Something has shifted in the way recruiters look for candidates, but something has also changed in the way candidates approach interviews.

 
We all know that the current state of the job market is indecipherable. We don't even understand what companies are looking for in candidates anymore. Every hiring manager is different and has completely opposite expectations for each candidate they interview. There is no formula to get a job. It's a combination of having an incredible résumé (but not TOO incredible), a charismatic personality (but not TOO charismatic), and being good at selling yourself as a great employee. You have to be amazing but not too amazing. A good interview consists of finding the balance between perfection and not being too good to leave for a better job in two months. 

This Reddit thread got me thinking about another aspect that we don't usually consider that has shifted in the job market: candidates. Reading the stories some recruiters shared got me thinking that everything has changed SO much that no candidate is secure enough during interviews. Overqualification has become common, and, at the same time, the ones who have a resume that goes well with the job description aren't showing enough social skills. It seems that everyone is so nervous about not having a job that when the opportunity of an interview appears, fear is what takes over them. They don't showcase themselves as normal employees, and instead they come off as weird. But they aren't weird. They are just nervous. 

This shift in industry trends has shown us that even if you are a great candidate, you may not get the job. Everything is changing, and nowadays nothing really secures you as a great prospect. It seems as if it's just luck. Let's just wish things go back to normal. Companies lower their expectations on candidates, recruiters stop being subjective towards the people they interview, and candidates loosen up and act less terrified when just being asked simple questions. No magic trick will land you a job, and things are really difficult right now, but the last thing anybody should be doing is stop trying. 
 

Some companies enjoy making job applicants jump through hoops in the interview process… only to reject them after weeks of hard work. Which leads to the question, when should a job applicant put their foot down and refuse to be subjected to all these hoops?

When you need a job, you are willing to do just about anything in order to get it. 10 interviews spread across three months? No problem. 3 assignments that provide the company with some free labor? Bring it on. Five recommendation letters from former employers and your kindergarten teacher? You got it covered. All before you even signed a contract, and for the off chance of actually being accepted to the job.

As long as there are people willing to go through all these steps, the hiring process is not likely to change. In fact, in recent years, it has only gotten worse. And all thanks to… take a quick guess… Yep. The lovely technologies offered by AI.

So now, not only are job applicants going through numerous rounds of interviews, but they also have to do it in front of a barley functioning AI tool. Companies don't even bother to have a human meet with a candidate first; they simply send them a link for a "one-way video interview" and call it a day. Let the job candidate figure it out themselves, that will get them to want to work for your company for sure.

The only way to make a change in the hiring process is if people stop participating in it, and the job seeker below has already taken the first steps. They decided that a company that does not have ten minutes for a real human conversation during the initial screen is never going to value them as an employee. Why should they waste their time on these horrible video interviews if all they get in return is a generic rejection email? It's not like these companies are worth it anyway.

It's time that job candidates learn that rejection is a two-way street…

Somewhere between the collapse of print journalism and the rise of the algorithm, we accidentally built the greatest comedy writers' room in human history, and none of them get paid a cent. That's the entire premise behind ReplyArchive, a page that simply does the sacred work of screenshotting strangers roasting each other online before the original poster deletes the evidence out of shame. Nobody asked for this content, especially the specific poster of some of these posts. And yet here it is, better than ninety percent of what network television has produced since 2015.

Lost in translation

I love that people feel the need to make silly confessions like this. I don't think lying is always bad if it doesn't really hurt anybody. I'm surprised to know the barber never realized the English-speaking man was actually French. Either he is an excellent English speaker, or the barber was just playing along for all those years. In my experience, you can always tell when someone is not Native, no matter how perfectly they speak the language. Maybe it would've been easier to be upfront about not wanting to do small talk, but this other option was a little funnier, and it involved some performance, so I'm up for it.

In customer service, you often encounter people who believe the world revolves around them. But how can you make them see that it is definitely not the case?

When a customer calls customer service, they usually have a problem they need fixing, and they expect the person on the other line to be able to solve it. 99% of the time, the issue really is an easy fix that a short phone call can provide, but there are these rare occasions where there is nothing that can be done.

The problem is that people do not like being told 'no', and it only urges them to push for a solution when they hear that word. When that customer is also a person who believes the sun shines out of their you-know-what, it could lead to a long dispute for the poor customer service person. All of a sudden, a pleasant conversation turns into a yelling-fest, as the customer is told that their issue is their problem, and there is nothing that could be done to change it.

