-

r/recruitinghell u/Fast-Application5391 . 1h applied to my own company's job posting under a fake name. rejected in 6 minutes. I lead a team of nine. We've had a desperate need for a senior associate role since april and hr keeps telling me the pipeline <br />was thin, nothing passing screening. So last month i made a new email, changed my name, tweaked the dates, and applied to my own req with essentially my own cv. The CV of the person who wrote the job description and brother i was auto-rejected in six <br />minutes! Took a week to work out why. the filter was set to require React.js and my cv says React. that's it. that's the whole thing. a full stop. We have been rejecting every qualified applicant since april over punctuation, while i sat in weekly <br />meetings being told the market was tough. if you've been getting instant rejections from places you're clearly qualified for, it is very possibly not you. Anyone else tested their own funnel? i'm now scared to look at the other two requirements

2026-10-28 10:55:37

Nαtαshα :mastodon: via Cory Doctorow

Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt

This is absolutely mad

2026-10-28 11:09:02

Andrew

cinebox@masto.hackers.town

@Natasha_Jay better than being ghosted at least

2026-10-28 11:15:17

Victoria :3 🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸

tragivictoria@mastodon.com.pl

@Natasha_Jay it's absolutely impressive how tech sector have ruined itself

2026-10-28 11:16:48

Vanu "My private key is 4" Arson

VanuPhantom@zug.network

@Natasha_Jay whenever we've hired at vanu.dev, we've simply put out some ads asking for applications of any kind, suggesting the inclusion of a résumé, but actually saying a good cover letter can be enough to get an interview. We then read through emails on a first-come-first-serve basis.

If automated systems are this fallible, why use them? Humans are great at this!

2026-10-28 11:19:01

Aut

Aut@hachyderm.io

@Natasha_Jay Imagine testing your stuff. Couldn't be me

2026-10-28 11:19:16

guenther

guenther@chaos.social

@Natasha_Jay why would the market be tough for employers at the moment?

2026-10-28 11:42:22

Autumn Meadow

meadow@lgbtqia.space

@Natasha_Jay
It would be nice if we would stop assigning machines to do what a human should be doing.

2026-10-28 11:46:29

fool

fool@brontosin.space

@Natasha_Jay I think that most tech companies (or companies of any kind) are simply bad at hiring.

Specifically, the usual strategy is to gather as many applicants as possible and then reject them for arbitrary, often spurious reasons until the workload shrinks to a tractable size.

They can get away with it for two reasons: Permanent cyclical unemployment means that there will be a superabundance of qualified applicants; and the companies take steps to protect themselves from their employees.

2026-10-28 11:49:58

Em & future cats 🇺🇦🐈🏳️‍🌈

em_and_future_cats@mastodon.social

@Natasha_Jay Yuuuup, my husband has had to deal with this exact nonsense too!!
And he technically works for this same damn organization as a doctoral student and the people who are in the organization know him and want him! Yet damn HR immediately rejected him and everyone else there is like ??why??
😒🙄🙃
So no, I do not like hr 😹

2026-10-28 11:50:27

Woozle Hypertwin

woozle@toot.cat

@Natasha_Jay I want to know what's going on there with communication between the team doing the hiring and the team writing the filters.

...and, like, if many applications are coming in but 100% are being rejected, shouldn't someone have been investigating that immediately...

2026-10-28 11:51:57

718GT4

aikidospike@mastodon.online

@Natasha_Jay this is the modern hiring and recruitment pipeline. Ignore the person and focus on pointless features of the CV

2026-10-28 12:24:38

Mihail Zdravkov

mzdravkov@mastodon.green

@Natasha_Jay Automating hiring is insulting to potential candidates in my opinion. Hiring never scales faster than company size, so if you are not willing to spend the time to personally check the applications of people that are to be your co-workers, then you simply do not respect them enough for me to want to work for you.

2026-10-28 12:28:51

S T E L L A R :bun:

Stellar@mk.absturztau.be

@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt recruiters have automated their job years ago, this isn't surprising

2026-10-28 12:37:28

device ⛧

device@infosec.exchange

@Natasha_Jay I had several jobs where I flagged that the job requirement and the interview is not something I'd pass, and they thought I was a great contributor.

Since it's on reddit unsure how true is it, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is behind the job market, I hear from companies they can't find anyone and from good devs that nobody hires them. I'm sure it's something like this with some AI sprinkled on top of excluding people for shits and giggles

2026-10-28 12:42:30

Paul_IPv6

paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange

@Natasha_Jay

back before AI screening but when HR did CV screening based on buzz word bingo, this kind of stupidity is exactly why i asked for copies of all rejected CVs in a 2nd pile. i never failed to find at least a few resumes that never should have been rejected by HR.

way better for me to waste 30 -60 seconds scanning an unsuitable resume than have some idiot person or program reject solid candidates.

