Margaret SpenceFounder, The Inclusion Learning Lab · AI Governance Strategy for CHROs | Author, When AI Breaks the Law | SXSW Speaker: Human+AI CoLab and AI Skills Gap for Women | Substack: AI Governance for HR & The Undisruptable Woman

The Psychological Scars of Interviewing For A New Job

3 Feb 2024 · 1 min

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In this monologue, the speaker critiques modern hiring practices that claim to prioritize diversity while subjecting candidates to exhausting, multi‑stage interview processes with little to no feedback. They share anecdotes of individuals enduring dozens of interviews without outcomes, navigating five or six interview layers without offers, and repeatedly applying to the same organization without ever receiving a response. The speaker highlights how these practices leave candidates psychologically scarred, undermining the stated goal of increasing diverse hires and exposing a systemic disregard for applicant well‑being.

Chapters

You want that because that's your goal. That's the thing you put on the wall that you're going and goal— your, your goal-setting numbers. We want to increase the number of diverse people that we hire, but the way you treat us in the hiring process leaves us psychologically scarred. It does. I've had people that I've coached who've had 30 interviews and never got the job, never even got a decline. I've had people that have gone through 5 or 6 layers of interviews who've never gotten the job, and they've gone through 5 or 6 layers of interviews. I've had other people who didn't ever— they, they want to work for this particular organization, they apply over and over and over again, and they don't even get a response to their, um, to their resume.