NYT opinion writer Jessica Grobe claims, “The Hunt for a Job Has Never Been Worse. These Applicants Are Fighting Back.”
I recently wrote about the purgatory job market of 2026, in which potential employees are largely evaluated by automated systems, engage in chatbot interviews and, even then, often get no feedback about their applications. Multiple job seekers described this experience to me as a “dispiriting,” “dehumanizing,” “dystopian” netherworld.
After that story ran, I got several emails from start-up founders who told me that their new tech product was going to help fix the broken job search. I spoke to a few of them, all of whom identified a real “pain point” on the employer side: Corporations receive way too many résumés to evaluate, yet they are still having trouble finding genuinely skilled and appropriate employees. What’s more, some job seekers are using A.I. to misrepresent their skills and sometimes even who they are.
Their proposed solution, naturally, is more AI with better algorithms.
As to the headline, it’s certainly hyperbolic. The job market has frequently been worse in terms of actually finding work. We track unemployment rates, after all. Still, the process has become ever more depersonalized and frustrating. And it works both ways:
A wave of start-ups in the mid-2010s claimed that using algorithms in hiring would make the process less biased and more efficient. By 2011, over 75 percent of job seekers looked online for jobs, and companies were flooded with too many applications to process, so they did need some way to begin vetting. (The volume of applications has become even more unmanageable since ChatGPT became available in 2022; per The Economist, “Paid services like LazyApply and aiApply let candidates submit applications while they sleep, tailoring résumés and cover letters to a tee.”) But machine learning often reinforced existing biases and, for many human resources professionals, added new complications like fake applicants and more cheating on skills assessments.
Employers couldn’t reasonably screen all these applications manually, but even well-trained AI systems are looking for keywords rather than applying actual intelligence. So, as Grobe puts it, it’s a Spy vs. Spy farce.
Her hope is a return to a human-centered system, but I don’t see how we get there. Applying for jobs online is cheap, if not free, and the incentives are to flood the zone and hope to get lucky. Many Federal employees apply for jobs constantly, hoping to move up the ladder, find a less abusive environment, or diversify their skill sets. I presume that happens in the private sector as well. (Grobe points to a Gallup survey claiming more than half of the workforce is actively looking for a different job, which seems hard to believe.)
