There’s this sto­ry we keep telling about the job mar­ket: it’s tough out there. Fine. I can live with that. And I’m say­ing this as some­one cur­rent­ly in it — reori­ent­ing on the way to my next role. I’m hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions, doing calls, send­ing appli­ca­tions, wait­ing, look­ing close­ly at what’s out there. And there’s this slight­ly sur­re­al expe­ri­ence of try­ing to meet a sys­tem where it is, with­out let­ting it define me.

But first, let me be clear: I get it. Few­er open­ings, more appli­cants, smart peo­ple com­pet­ing for the same roles — that’s real. Labor mar­kets have always been cycli­cal, and econ­o­mists have data for that. What doesn’t make sense is the vibe.

Scrolling through my feeds late­ly feels less like »peo­ple look­ing for work« and more like watch­ing a weird strat­e­gy game. Every­one is min-max­ing their char­ac­ter build. And I’m not exempt — I catch myself doing it, too. You start out think­ing you’ll just be hon­est and clear, and two weeks lat­er you’re squint­ing at job ads like they’re rid­dles, ask­ing your­self which exact syn­onyms might sur­vive the first auto­mat­ed filter.

And that fil­ter isn’t a metaphor. A lot of com­pa­nies these days use an ATS — an appli­cant track­ing sys­tem — that pars­es appli­ca­tions, pulls struc­tured data out of your doc­u­ments, and can reduce a messy human sto­ry into a score, a rank, a shortlist.

What we’re all doing here reminds me of some­thing odd­ly spe­cif­ic from anoth­er cor­ner of my life. I’ve been play­ing pen-and-paper role-play­ing games for some­thing like 35 years, and there’s a word for a cer­tain kind of play­er: the pow­er-gamer. Not the per­son who builds a char­ac­ter with a vibe, or a back­sto­ry, or a few inter­est­ing flaws — but the one who opti­mizes so hard the char­ac­ter turns into a car­i­ca­ture. Tech­ni­cal­ly bril­liant. Mechan­i­cal­ly unstop­pable. Social­ly … kind of ridicu­lous. The par­ty needs a liv­ing per­son and gets hand­ed a spread­sheet in a cloak. Sure, that char­ac­ter can do every­thing. But exact­ly: that’s the prob­lem. It stops being a char­ac­ter and becomes a sys­tem exploit wear­ing pants. That’s how a lot of job search­ing feels right now.

How Do I Outsmart the Filters?

Com­pa­nies use ATS sys­tems, so peo­ple opti­mize their CVs for what­ev­er the sys­tem might reward. And if you keep going, you end up with this odd­ly maxed-out ver­sion of your­self that reads great on paper and feels vague­ly alien when you look at it too long.

Recruiters on social media share »inside tips« about inter­views, so can­di­dates start train­ing for the meta-game instead of the con­ver­sa­tion. Not the job, not the craft — the chore­og­ra­phy. If they offer you some­thing to drink, take it calm­ly (don’t make it a thing). If they ask, »Why shouldn’t we hire you?«, don’t admit a real weak­ness — frame a »devel­op­ment area« that sounds safe, con­tained, already half solved. If they ask whether you have ques­tions, you’re appar­ent­ly not sup­posed to think of your own in the moment. You’re sup­posed to pick from one of the many cir­cu­lat­ing lists of »great ques­tions«, like you’re select­ing dia­logue options in a 90s adven­ture video game. Sud­den­ly we’re all Guy­brush Three­p­wood.

Cov­er let­ters start sound­ing like they were writ­ten by the same com­mit­tee. LinkedIn posts read like cor­po­rate fan fic­tion. And some­where in between all that pol­ish­ing, some­thing human qui­et­ly disappears.

It reminds me of the arms race between anti-dop­ing agen­cies and ath­letes. Test meth­ods improve, so dop­ing gets smarter. Con­trols get tighter, workarounds get sneaki­er. Both sides invest more and more ener­gy — not into per­for­mance or health, but into beat­ing the sys­tem. That’s exact­ly what this whole process feels like some­times. Not »How do I find a place where I can do good work?« But »How do I out­smart the filters?«

Psy­chol­o­gy has a few names for this. One is impres­sion man­age­ment — the (very nor­mal) human ten­den­cy to present our­selves strate­gi­cal­ly when some­thing is at stake. We all do it in inter­views. That’s not new. The weird part is how quick­ly it turns into a full-blown per­for­mance when the stakes rise and the eval­u­a­tion feels opaque — algo­rithms, auto­mat­ed screen­ing, ghost­ing. If you don’t know what’s actu­al­ly being judged, you opti­mize every­thing you can con­trol: the word­ing, the for­mat, the sto­ry arc, the smile.

Hiring is Supposed to Be About Something Deeply Human: Trust 

There’s also a con­cept from eco­nom­ics that fits almost too well: Goodhart’s Law. When a mea­sure becomes a tar­get, it stops being a good mea­sure. If »key­word match rate« becomes the goal, CVs turn into key­word soup. If »cul­ture fit answers« becomes the goal, inter­views turn into rehearsed scripts. If »engage­ment on LinkedIn« becomes the goal, authen­tic­i­ty qui­et­ly dies. The sig­nal gets gamed. And once every­one games the sig­nal, it stops sig­nal­ing anything.

Which is kind of trag­ic, because hir­ing is sup­posed to be about some­thing deeply human: trust. Can we work togeth­er? Do we think in com­pat­i­ble ways? Will we enjoy solv­ing prob­lems side by side? None of that sur­vives well inside an opti­miza­tion con­test. Instead, both sides burn too much ener­gy on theater.

Com­pa­nies add tools to reduce uncer­tain­ty. Can­di­dates add tac­tics to beat the tools. More tools. More tac­tics. Less truth. It’s per­fect­ly ratio­nal behav­ior on both sides. And col­lec­tive­ly … absurd.

The irony is that the more we try to con­trol the process, the less we actu­al­ly learn about each oth­er. The more lay­ers we add, the more the whole thing starts select­ing for peo­ple who are good at selec­tion — like reward­ing the play­er who’s best at exploit­ing the rules of char­ac­ter cre­ation, not the one who’ll make the table bet­ter for everyone.

The Process Seems Designed to Reward Performance Over Truth 

And maybe that’s my real frus­tra­tion with this tran­si­tion peri­od: I don’t mind putting in effort. I don’t mind being eval­u­at­ed. I don’t even mind rejec­tion. ’Cause at least rejec­tion is infor­ma­tion. What I mind is how often the process seems designed to reward per­for­mance over truth. To turn actu­al peo­ple into »pro­files«, and actu­al work into »sig­nals«, until you’re basi­cal­ly audi­tion­ing for an algo­rithm and hop­ing a human shows up eventually.

So yeah, I’ll keep play­ing the game to some extent. I’m not naive. I’ll tai­lor the CV. I’ll prep for inter­views. I’ll do the dance. But I’m also try­ing, delib­er­ate­ly, not to dis­ap­pear inside it. To be spe­cif­ic instead of flaw­less. To sound like a per­son instead of a tem­plate. To choose clar­i­ty over opti­miza­tion — even if it costs me some points in the invis­i­ble scor­ing system.

Because at the end of the day I’m not look­ing to »win« recruit­ing. I’m look­ing for a place where I can do good work with real peo­ple, on real prob­lems, on a ran­dom Tues­day morn­ing — with­out all of us hav­ing to pre­tend we’re char­ac­ters in a gam­i­fied hir­ing simulator.