2026-10-28 12:49:46

Marquis de Geek

marquisdegeek@ohai.social

@Natasha_Jay And not just AI. An internal HR human rejected a candidate because of the slash in Linux/Unix.

When I asked to see a sample of previous candidates they refused, and started complaining to the CEO that I (a mere CTO) shouldn't be allowed to see any CV, ever.

2026-10-28 12:52:27

Sonikku

Sonic2k@oldbytes.space

@Natasha_Jay
The problem is I've been rejected now from just about everywhere... so I might as well just die... eventually I will be on the street when the money runs out.

That douchebag can make all the excuses he wants.. he can write about the "punctuation" thing. At the end of the day he is in control of his company.

2026-10-28 13:00:02

Log 🪵

log@mastodon.sdf.org

@Natasha_Jay All available anecdotes suggest that any manager trying to hire someone--that they will actually be able to approve and not want to fire later--absolutely should not rely on HR as their sole source of candidates.

2026-10-28 13:07:37

ThatKomputerKat :neocat_cool:

thatKomputerKat@oldbytes.space

@Natasha_Jay

HR: fucking useless.

2026-10-28 13:17:10

Benny for the Pooka 🪈🎃

feijoa@mastodon.org.uk

@Natasha_Jay Artificial "intelligence"

2026-10-28 13:22:37

kramaker

kramaker@vivaldi.net

@Natasha_Jay And this is absolutely only the tiniest little taste of what's coming as not only decisions but increasingly actions are delegated to brittle models.

2026-10-28 13:27:18

Phil Dissonance

philphi@metalhead.club

@Natasha_Jay I guess the silver lining is that that company got exactly the applicants it deserved

2026-10-28 13:37:14

Mx. Eddie R

silvermoon82@wandering.shop

@Natasha_Jay
So what I'm reading is that the HR team is grossly negligent and needs to be fired and replaced in their entirety.

2026-10-28 13:37:23

GrumpyDad 🇺🇦🇵🇸

grumpydad@infosec.exchange

@Natasha_Jay HR are usually populated by morons

2026-10-28 13:57:35

Toni Aittoniemi

gimulnautti@mastodon.green

@Natasha_Jay wow

2026-10-28 13:59:39

Ю ⁂

yuliyan@nahe.social

@Natasha_Jay Also...not to defend the use of LLMs but this would have probably been detected by an LLM.

2026-10-28 14:20:22

Kristopher Johnson

oldmankris@mastodon.xyz

@Natasha_Jay Management at my employer is very open about their goal to hire people who are better than the current employees. None of us would be hired now.

2026-10-28 15:12:39

Bruce Elrick 🇨🇦

virtuous_sloth@cosocial.ca

@Natasha_Jay
I’ve always been under the impression that most of the HR industry was either largely incompetent or functioning in its role as the immune system of the body corporate.

2026-10-28 15:31:27

SpaceLifeForm

SpaceLifeForm@infosec.exchange

@Natasha_Jay

AI Fail.

#AI #Insanity

2026-10-28 15:31:38

nick

nickzoic@aus.social

@Natasha_Jay Even worse than back when human recruiters would phone you and say "So you know javascript and postgres, and this job says java and postscript, so that's the same thing right? Also it's a seven hour drive from the city."

2026-10-28 15:38:06

Flipper 🐬🏳️‍🌈🌹

flipper@mastodonapp.uk

@Natasha_Jay this is completely insane. Imagine using, actually using, React.

2026-10-28 16:05:13

Wayne Dixon

waynedixon@mastodon.social

@Natasha_Jay @catsalad wow, that really is wild. This is why I think that humans should look at each application, or at bare minimum do what this person did and put up a fake fully qualified applicant and see how what happens.

2026-10-28 16:06:08

Adam Collins

m104@mastodon.social

@Natasha_Jay hiring is dating and dating is hiring and it will continue until we get the machines out of the middle

2026-10-28 16:10:03

LaGuatona

melibb@mastodon.social

@Natasha_Jay @manorag Imaginate la cantidad de veces que esto detuvo un proceso por culpa de la gente xd

2026-10-28 16:21:52

Mark Whybird

whybird@aus.social

The Simpson’s Proncipal Skinner meme: “Is it me who is the problem?” … “No, it must be everyone else.”

@Natasha_Jay The worst part of this - and who could have predicted such a thing with hiring firms and HR depts - is the arrogance.

I can understand normies not getting that React and React.js are the same thing while Java and JavaScript are not. That’s fine. The problem is when (a) they claim to be technology hiring experts and don’t know this, and (b) when NOTHING is getting through the filter, they don’t think to check their work.

2026-10-28 16:33:59

Jeremy Nickurak

atrus@toot.cafe

@Natasha_Jay Industry: Is this the part where you tell me you're not mad, just disappointed?

Me: Yes, except for the part about not being mad.