When it comes to the tourist attraction in the story below, published on r/EntitledPeople, you can definitely say that the customer who called fully believes that the world revolves around him, as his request was so entitled that it almost left the customer service person speechless.

The phone call started with the customer telling the tour guide that they were going to be late to the tour they booked, then admitted that "traffic" had caused them to be an hour late. Then, they proceeded to ask the tour guide to delay the tour by an hour so that they would be able to make it, but considering the tour was fully booked, the guide refused to make the entire group wait for two people who clearly had an issue with time management.

As we established, people don't like being told 'no', and this customer is no different. Scroll down to discover how they reacted to this single word.

Malicious compliance or the dumbest idea you ever heard?

When things don't go our way is normal to feel not only hopeless but also mad. This irritation may showcase itself in weird ways that may not always be the best ones. Anger tends to get the best of us, and that is, in fact, completely understandable. Especially during divorce is normal for emotions to take the place of our brain. To stop thinking about actions and consequences and instead just act in the way that you feel would be the most damaging for the other person. Someone you used to love, but now you hate so deeply that the thought of inconveniencing them makes you thrilled. This is normal. You aren't crazy just because you want your ex-spouse to be unhappy. The problem is when it gets out of hand and begins a lawsuit.

In this Reddit story, the user's sister is going through a tense divorce that has indeed exterminated the remaining love the couple had for each other. The judge has heard them fight for long, and everyone in that courtroom is already tired of them. So when the woman says that it is fine if his ex-husband gets half the things in the house, everyone is happy. She didn't discuss or complain. She complied. The bigger problem did not happen in the story yet. That one is about to come any day now.

The wife decided to take that "in half" phrase literally. She cut his clothes, disassembled his appliances, and separated the CD's of his DVD collection from their packaging. This, unfortunately, is not malicious compliance. This is being dumb. As I previously said, it is normal in this kind of situation for your emotions to get the best of you. But this does not excuse not following the law. This case is going to escalate from a normal divorce to bigger problems just cause this woman could not have it in her the fact that his ex-husband was going to get what he wanted. She made everything worse and damaged herself for just simple things that didn't hold that much value in reality. 
 

What could go wrong when managers care more about metrics than real solutions?

I've read and heard multiple stories of managers trying to solve a problem, only to cause a much bigger one. In this case, they thought that by having each customer support employee close the unsolved tickets by EOD, the numbers would improve. Instead, they caused the whole system to collapse since multiple cases were opened, even three or four new ones per client. Since this made everything go wrong, they backtracked and dissolved the request.

I expect managers to understand better than anyone the numbers and metrics of a company, so I really get confused when they are the ones who ask employees to follow a mandatory task that ruins the whole system. As we can all imagine, these types of decisions end up being erased…

Anyways, sometimes trying new things is worth the attempt. But if they were going to change the whole procedure, they should've expected the numbers they ended up having: multiple new cases a day, and around three or four per client. That's a lot… even for customer service.

The part that I found to be the funniest was the one when nobody was shocked when the numbers exploded. The support agents knew exactly what would happen because they are the ones dealing with customers daily. If a problem depends on another department, closing the case doesn't really make the case disappear. It just creates more work later when the same customer calls the next day and demands an update.

It got to me when they didn't complain about the manager's rule. They simply followed the instructions exactly as they were given. That's usually when flawed policies reveal themselves the fastest. A dashboard might look cleaner for a few days, but reality eventually catches up. That's when they learned that a closed case and a solved one are not the same, and that it's better to have both of them even though the numbers are worse.

The notification comes from inside the house

This could qualify as a horror story. It would be a good A24 film. A man gets smart-fridge notifications in the middle of the night while everyone is sound asleep. In this case, discovering a snack-eating ghost would've been a better outcome than what really happened. Infidelities are not solved via an exorcism. I'm surprised to know how many cheaters are found like this, via smart appliances. I suppose it's because they can't lie, they have a memory, and we use them all the time.

Is there anybody out there thinking about the exhausted customer service employees who have to work during holidays?

A good amount of hotel guests and restaurant clients couldn't care less about the people serving them. They think they're entitled to anything they want, when they want it, and how they want it. They forget that they're not the center of the universe and people are just trying to do their jobs right. 

