As I apply for yet another job, I look at the company\u2019s website for context. I\u2019ve now read their \u201cwhat we do\u201d section four or five times, and I have a problem \u2013 I can\u2019t figure out what they do. There are two possibilities here. One: they don\u2019t know what they do. Two: what they do is so pointless and embarrassing that they dare not spell it out in plain English. \u201cWe forge marketing systems at the forefront of the online wellness space\u201d translates to something like \u201cwe use ChatGPT to sell dodgy supplements\u201d.<\/p>\n
But understanding what so many businesses actually do is the least of my worries. I\u2019m currently among the 5% of Brits<\/a> who are unemployed. In my six months of job hunting, my total lack of success has begun to make me question my own existence. Just like when you repeat a word over and over until it loses all meaning, when you apply repeatedly for jobs in a similar field, the semantics of the entire situation begin to fall apart like a snotty tissue. About one in five of my job applications elicit a rejection email, usually bemoaning the sheer number of \u201cquality applicants\u201d for the position. For the most part, though \u2013 nothing. It\u2019s almost like the job never existed in the first place, and it\u2019s possible that it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n In 2024, <\/a>40% of companies posted listings for \u201cghost jobs<\/a>\u201d, nonexistent positions advertised to create the illusion that the company is doing well enough to take on new employees. And this seems like an all-too-easy way to lie about your success. Regulation of job ads is mostly the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority, which \u2013 in all its might \u2013 has the power to \u2026 have a misleading job ad taken down. So with no particularly harsh consequences for employers, why not go on a pretend hiring spree? Ethics in the job market<\/a> seem to have gone out the window, and the idea of wasting the time of thousands of hapless jobseekers doesn\u2019t seem to matter much.<\/p>\n Even if the job you\u2019re applying for exists, next comes the hurdle of the AI HR bot. While it\u2019s difficult to find any hard data on just how many employers are using AI to filter applications (sometimes favouring men over women, if a now-scrapped algorithm used by Amazon<\/a> is anything to go by), articles<\/a> and Reddit threads<\/a> about how to game the bots and get in the right \u201ckey words\u201d now abound. According to an Atlantic article<\/a> from earlier this year: \u201cYoung people are using ChatGPT to write their applications; HR is using AI to read them; no one is getting hired.\u201d And let\u2019s say your CV and cover letter do make it past the robot gatekeepers, it\u2019s possible that your interview will be conducted by yet another bot<\/a>. Although I haven\u2019t had the pleasure of an interview, AI or otherwise, since I began my latest job search, the possibility of not coming into contact with a single human during most of the process to becoming the dodgy supplements social media marketing manager looms large and dreadful.<\/p>\n