For years we had been hearing about slooooow interview processes. We had been hearing about endless delays and interruptions in what should be a straightforward hiring exercise.

We chalked it up to corporate or institutional red tape. Over the past few years the level of abuse toward job-seekers has gotten a lot worse.

These days we hear from job-seekers who have made it nearly to the finish line and a job offer, only to be told "Now we want to see other candidates" or "We're re-thinking the position."

Sometimes you have to wonder whether hiring authorities realize that job-seekers need to eat.

If I can't get a job with you people, I'm going to have to take something else - do you understand that?

We had a client involved in a four-month-long interview process for a VP of Marketing position.

At the end of the four-month process, the third-party recruiter told him "The client is thinking about pushing this hire off until spring."

Pushing it off? Who can wait around for months for a job offer that may never come? That would require not only the financial resources to ride it out during the intervening months, but also the self-esteem level of a doormat.

Our VP of Marketing client started consulting. He followed our Two-Lane Highway approach. Once his flame was lit again and he was back to his old, confident self, he got an awesome job offer. Funny how that works!

Job-seeker abuse is real, and it's getting worse. It used to be that you'd send a resume and perhaps be invited for an interview. These days you send a resume or fill out an online job application, and your prize for making it past the first screen is that you get an auto-responder message with a quiz or a questionnaire in it.

If you go along with that and complete the quiz or questionnaire, you are likely to drop off a cliff and be left completely in the dark, getting colder by the day.

The humanity has dropped completely out of most corporate and institutional hiring practices. Job-seekers are treated like cattle.

We talked to one HR manager who was commanded not to smile or nod at the job candidates she met, because such friendly gestures might show favoritism. This is a sickness.

We had another HR client who was told by her boss not to write to the active candidates until a hiring decision was made, completely disregarding their human need for information and connection.

There is good news in all this nonsense. The good news is that the employers who treat job-seekers so shabbily will never grow your career or your precious flame anyway. You literally can't afford to work for them.

It's better for you to take a survival job and keep looking than to take an energy-tank-depleting job, because when you take the wrong job, something terrible happens.

In the wrong job, your flame dims down to nothing. When your mojo disappears, it can take years to build it back up.

Your fear -- fear of missing another mortgage payment or getting your spouse's worried looks when you get home after a fruitless day of job-hunting -- will push you to accept a crappy job offer, though your gut will scream in rebellion.

I'm begging you not to take a job that your gut doesn't like, because in our company we deal every day with people whose souls have been ground into the dirt by lousy managers. These are people who aren't qualified to lead and organizations that wouldn't know talent if it hit them in the face.

Fear will get you to say "Sure, easy for you to say, Liz Ryan - what do you know about my problems?"

Angel, I do know. I know that if you ignore the abuse heaped on you during the job-search process, you will signal not only your new employer but your body and the entire universe that you're worthy of nothing better.

You can tank not only your self-esteem but your resume and your very marketability by taking a job where you don't count.

If you do that, you'll enter a downward spiral. Seeking any job at all to get out of your hellish situation will push you out of the frying pan and into the fire, and two years from now you'll call us and say "What happened to my promising career?"

You have to get out of an abusive job-search situation by slamming a door loudly. That doesn't mean being rude or unprofessional. It is fun and empowering to politely say "No thanks" to the wrong opportunity, and doing so will help bring the right opportunities in.

Not sure what the warning signs are? Here are a few of our favorites:

We'll Talk To You When We Feel Like It

A recruiter calls you and takes up an hour of your time, asks you to send an email follow-up and then ignores you for a month or more. Then, you get a terse, canned message telling you to fill out another form or take a test. Big red flag! Are you dealing with humans, or pod people?

Our Silence Only Means "You're Nothing To Us"

You get into an interview process and things move along well, then everyone goes silent and pretends you don't exist. When they reappear weeks or months later, they pretend that nothing strange happened - no apologies or explanation, just "Can you be here on Friday at three?"

Don't Assume You're in the Running Just Because I Want your (Free) Advice

You meet your department manager and start digging into the specifics of the job. The manager is avid to hear your ideas. She even writes to you after the interview to ask you a question about something you two talked about.

When you check in with the recruiter, the recruiter says "It could be weeks -- they have a lot of people to interview." Really? In that case, you should be getting paid for the consulting you're providing.

You're Awesome, But We Want to See More People

You go through the entire interview process and then they say "We want to see more candidates." That means they want someone exactly like you, only cheaper. Show them the back of your Levis and hit the road.

Don't Hold Us to Anything We Said about Money

They ask you for your salary requirement early on and you tell them what it is. They say that your salary requirement should work.

As you get close to the offer stage, they say "We're getting close to an offer. What was your salary requirement again? Oh really, that high? I don't think we can match that. We might get there eventually, after you've been here a few years."

These people are either incompetent or unethical, or both. You don't have time for people like that.

Any time you are lied to or insulted, that's a cue from the universe to exit the hiring process stage right.

If they don't love you now, when they should be courting you, they will never love you. You will always be a number and a cog in the machine. Run away. Send a quick email message that says "Thanks so much for your time; I'm going to withdraw from the interview process, and I wish you all the best."

Make it short and sweet - just get out of Dodge. There are lots of clueless and inept managers around, but there are upright and forward-looking ones who understand that it's only their talented teams that allow them to win.

It's all about the people, and every smart leader knows that.

If you find yourself stuck in fear, deal with that before focusing on your job search.

"But what if there isn't anyone who gets me and therefore deserves me, Liz? What if this is all there is - misery and abuse and the gut-wrenching feeling that your own boss doesn't understand half of what you're saying?"

Everyone has those feelings at times. That's a signal that you aren't ready for a career-type job search right now.

Your mojo is depleted. It happens to all of us. Take a survival job through the holidays and rebuild the fuel supply that was knocked out of you by harsh circumstance. Surround yourself with people who get you and who know how smart and capable you are.

It's worth the pain of a modest holiday season or your spouse's frustration to listen to your trusty instinct and follow it. The only way to grow your muscles and your precious flame is to remember that you deserve to work among people who see your value as clearly as you do.

Questions and Answers

What is a Two-Lane Highway Approach?

Read about it here!

What if I take a job I know I'll hate, just for the money, and keep looking?

Of course you can do that, but ask yourself these questions:

1) Will I have the mental and physical energy to keep a full-scale, career-type job search going after I take this job, and will I stick with it?

2) How will I explain the fact that I've just started a new job and I'm still looking, when employers ask me why I'm job-hunting?

Consider taking a temp or contract job instead and keeping your job search going full-steam!

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