Redditor u/LCupidx works at a hotel and has experience managing entitled people, especially during a holiday weekend like the 4th of July. Guests not wanting to respect the check-out times, others complaining about the management rules, and such, all the while working on approximately three hours of sleep. The last straw was an entitled guy at 4:30 am demanding she give him an even later check-out than noon. Our receptionist here said that was not up to her, and the guy just started yelling, at 4:30 am I remind you, saying that he worked for the government and for Facebook. It doesn't matter where you work: hotel rules are hotel rules. 

I deeply admire people working in customer service, they have to deal with the craziest humans out there, and all without batting an eyelash. How did they get to master so much patience? That is beyond my understanding. If it were me, I would have called security the second the guy started yelling. Or just told him to go you-know-where, but then they would fire me. Let's just say there's a reason I'm working here, at home, behind a computer desk and writing all of these crazy stories for you to read and not in customer service. 

We'll do well by remembering that these people are working for our benefit, but that's not the same as working for us. They provide a service, one that we need, but that's not the same as catering to our whims, especially when that service has specific guidelines to follow. So, let's all be better and start treating them with respect, kindness, and dare I say, empathy? 

Invisible labor: what you do but nobody seems to notice.

In every family, there is always someone who does everything for everyone without expecting anything in return. The one that plans and hosts everyone's birthday, the one that always stays after a gathering helping you clean, the one that never forgets a special day. This may seem like simple things that don't need some major effort to be done, but the fact that there is only one person who cares enough to do it explains everything. Nobody does it, nobody cares, nobody even notices. Is invisible labor. And what makes it worse is the expectations that come with it. You can't ever stop doing it because it causes fights, and everyone starts treating you badly because you ruined it, when in reality, you didn't ruin everything. Everyone else did by not cooperating. 
 

This shows the entitlement these people have. They expect everything to be perfect, as if you were some kind of servant that HAS to do everything for them. While they don't even offer to stay after a little gathering that you hosted to help you clean out. This not only shows how ungrateful they are, but also how much you do, how much labor that becomes visible only when you stop doing it. And if someone else starts doing it, then now they are praised for it for taking the initiative when you ruined everything. 
 

This Reddit story is just another example of inconsiderate family members who prioritize themselves and nothing else. People who act as if you owe them something, as if your job was to do twice what they do, without expecting a thank you or even complaining. It's not your job. Don't offer to do everything, because if not, someday you will already be stuck with so many tasks and nobody is going to even tilt an eye to ask if you need help. You cannot get this burden because it condemns you to a life of pleasing people just because you are afraid to speak up for yourself. Do what you want, and the rest is for somebody else to figure out. 
 

Are people no longer interested in having friends?

Friendships are something most people want, yet not as many people make an effort to find and maintain them. It's a tough subject because socially, we assume it's something people should naturally know how to do, and I'm starting to think many people fail at it because it doesn't come as naturally to everyone. Should we implement friendship-making workshops in basic education? This Redditor wonders whether people no longer care about friendship or they just don't care about him. Could be both, but let's find out for ourselves.

Are you guys normal, or do you also have a wicked sense of humor? 

Telling a well-timed joke is an art not many people learn to master until well into adulthood. Those of us with a peculiar sense of humor understand pretty fast that there are jokes that should never be said out loud, at least not in wholesome company. Sarcasm is relegated to the intimate social circles, and those gloomy jokes are for our besties' ears only. Sometimes we don't even tell them to our families. Especially if it's about a delicate subject. 

Reddit user u/KDragonDeluxe told an ill-timed joke in front of her parents. She says she's always been a sarcastic person and tends to tell jokes about things she's sure will never happen. Oh, poor innocent girl. Anyway, she went to her parents' house with her boyfriend and brother once and the environment was already kind of tense for some reason. So she joked about it to her parents, saying, "What, are you guys getting a divorce?" And, low and behold, they were… Talk about bad timing!

I don't think that hearing your parents are getting a divorce gets any easier when you're an adult. My parents are luckily still together and very much in love, and I'm pretty grown up, but my whole world would definitely come down if they suddenly decided to split up. For them, it must have been like that. Even harder, since they found out about it through a bad joke. 

I only hope those siblings and their parents are emotionally okay. Hopefully she  learned from that experience. If it were me, no more sarcastic jokes unless I know for a fact that what I'm about to say is 100% not happening. 

