Broken Hiring Systems and the Cowards Who Run Them

This isn’t rigor. It’s fear.

To every job seeker out there who’s exhausted, ghosted, and left blinking at their inbox in angry disbelief, wondering if the entire enterprise of hiring has become an elaborate prank: no, you’re not imagining it. Something fundamental has broken.

There was a time, not ancient history but recent enough for your mentors to remember, when hiring meant just that: hiring. An opening appeared. A manager, feeling the heat of unmet deadlines, scheduled three interviews tops. They met a human being, looked them in the eye, and made a call. Not a committee. Not an algorithm. A call.

If the new hire couldn’t do the job, the failure belonged to the manager, who was expected to fix it. Maybe that meant coaching. Maybe it meant a swift but humane exit. Either way, ownership was clear. If a team floundered, everyone knew whose name showed up in the postmortem. Accountability wasn’t a buzzword. It was the job description.

Managers hired people who felt right, sometimes overreaching, sometimes gambling on a “maybe,” occasionally risking a spectacular flameout for the chance at a star. It was messy. It was beautifully human.

Now, hiring has mutated into a bloated ritual where candidates run through eight rounds of interviews, three take-home projects, and a “culture add” panel with people they will never see again once they are onboarded. I have been in HR and in the C-suite long enough to know this isn’t about quality. It is about fear.

The Fear Behind the Circus

Executives and hiring managers are terrified of being wrong. Nobody wants to be blamed for a “bad hire,” so they spread the risk around. Everyone gets a vote, no one owns the outcome.

Here is the problem: a dozen interviews does not prevent mistakes. It just makes them slower, costlier, and more demoralizing. Hiring is not supposed to be a group therapy exercise where leaders protect their egos. It is supposed to be a business decision.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Average time-to-hire in the U.S. is 44 days (SHRM). That is a month and a half with an empty seat while leaders whine about being understaffed.
Interview rounds have ballooned. Glassdoor puts the average at 4 to 6, but for corporate and tech roles it is often 8 to 12.
Candidates are not sticking around. A 2024 Greenhouse survey showed 60 percent of job seekers abandon processes that drag on too long.

So when companies cry about a “talent shortage,” let’s be clear. There is no shortage of talent. There is a shortage of decisiveness.

I Know What I Am Talking About — And I Am Living It

Two months ago, I was laid off. Since then I have applied to over 300 jobs.

I have built HR systems from scratch, implemented ATS and HRIS platforms, redesigned comp and benefits, reset broken recruiting processes, and sat in the C-suite making million-dollar people decisions. I know this game inside and out. Humbly speaking: I know what the fuck I am doing.

And what have I gotten for 300-plus applications? One interview. With a bot. Not a manager. Not a recruiter. A piece of AI programmed to run me through questions so someone else could avoid making a judgment call.

If this is how the system treats a seasoned (Old Bay, mostly) executive, what chance does a first-time job seeker have? Or someone pivoting careers? Or anyone without the “perfect” resume?

The ATS Black Hole No One Talks About

And while we are here, let’s talk about the other villain in this story: the ATS. Yes, some recruiters do actually rely on AI-driven parsing and scoring systems to decide who even gets seen.

Here is the problem: most candidates do not realize how easy it is to get scored as a zero.

Upload a resume with two columns? Zero.
Add a headshot or a graphic timeline? Zero.
Use text boxes or Canva-style formatting? The system often cannot read it, so it tanks your match score.

I have been on the back end of these systems since they were cruel little MS-DOS or Access-driven databases that could barely handle a search query. The tech has gotten shinier, but the core problem has not changed. The machine does not care about your story, your trajectory, or your potential. It cares about keywords and formatting.

Here is a real example. I was once hiring for a front-end developer role and got 535 resumes. At one point, just to sanity-check, I resorted the list by “AI match score.” If I had relied on that filter the way many younger recruiters do, I would have only looked at the top 25 percent and thrown out the rest as “unqualified.”

But here is the kicker. One candidate the system scored at 0 percent — literally the lowest possible match — ended up making it all the way to the final round.

If I had blindly trusted the AI, I never would have even seen them. And let’s be honest, most newer recruiters are not re-sorting or double-checking what the machine missed. They do not have the habit or the time. Old-school recruiters like me sometimes still sanity check the system, when we have time, but that is the exception. Which means a lot of great people are getting screened out before a human ever lays eyes on their resume.

Disruption, My Ass

I have been in the rooms where leaders preach agility and “fail fast” yet when it comes to hiring, they act like one employee could blow up the entire company. Suddenly it is:

“Let’s get more input.”
“Maybe another panel.”
“Let’s add one more round.”

That is not rigor. That is cowardice. And it shows up everywhere: recruiting, hiring, even performance management. Managers drag out “performance improvement plans” instead of making a call because they do not want the responsibility.

The Human Cost

This dithering has consequences:

Top candidates walk. If you need six weeks and 12 interviews to decide, you are not getting the best people. You are getting the most desperate.
The signal is loud. A hiring process is a preview of culture. If it is this broken at the door, people know what to expect inside.
Credibility burns. Asking for case studies and week-long projects before even deciding on a finalist does not make you look thoughtful. It makes you look like you do not know how to lead.

And right now, as someone actively on the market, I feel that cost every damn day. Not just for me, but for every job seeker refreshing their inbox, ghosted after round four, or rejected without explanation.

To Every Job Seeker Out There

If you are out there applying, ghosted after endless interviews, or screaming into the void because you know you are qualified and still cannot get a call back, I see you.

If your resume scored a “0 percent match” because you used columns or added a graphic, I see you. That is not on you. That is on a machine designed to make rejection automatic.

This system is broken, and it is not your fault. You are not crazy, you are not lazy, and you are not alone. The problem is not you. It is leadership that has forgotten how to lead, forgotten how to decide.

The Punchline

Hiring is not complicated. Decide, hire, and lead. If leaders cannot even do that, they should get the hell out of the way and stop wasting everyone’s time.

There is no shortage of talent. There is a shortage of fucking courage at the top, and that is why this whole system is broken beyond belief.

Kathy Yost embodies a remarkable blend of professional acumen and personal depth. With a career spanning over twenty years as an HR executive and Talent Acquisition expert in diverse sectors in Baltimore and the District of Columbia, her expertise is both broad and deep. Kathy’s foundation in Business Administration in Human Resources Management has been the bedrock of her professional journey, influencing her roles in startups, Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and government contracting. Find her on Instagram at @kjybecauseisaidso.