Do I wear a different colored shirt?

How tall should my high heels be?

Should I wear this blazer, or this identical blazer in a color one shade down?

Here’s my crazy resume that dwarfs even Kira’s nuts skills — should I apply at McDonalds?

I’ve been unemployed for 1 year but job hunting every day — am I literally just incapable of being hired?

Should I lie on my resume?

I’m a high school freshman and I’m already worried about job hunting.

And this type of post that I see literally every day from a different Reddit user, each time:

No interviews no nothing — any advice, losing hope

Before you point out that they probably just suck (and by extension, I also suck) let this sink in for a moment. ‘No interviews no nothing — any advice, losing hope’ is a sentiment that is posted literally every single day. The majority of Redditors are Americans. Think about that. With an unemployment rate of 4.3% we have topics like that. Is your mind blown yet?

I keep getting rejected from jobs for which I’m qualified has 52 upvotes and 36 comments and counting.

Update: We’re at 72 upvotes and 63 comments.

To hit the malaise of the underemployed or unemployed American worker home even harder, here’s a thing I did with computer things and data. Which is a job requirement for many of the marketing jobs I apply to.

The last time I scraped Reddit using Zapier and imported data on the keyword ‘depressed’ in the /r/Jobs forums it came up in the thousands upon thousands. Your hiring process is broken.

I also know how to apply this skill to marketing, and I’ll bet my sweet butt that many of your marketing managers had no idea they could glean topical information from Reddit, automated, to cast a net on trends for current content marketing initiatives before they read this article. Which also means your hiring practice is broken, since Zapier is objectively one of the most important tools you’ll ever use. And Reddit is literally a treasure trove of content. Literally.

“I keep getting rejected from jobs for which I’m qualified” will be on my tombstone when I’m dead at the ripe old age of 98 unless stress gets to me first. Which it might, let’s be honest.

We can also see how not only is the hiring process broken, but the thought process of many employers is broken as well. All it takes is a little medium.com searching and there it is, black and white, clear as crystal.

This article by Jason Shen is eye-opening as per huge differences between hiring managers and applicants in terms of what they think about the hiring practice. Specifically in tech. Which is specifically broken.

Speaking of tech, let’s talk about sexism and discrimination in hiring practices in the tech-world.

(Some of you are going to stop reading at this point, which is sad, because discrimination in tech hiring practices is real, and you are in denial.)

The most devastating thing I’ve ever seen in my life that has come from a recruiter or hiring manager is the following topic and consequent response, listed in Jason’s article:

Finding diverse candidate pools to hire from:

“It’s difficult to find women and minorities to apply through traditional channels.”

Read it again. “It’s difficult to find women and minorities to apply through traditional channels.” Can you hear me screaming right now? Amplify that by the thousands. This is the quantified scream of every single qualified minority or woman that you have failed to hire. Does it sound loud? It should. It should sound like the Wilhelm Scream turned up to 11.

It is complete and utter nonsense that people find it hard to garner female and minority applications through traditional channels. It is complete and utter nonsense because although women and minorities make up a smaller pool, we are by far hungrier, paid less, and have to overcome larger obstacles when it comes to work-cultures. We aren’t getting hired not because of our lack of skill — mark my damn words. We aren’t getting hired, and aren’t being paid well, because of unconscious biases. Or very clearly conscious biases, might I add.

There are tons of writers just here on medium.com alone that talk about sexism and discrimination in tech near-daily. And somehow they can be discredited with a hand-wave. Why? Biases.

Before some of you start with your tirade, citing your superior logic skills in terms of “well, if you were paid less, how come companies don’t just hire women and minorities to cut down costs, hmm?”, let me answer. But you’re not going to like the answer, because it conflicts with your worldview.

The answer is this: If minorities and women even get to the interview stage, you can end up hiring them anyways, but you low-ball them. They take it because they know how hard it is to get into the field, and especially in this job market, how hard it is to even just get a job in the first place.

Many dudes negotiate at the start of it all. Many white dudes are seen as assertive when they negotiate. Me, specifically, as a woman? Shrill and difficult. And then I don’t get the job. So I accept the low-ball salary. See how fun that is? Either get paid less, or don’t get paid at all. Wonderful. Your hiring process is broken.

We suffer sexual harassment and discrimination, which companies are trying to address, but check out the most recent Uber scandals and women coming forward en-mass in the tech world about the same exact thing.

Or, for shits and giggles, check out the Google Manifesto, and see that some milquetoast gish galloping member of /r/IAmVerySmart decided to ram his face into Google’s hiring practices and get himself fired over crying about diversity hurting hiring practices. And also how women just aren’t drawn to the field as much as men, which we know when we leave America and look at India, this is simply not the case. The gender gap closes exponentially.

The Google Man-Fiasco author James Damore somehow forgot that America isn’t the only country that hires people into the tech field. Show’s how much ‘logic’ he was using, doesn’t it?

There is no biological basis to be found for any of this Google Manifesto garbage. But somehow in tech, specifically, as I am in tech, it’s difficult to hire women and minorities. Insanity. That, right there, is insanity.

Speaking of the insanity of it all:

RaveGirl obviously has enough computer skills to find Reddit, find the right Subreddit, and post on it. That’s a lot more computer skills than I’ve found in corporate America, let me tell you. And you are still not hiring people, or you are internally hiring people who don’t know what they are doing, or you are paying entry level wages for jobs that fundamentally should be Junior or Senior level. Your hiring process is broken.

For a lovely anecdote that I hope makes you throw up in your mouth a little bit: I applied to be a Digital Content Coordinator at a well-known publishing company. I was given the figure $30,000 if I were to be their digital coordinator and usher them into the new age of The Internets. Think about that wage for a second for a well-known publisher. And then think about the hiring process and the problems I listed above.

Reddit agrees with me. And also wants me to move to California.

Let that sink in for a moment: Taking an entire company by the hand and throwing them into the digital world, all by yourself, for $30,000 a year with no one else on the team knowing how you work your Hogwarts-level witchcraft on the computational devices. They wouldn’t accept my offer of $40,000 which is crazy to even think about since I’m 29 years old. If you are like them, this is why you can’t fill the role. Your hiring process is broken.

What about this lovely gem? How many times have you, readers of medium.com, applied for something and was given the go-ahead for some fantastic title — only to have it downgraded for no apparent reason other than treachery?

I have specific experience with employers backtracking on job titles, descriptions and responsibilities. Social Media Marketer does not equal cold-calling billing-support-UX designer-girl-and-web-developer. Your hiring process is broken, your company culture is most likely toxic, and I’m taking a 5 minute break from this huge rant to get more goddamn coffee.

Racist comments? Are you kidding me? And tons of people within the past 24 hours scared, terrified, and hopeless? Just visit the forum and keep scrolling. It is a damn nightmare.

The nightmare gets worse when you try to figure out why you were turned down for the 5369363749 jobs you applied to for the past umpteen million months. Because most of the time, there is no response. Nada. Zilch. Zip.

I have asked every person who has turned me down what I could do better. Do you want to know the results?

I had one hiring manager reply that my cover letter stated that I could only work two days a week. This is objectively false. I said I had time to interview on those two days. They hadn’t bothered to fully read, nor comprehend, what I was saying in my cover letter. Out of 152+ applications since I put in my notice, only 4 other people responded at all to my request. All I wanted to know is what I could’ve done better.

The other 3 people were really cool, and I will be applying again as they are cool bros and actually real humans. I’m convinced the rest are Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

I’m crying for you, fam.

I’ve got 99 problems and a job application won’t solve them.