally CC’d you on a comedy sketch. Not a regular message. Not a normal “Hey, hope you’re well” message. I mean the kind of message that arrives wearing sensible shoes, carrying a tote bag full of unsolicited feedback, and acting like it just discovered professionalism in aisle seven at Target.
That happened when Kayla reached out to tell me, “Hey Alex, you’re making recruiters look bad. You need to stop.” Oh, Kayla. Sweet, salaried, possibly LinkedIn-verified Kayla. I read that sentence three times because I wanted to make sure my unemployment trauma had not developed subtitles. At first, I thought maybe I misunderstood. Maybe she meant, “Alex, you’re making recruiters laugh.” Maybe she meant, “Alex, thank you for bringing attention to a broken system.” Maybe she meant, “Alex, we have decided to move forward with another candidate, but your jokes were impressive.” But no. She meant I needed to stop.
I had to sit down. Not because I was offended. Not because I suddenly felt guilty. Not because I realized my tiny LinkedIn post had taken down the entire recruiting industry like a folding table at a company picnic. I sat down because I was laughing so hard I nearly dropped my phone into the rejection email I was actively crying into. Which, honestly, would have been poetic. My phone drowning in a rejection email while someone told me my jokes were the problem. That is not a moment. That is a full documentary with sad violin music, gray lighting, and a recruiter softly saying, “We’ll keep your resume on file.”
Here is the thing, Kayla. I am not out here trying to make recruiters look bad. I do not wake up in the morning, stretch, drink coffee, and whisper, “Today, I destroy talent acquisition.” I am not sitting in a dark room with a vision board that says “Expose Brenda from HR.” I am just a job seeker trying to survive the emotional obstacle course of modern hiring without turning into a LinkedIn thought leader who says things like “Rejection is redirection” while quietly screaming into a decorative pillow.
I am not creating the chaos. I am describing the chaos. There is a difference. If I say the hiring process feels broken, that does not mean I broke it. If I joke about being ghosted after a final interview, that does not mean I invented ghosting. If I mention getting an automated rejection email after seven rounds, three assessments, two panel interviews, one “culture fit conversation,” and a partridge in a conference room, that is not me making anyone look bad. That is me reading the receipt. And apparently, the receipt is long. Very long. CVS long. The kind of receipt that comes with coupons for shampoo you have never purchased and emotional damage you did not request.
The Recruiting Process Did Not Need My Help Looking Suspicious
Let’s clear something up right away. If a professional system is healthy, fair, transparent, and functioning properly, one sarcastic LinkedIn post should not be able to injure its entire reputation. A joke should not be able to walk into the room, touch one loose wire, and suddenly the whole machine starts smoking and printing rejection emails in Latin. If the reputation of modern recruiting can be damaged by a man saying, “Hey, maybe stop ghosting people after final interviews,” then maybe the foundation was already built out of expired Indeed credits, broken ATS filters, and motivational Canva graphics that say “Hiring is human” while no human has responded in 46 business days.
I have applied to hundreds of jobs. Hundreds. At this point, my resume has had more versions than Spider-Man. One version makes me sound like a seasoned executive. Another makes me sound humble and collaborative. Another makes me sound like I was created in a corporate lab by three hiring managers, two consultants, and one broken algorithm that only understands the word “synergy.” I have uploaded my resume, then manually typed my entire resume into tiny boxes, because apparently the application system wanted to make sure I was serious enough to suffer twice. I have selected my highest level of education from dropdown menus older than some recruiters. I have re-entered job titles, dates, responsibilities, skills, certifications, and my willingness to relocate, even though my resume was sitting right there like, “Hello? I brought snacks.”
I have answered questions like, “Why do you want to work here?” Because rent has entered the chat, Kayla. Because groceries are no longer priced like food. Because my electric company has yet to accept passion as a payment method. I have answered, “What attracted you to this role?” The salary range you refused to post. The benefits you described as “competitive,” which usually means “we compete with your will to live.” The phrase “growth opportunity,” which I now understand means “three jobs in a trench coat with one paycheck.”