There's always the possibility that everybody got over it quickly, the divorce was amiable, and now all of that is a funny memory. That's the version I'm choosing to believe in, and I'm quite sure it is what happened. Otherwise, the Redditor would never have told the story, right? 

Do you have a neighbor who runs their business out of their home? If not, consider yourself lucky…

It doesn't matter what kind of business they run, it will always be a disturbance to those around them. They are either extremely loud, super noisy, or allow their customers to do whatever they want around the neighborhood. Usually, it is a combination of all three.

When someone invites their customers or clients into their business, which happens to be their home, they are bound to disturb the other residents as well, which is exactly what happens in the story below. The business owner didn't care that the many people coming to her house were a bother to others, and she didn't intend to bring the disturbance to a stop. At least that was until her next-door neighbor had had enough of her inconsiderate behavior.

As a yoga instructor, this woman has many clients coming to her house. Every lesson she gives involves at least a few people, and she probably gives some lessons every single day. That means that dozens of people come to her house on a daily basis. That also means that many cars find their way to the neighborhood, and every person who drives up expects to find a parking spot available.

That is where the next-door neighbor comes into the story. Despite the road being wide enough and the neighborhood pretty empty, the yoga instructor's clients kept parking their cars on the neighbor's front lawn. They didn't even try to avoid it; they viecles would be parked entirely on the front lawn when the neighbor arrived home.

Having had enough of the damage caused by complete strangers, the neighbor decided to confront the drivers and the yoga instructor and demand the stop. They even resorted to turning on their sprinklers on the parked cars to make a point. Did it help? You'll have to keep reading to find out…

If you want to stay over at someone's home, there's a basic rule: don't disrespect the person who lives there. That shouldn't be controversial. In fact, that is the bare minimum you expect.

The boyfriend's boundary makes so much sense. He has been living with his girlfriend for almost three years in an apartment they both pay for, which means the place is his home too. And his home is not a place his girlfriend can offer to any family member without his consent, regardless of how they treat him. 

The problem isn't that the girlfriend's sister needs help. The problem is that she has repeatedly disrespected her boyfriend in public, and now she expects to access his home anyway, as if nothing had happened. 

But what makes the situation even worse is that the girlfriend defends her sister instead of her boyfriend. She justifies her sister, saying she's "just like that" and that "she teases him because he's family". Making negative comments about his physical appearance and even saying he "at least makes money" is not harmless teasing. It is humiliating. And it is uncomfortable. 

So the boyfriend set a reasonable boundary when refusing to have his girlfriend's sister stay at his home. No one wants to be around someone who disrespects them and humiliates them. Just imagine spending an entire day and night together. 

If the sister wants to stay with them, the least she can do is apologize first. And then she should promise to stop making those kinds of comments. Even then, he wouldn't be obligated to say yes. 

Why would a boss think that an employee who was mistreated, overworked, and underpaid would leave a positive review about the job?

Bosses who have zero respect for employees are common. Bosses that overwork their employees are predictable. But bosses that expect a positive review after all that- that is shocking! The nerve that you have to pretend that an employee you forced to work over their job title for the same salary leaves a nice and extremely positive review after quitting because of the horrible work environment. It doesn't even make sense. Why would you pretend that? Why would a boss think they have the right to demand a positive review of a former employee who left because of them? In what world did he think that was possible?

In this Reddit story, we are presented once again with malicious compliance in its full splendor. Complaining about what your boss, or in this case, former boss, asked only to create a bigger problem. This boss not only has an incredible nerve, but he also believes he still has some kind of power over a former employee, and he even thinks he has to ask for a favor from an employee that he mistreated during their time in the company. If you have to beg for reviews for people to want to work with you when we are in a job crisis, that is because your company values are especially questionable and your work environment is unbearable. The fact that, as a manager, you know that you are doing something wrong, but instead of fixing it, you believe that the best solution is to beg former employees to leave a positive review, as well as writing a bunch of fake ones so people believe it is an amazing place to work.

If you are a manager looking for amazing reviews to make the job opening that your company has go away. Stop pretending that former employees will do anything for you. Instead, start making actual changes to the work environment. That will not only boost productivity as employees are in better conditions, but also it will get the word out that your company is a nice place to work. No more false reviews. Just make the changes and stick to them so that working there isn't the worst thing. 
 

