Stop Wasting Our Time: Why the Modern Hiring Process Is Broken — and How We Can Fix It
- Joseph Haecker
- Oct 17
- 3 min read
You know what’s worse than rejection?
False hope.
It starts the same way every time. You see a post that sounds perfect: “We’re looking for passionate, driven team members who thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.” Great! That’s me!
You click apply. And then the games begin.
The Hidden Hoops
First, there’s the “creative” job post — with cute little challenges buried inside. “If you’ve read this far, put the word ‘pineapple’ in your subject line.” Because nothing says professional vetting process like testing whether I can spot an Easter egg in a job description written like a riddle.
Then come the “innovative” application portals. The ones that make you manually re-enter your entire résumé — line by line — after you’ve already uploaded it. Because apparently parsing text from a PDF is rocket science.
Next, the “pre-screening” questions.
“Tell us about a time you showed leadership.”
“Record a short video introducing yourself.”
“Please answer the following diversity, veteran, and disability questions…”
Sure, these might look harmless. But let’s be honest — 99.999% of these forms aren’t reviewed by a person. They’re run through an algorithm that decides who makes it past the invisible gate.
And we all know what happens next.
The Viral Job That Wasn’t
One day, I came across a job posting that asked candidates to record seven short videos as part of their pre-interview.
Seven.
So, I decided to do it right. I set up my tripod. Connected my wireless microphone. Adjusted the lighting. Double-checked the sound levels. I even re-recorded a few clips just to make sure they were perfect.
Per the instructions, I uploaded each video to YouTube, pasted the links into the application, attached my résumé, filled out the voluntary demographic questionnaire — gender, veteran status, disabilities, all of it — and hit Submit.
Within seconds… Ding.
An email.
“Oh! They got my application already!” I thought.
Then… Ding.
Another email.
“Thank you for applying. We’ve been flooded with great candidates. Unfortunately, we’ve decided to move forward with others…”
Seconds. After spending well over an hour setting everything up, I got the digital equivalent of a door slammed in my face.
That wasn’t “cute.” That wasn’t “innovative.” That was a colossal waste of time — for me, and probably for every other hopeful applicant who jumped through the same hoops.
The System Is Broken
Somewhere along the line, hiring stopped being human.
HR departments and marketing teams got “creative.” They gamified applications. Added filters. Introduced personality quizzes and video portals. They called it efficiency. But what they really did was automate empathy out of the process.
And what’s left? A system where job seekers spend hours — sometimes days — perfecting applications that never even reach a person’s inbox.
What Should Be Done
Here’s a radical idea: what if the responsibility of finding great candidates actually fell on the hiring managers again?
Instead of posting “cute” job listings and waiting for résumés to roll in, hiring managers could:
Scout talent on LinkedIn and industry groups
Read real stories and posts from professionals
Reach out to people recommended by peers
Start conversations — human ones
Imagine if the hiring process looked more like networking and less like spam-filter roulette.
Flip the System
The truth is, the system has conditioned HR departments and recruiters to be lazy. Automation made it easy to cast a wide net and let an algorithm do the sorting. But in doing so, they’ve forgotten something essential: people aren’t data points.
At Open To Work Social, we’re flipping the process on its head.
We believe finding the right fit doesn’t start with a résumé — it starts with a story.Your story.
When hiring begins with the human — not the form, not the keyword match — everything changes. Real connections happen. Real conversations follow. And maybe, just maybe, people stop wasting each other’s time.
Because in the end, we don’t need another clever job post or automated rejection email.
We just need honesty, effort, and a little bit of humanity back in hiring.
Stop wasting our time. Start with the story.
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