I have been through interviews where everyone seemed excited. The recruiter loved me. The hiring manager loved me. The panel nodded like I had just brought balance to the Force. Someone even said, “We’ll be in touch soon,” which, in hiring language, can mean anything from “tomorrow” to “we have sealed your application inside a cave and future archaeologists may discover it.” Then came the silence. Then came the rejection email. Then came the classic line: “After careful consideration.” Careful consideration by whom? A person? A spreadsheet? A raccoon with access to Workday? Because sometimes it feels like nobody carefully considered anything except how quickly they could turn a human being into a status update called “not selected.”
I have been told I am overqualified, underqualified, impressive, not quite the fit, too senior, too broad, too specific, very strong, very competitive, and somehow not memorable enough to receive feedback from anyone with a name, pulse, or lunch break. So when I write jokes about this process, I am not inventing the absurdity. I am reporting live from inside it. I am standing in the middle of the hiring circus, pointing at the raccoon driving the bus, and saying, “Does anyone else see this?” And judging by the comments, yes. A lot of people see the raccoon. Some of them have been riding that bus for 14 months with no snacks and a dashboard that says “Application under review.”
Good Recruiters Are Not the Problem. The Broken Process Is.
Let me say this clearly before Kayla screenshots this and adds it to a group chat called “Candidate Red Flags.” There are great recruiters. I know some of them. I respect them. I appreciate them. I have met recruiters who communicate, advocate, follow up, give honest feedback, explain delays, prepare candidates, push back on unrealistic hiring managers, and treat job seekers like actual people instead of resume-shaped interruptions to their dashboard.
Those recruiters are not the problem. In fact, they are often trapped inside the same broken system candidates are complaining about. They are trying to make hiring human while being handed unrealistic job descriptions, disappearing hiring managers, compensation bands hidden like national secrets, and leadership teams asking for a “rockstar unicorn” with 15 years of experience, a master’s degree, entry-level salary expectations, and the emotional flexibility of a yoga instructor during layoffs. Good recruiters deserve credit. They deserve support. They deserve calendars that make sense, hiring managers who answer emails, and job requirements that were not written during a fever dream on a delayed flight.
But the bad ones? The ones who vanish after saying, “You’ll hear from me either way”? The ones who send you a message that says, “I have an exciting opportunity,” and it turns out to be 40 percent less pay, three states away, and requires experience operating software that was invented last Thursday? The ones who call you “perfect for the role,” then disappear like corporate Bigfoot? The ones who ask for your availability, schedule the call, reschedule the call, cancel the call, then reject you for a role you never got to discuss? Yes, Kayla. I may have a few jokes.
Because candidates are tired. We are tired of being told to be patient by systems that move with the urgency of a printer jam. We are tired of being told to network when half the network is also unemployed, burned out, recovering from layoffs, or posting inspirational sunrise photos with captions like “Open to new opportunities” while privately questioning every decision they have ever made. We are tired of being told to customize every resume and cover letter while companies send the same rejection template they found buried in a SharePoint folder from 2011.
We are tired of interviews that feel less like conversations and more like corporate escape rooms where every answer must be confident, humble, strategic, tactical, passionate, calm, data-driven, emotionally intelligent, and legally non-threatening. We are tired of being evaluated for “culture fit” by people who cannot explain the culture beyond “fast-paced,” “collaborative,” and “we wear jeans sometimes.” And we are especially tired of being told that talking about this publicly is “unprofessional.”
You know what is unprofessional? Ghosting a candidate after four interviews. Canceling a final round with no explanation. Posting fake evergreen jobs to collect resumes like emotional Pokémon cards. Telling someone they are a top candidate, then sending a rejection email so generic it could have been written by a toaster with access to LinkedIn Learning. That is unprofessional. My joke is just the smoke alarm. Stop yelling at the smoke alarm. There is a fire in the conference room, and someone from leadership just scheduled a listening session about it with no agenda and mandatory attendance.
