Why Hiring Absolutely F'n Sucks

And some ways we could try and fix it.

Whether you’d like to subscribe is up to you. I ain’t your mom.

My last couple of years have been pretty awkward in terms of hiring process. I worked at PBS from 2011 to 2012, then decided to go to graduate school. That kinda sorta turned out OK, but it took me a long time to get a job once I got my Masters. Then I moved down to Texas for that job, right? And … 17 months later, I got fired. I don’t really look for work right now — I do a lot of freelance — and while part of that is because I’m not sure how great I am with hierarchy and office jobs, part of it is because the hiring process is completely broken in America.

How broken is it? Let’s explore.’

Hiring Process Flaw №1: The foundation

Imagine a genie came to you with this deal: you spend a bunch of money, and the reason for spending the money is that you’re going to gain all this knowledge and learn so much. OK, got that part? Now once you’ve spent the money and theoretically gained the knowledge, another genie is going to come along. When you ask that genie for a wish, he’s gonna spit in your face and say “Nope, we only want people who have done this exact set of things beforehand.” You’d probably be pretty pissed off at the second genie, since the promise of the first genie was that money → knowledge would make you more well-rounded, yea?

Genies don’t exist, but this shit happens every single day in America. Kids come out of school, or grad school, or community college, or whatever else … and they went to that school partially on the assumption that increased levels of education would make them attractive to employers. But the hiring process isn’t rooted in that. It’s rooted in “Here’s a checklist of shit we think this job should be able to do. If you have the entire checklist, maybe you can advance.”

Never understood this: if business “moves faster than ever” and is “so complex” — all shit you’ll hear executives say in any interview — then wouldn’t we want someone with diverse knowledge, as opposed to someone with an extremely specific set of skills that’s basically done the exact same shit before? This same prioritization of task work over knowledge and growth will someday kill Silicon Valley, as an aside.

Soooo … the entire foundation on which the hiring process typically rests is a giant fucking turd. Nice. Can it get worse?

Hiring Process Flaw №2: The cover your ass move