2026-10-28 16:51:11

Misuse Case

MisuseCase@twit.social

@Natasha_Jay This kind of stuff was already a problem before AI infiltrated the hiring process because everyone was using the same 6 job search companies and their screening algorithms and the job search companies basically collect rent by milking both companies and job seekers for money.

2026-10-28 16:54:24

Jeremy 🇨🇦

thatgeoguy@coales.co

@Natasha_Jay I am pretty sure this is ragebait. Someone on bluesky put it through pangram or something

https://bsky.app/profile/satyrs.eu/post/3mywf72v5sk2i

2026-10-28 17:51:10

Martin Schröder 🇺🇳

oneiros@ruhr.social

@Natasha_Jay
Old.

2026-10-28 17:55:16

Killa Koala

dshan@mastodon.au

@Natasha_Jay Super Intelligence at work!

2026-10-28 18:20:32

Supermoosie

SuperMoosie@mastodon.au

@Natasha_Jay

I remember having discussions on Twitter with a person working at a recruitment company. She was giving advice to ditch a cover letter and don't make your CV longer than 3/4 of a page. Because she only reads the first few lines. It is all I have time for.

She didn't like when I pointed out the company hiring were paying for her to read the whole thing. To find the best candidates, no matter how they formatted their cv.

2026-10-28 18:24:13

plastic_puppy

plastic_puppy@app.wafrn.net

@Natasha_Jay@tech.lgbt

I used to be really sad that I haven't gotten a tech job. But these days I thank my lucky stars I'm too dumb of a puppy

2026-10-28 20:37:33

Tekchip

Tekchip@infosec.exchange

@Natasha_Jay I've been trying to find a new job for years and this is how it's been. Very quick rejections or straight ghosted. It feels entirely impossible to get a job.

2026-10-28 23:59:43

zivir'kari

hsza@social.tudbut.de

@Natasha_Jay nobody wants to work anymore!!~

2026-10-29 00:25:12

der.hans

lufthans@mastodon.social

@Natasha_Jay this is exactly why I always want a raw feed of the applications

I'll work with the recruiters to let them give me a short list, but I want be able to view every candidate

In a recent hiring round 2 of the last 3 candidates were from my fire hose filtering and one of the 2 was hired

That said, until recently I've never been at a place popular enough to really get hit with a fire hose of candidates, but now with AI even my job ads get hit with a couple fire hoses

2026-10-29 02:11:10

AngharadHafod

AngharadHafod@toot.wales

@Natasha_Jay I was talking to someone yesterday who recently received a job rejection. On enquiry, it turned out she didn't make it clear that she had an English GCSE. She didn't see the need to emphasise that in the application when she'd noted that she had a BA degree in English.

Once she pointed this out to them, she was offered an interview.

2026-10-29 02:19:28

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

david_chisnall@infosec.exchange

@Natasha_Jay A year or so ago, I posted a job for a toolchain engineer to work on LLVM on LinkedIn. I didn’t realise that it automatically allowed people to apply through LinkedIn. Even though the ad explicitly provided an email to send applications to and told you to apply by that, it turned out a load of people applied through LinkedIn.

The applications were not great. Very few had ever worked on any compiler. I then discovered that LinkedIn did a pre-filtering pass and, by default, hid all of the people who were filtered out. The filtered-out people were also mostly not great but around 70% of the people who did have relevant experience were in that bucket. Sadly not 100%, or I could have just inverted the meaning. But the vast majority of people who had previously worked on LLVM were filtered out by their LLM-driven flow for a job working on LLVM.

2026-10-29 04:04:37

🧠 🧟‍♂️ brainsoup 🎃

hotsoup@infosec.exchange

Everyone has a test environment Some people are lucky enough that they have a separate environment for running production

@Natasha_Jay hr be testing in prod

2026-10-29 06:04:40

Reid :blobcat_happy:

reiddragon@fedi.catto.garden

@Natasha_Jay the market *is* tough, just not for the corporations

2026-10-29 06:25:54

Matthew Malthouse

calmeilles@mstdn.social

@Natasha_Jay

If they were that stupid they fully deserve to fail to recruit.

Would you want to work for people who can't write a regex?

2026-10-29 11:16:04

Ölbaum

oscherler@tooting.ch

@Natasha_Jay At a previous job, I was a senior developer, and we were looking for a mid-level programmer. When my boss showed me the job offer (that had already been posted,) I realised that if I saw it while job-searching, I wouldn’t apply, because I didn’t feel qualified. 🤦🏼‍♂️

2026-10-29 17:08:40

Zach Leatherman

zachleat@zachleat.com

@Natasha_Jay mad for the react part alone 🤷

2026-10-30 02:44:31

Bunny :InfinityVerified:

Babyboo@neopaquita.es

@Natasha_Jay now I feel so much better knowing the problem is not me but the fucking AI