Humor Is How Job Seekers Keep From Losing Their Minds
Here is what people like Kayla sometimes miss: the jokes are not just jokes. They are pressure valves. They are tiny survival rafts. They are how people keep going after months of silence, rejection, confusion, and being told their entire career is impressive but somehow inconvenient. Humor is what happens when your nervous system has filed a complaint, your inbox has become a haunted house, and your LinkedIn feed keeps showing you “easy apply” jobs that are neither easy nor apparently applying to reality.
Behind every sarcastic post is someone sitting at their kitchen table at midnight wondering what they did wrong. Someone refreshing their inbox like it owes them child support. Someone rereading a rejection email for hidden meaning, even though the message was clearly assembled by a bot with no childhood. Someone trying to stay hopeful while LinkedIn keeps suggesting jobs they already applied to, already got rejected from, and somehow still says, “Be among the first 200 applicants.”
Behind every joke is someone with 20 years of experience being treated like they showed up to an interview carrying a fax machine, a Blockbuster card, and a printed MapQuest route. Someone who has led teams, built departments, saved companies money, trained employees, fixed disasters, survived layoffs, restructures, recessions, toxic bosses, new CEOs, old CEOs, interim CEOs, and at least one mandatory team-building event involving trust falls, warm soda, and room-temperature pizza. And now that same person is being told they are “not the right fit” by a company whose job posting asked for leadership, resilience, adaptability, initiative, and “a self-starter who thrives in ambiguity.”
Buddy, I have been thriving in ambiguity since your application portal froze on question 47. So when I post something funny, it is not because I think job searching is a joke. It is because if we do not laugh, we might start screaming into a decorative throw pillow from Target. The humor is not punching down. It is punching through. Through the shame. Through the silence. Through the weird belief that candidates should endure this process quietly, politely, professionally, and with a fresh thank-you note after every emotional mugging.
People are allowed to talk about what this feels like. People are allowed to say, “This is broken.” People are allowed to laugh at the absurdity of being asked to upload a resume, enter the resume manually, complete a 45-minute assessment, record themselves answering questions into the void, interview with six people, wait three weeks, follow up twice, and then receive an email addressed to “Dear Candidate.” Dear Candidate? We had a relationship, Workday. You knew my address. You knew my employment history. You knew where I went to school. You knew my salary expectations. You knew I once worked somewhere for nine years and still made me pick my highest level of education from a dropdown menu designed during the Bush administration. Do not “Dear Candidate” me now.
Final Thoughts: I Am Not Stopping
So Kayla, with all due respect and one professionally aligned eyebrow raised, I am not stopping. I am not stopping because candidates are tired of pretending this is normal. I am not stopping because people message me every day saying, “I thought it was just me.” It is not just you. It was never just you. There are thousands of people out here being rejected, ghosted, filtered, overlooked, underpaid, overqualified, under-considered, and emotionally audited by hiring systems that somehow have more automation than accountability.
And when they read something funny about it, they feel seen. They laugh. They breathe. They remember they are not crazy. That matters. If my posts make a few people uncomfortable, maybe that discomfort is not the problem. Maybe it is the beginning of an overdue conversation. Maybe it is not me making recruiters look bad. Maybe it is candidates finally holding up a mirror and saying, “Hey, this part of the process is hurting people.”
And maybe instead of telling job seekers to be quieter, the better question is: why are so many people relating to the joke? Because healthy systems do not fear satire. Broken systems do. So to the great recruiters: I see you. I appreciate you. Please keep doing the human work in a process that badly needs humans. To the candidates still applying, still refreshing, still hoping, still rewriting resumes like hostage notes to the algorithm: you are not alone.
And to Kayla, thank you for the concern. I will place it carefully next to my rejection emails, my customized cover letters, my unpaid assessments, my seventh-round interview notes, my “we went with another candidate” screenshots, and the tiny shred of dignity I have left after being asked to describe my leadership style in three words. For the record, those three words are: Still. Not. Stopping.
Because behind every joke is a job seeker trying to stay alive inside a process that keeps asking them to smile for the camera. And if talking about that makes me “bad for business,” then I guess I will just be over here… still unemployed, still applying, still laughing, still telling the truth, but now, apparently, with a fanbase.
