In 2020, 2021 I saw a lot of companies hiring, for initiatives that do not necessarily make sense or profit, and that was because with near-zero interest rates, money was free and anyone would borrow for their business, and spend this new free money, on hiring people, to pursue projects that “may” be profitable. The HR process is hugely inefficient, and actually I would argue nearly all white-collar processes and tasks (the stuff that we poor smart people do) are hugely inefficient. A below-minimum-wage offshore contractor would attempt to source me, to have me talk to an interviewer who reads off of a list of questions and checks off boxes, to have me spend a day talking to managers and engineers, when in actuality they aren’t looking to hire, they are looking to maintain and utilize interviewing processes. Many times interviewers admit that they “have been slow to hire,” or “do not have a specific need but rather looking for an exceptional match.”
Money disappears if they don’t spend it, so businesses create busywork to spend it.
I’ve been installing and evaluating ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems recently and even the best ones seem cumbersome and bad. Most of them come with recruiting functionality. Looking at the hiring process from the opposite end, from the point of view of HR people and recruiters, you can see how candidates are just a commodity, a product being procured, selected and negotiated over. So many useless expectations are built into HR systems, it’s infuriating. And the admin assistants managing these processes just go along with it, and you are a candidate have to deal with it.
Some successful people on LinkedIn would make it their job, a speculative unpaid job, to be interviewed and be good at being interviewed. These “influencers” have thousands of followers, and talk about how to correctly and expectedly answwer interview questions. One can literally spend years being interviewed for a prestigious position at a prestigious company. It is literally a career.
But maybe the worst of it is the attitude that the HR people have. Since their attitude is that they are always selecting, and never being selected, they develop the power-tripping syndrome real fast. I’m quilty of this myself, anyone is. Anyone in the position of power is likely to abuse it.
If you are a candidate give the interviewer the impression that you are evaluating them, this may result in an automatic failure of your candidacy. Even according to their own instruction manuals, when they ask “do you have any questions,” it is an “opportunity” for you to “demonstrate” “excitement” and “interest” in the role. In other words, it is not for you to evaluate them, it is for you to demonstrate your loyalty and commitment to their company, *before* receiving an offer. So you as a candidate are expected to do all this work for free. And they get paid for interviewing you.
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