Breakup logistics are basically the Hunger Games of adulthood, except instead of a bow and arrow you're armed with a calculator, and everyone still ends up drained and empty over rent.Dividing assets after breaking up with someone is basically a small war, except here, instead of arguing over who keeps the good couch, the woman formerly known as girlfriend is arguing over who keeps the lease that's about to financially waterboard them.

Weddings are getting weirder and weirder

It's interesting to me that a ceremony that's so ancient starts being updated by TikTok trends and millions of very strange new cultural practices. Where it gets very weird to me is when the most important thing in a celebration is the aesthetic part, not the part where you share an experience with the ones you love and they welcome the new era you are entering. This wedding guest survived a last-minute change announced via the wedding's website and caused drama by unknowingly wearing a banned color. Have we gone too far with the wedding-tok?

A "promotion" with no raise is just your job slapping a shinier name tag on the same paycheck and hoping you're too flattered to check the mathIt's like getting upgraded to "Premium Economy" but you're still stuck in the same seat, same legroom, same bag of stale pretzels, just now with better vocabulary to describe your misery.

Why would someone think that the best thing to do after being kicked out of a hotel is to tell that story to the front desk employee at another hotel?

Guests are sometimes not only bad and disrespectful, but also extremely dumb. As if they weren't thinking before they talk. Or maybe they think that just because they are paying for a room, they have the right to say and do whatever they want. As if money bought everything, well, it doesn't. Having an attitude towards a front desk employee can 100% make you lose a reservation, and the fact that some guests don't know or think about this before they open their mouths baffles me. In this Reddit story, it is quite funny how clueless this guest had to be to act so carelessly, even though it would cost him the reservation. Maybe next time it's better to think before you talk.  

It's extremely shocking to me how some people manage. You go to a hotel to get a room and decide to pull a fire alarm to be disruptive? What is going on in your head to do that? Then the police come and kick you out, so you go to another hotel and immediately start talking trash about the previous hotel as if what they did was wrong. That not only caused you to not get a room in the new hotel, but it also shows how entitled you are. The fact that someone is so full of themselves that thinks not only that they can do whatever they want but also that no repercussions are really serious is incredible. 
If I were ever pulled out of a hotel by police workers, I'd be so ashamed of myself that I would immediately call a family member so they can pick me up and go home. But that wasn't the case with this guest. He had the luck not to get incarcerated for his scene, and he wastes it trying to act the same way in a new place and talking disrespectfully about the employees who had to put up with him. 
 

What concerns me the most is that if he hadn't started to tell his story to the other hotel worker, he may have gotten himself another room, and probably made a mess again. Because he proved that he didn't care and that he was entitled enough to believe that repercussions didn't mean anything. Acting like that in public is not excusable. No matter the state you are in, it's just blatantly disrespectful. 

When a relationship ends, the best course of action seems to be to let it be gone. But some may not think like that, unfortunately.

There is a problem that I'm starting to see in new relationships. There is this belief that love is always forever. Well, that's not exactly right, and thinking that it is can lead to toxic and problematic couples. Nothing is really forever, but especially love. There are millions of reasons to end a relationship, millions. Thinking that you are going to be forever together with your girlfriend is nice and sweet, and it's a good thing that you think that your future is together, but it becomes a problem if that blinds you from knowing that it can end. Of course, there is no point in being a couple if you think it's going to end, but it's not right to just believe that it can't end.

This whole debacle that the user wrote about in this Reddit story got me thinking about the problem that some people have to understand that something is over. The reaction he had when his girlfriend broke up with him was as if the main thing was to discover why it happened, when in reality you don't need a fully defined reason. It's over, and that's it. You can ask why, but it may not be just one thing, and it would probably make you incredibly sad. Also, the fact that most times when one of the people asks why is to see how they can fix it to get back together, and in reality, why would you want to be with someone that doesn't want to be with you?

Yes, your girlfriend dumped you, and? I get that it's sad, and it frustrates you the fact that there is nothing else to do about it. Sometimes the way this is expressed is not the best one, and it is complicated to stay in charge of your emotions when these things happen. But you are gonna get over it, and maybe even fall in love again. A breakup isn't the end of the world. And if as soon as your girlfriend tells you to break up you start thinking of all the things she did that you didn't like… then why do you want to get back together? Basically, what would you wanna be with someone that doesn't love you anymore? Don't make the situation harder and just let it be. Relationships end, life moves on, you get over it.