The dirty secret of hiring processes is that the main goal of the earliest stages is to get from a lot of applications to something less than a lot, not to screen for fit. This has long been true, and it is now super true.

Every job posting gets flooded with hundreds of applicants, if not into the thousands. Most of those people are coming through the front door with no one to vouch for them and probably nothing on their resume that makes them a must-see candidate.

Most managers and HR teams probably don't even explicitly think about it this way, but by pure pragmatism have evolved processes that act as flow control.

The unacknowledged result is that the company will reject 90+% of applicants, regardless of fit, under the assumption that the filtering process will allow enough good people into the actual interview rounds that the team will be able to find someone they want. From this perspective, Hackerrank is not broken, it's doing exactly what is required of it by companies.

I say all this because people who are in job search processes should frame the process accurately in their mind. It hopefully will help with not taking the process so personally or not getting so infuriated with it. It may also help you strategize how to find your way into the roles you want, if crushing these tests isn't your strong suit. People who are vouched for get to bypass all of this. The more confidently you are vouchced for by a trusted party, the more benefit of the doubt you get in the hiring process.

One might ask is there a better way to do this? Probably so. But if it were easy, it would already exist.

There would need to be an easier and cheaper way to filter applications.

One option for candidates is networking, this gets you in through the "vouched" side door.

This potentially means that the company should be encouraging employees with more than financial incentives to find candidates and recommend them. This means networking workshops, time swaps for attending networking/recruiting events, understanding the need to make synchronous contact with people who might be good candidates.

If you are interviewing based on what you do, and what the job application (which has been mutated to get through HR's posting requirements, but don't understand why and how you should be interviewing you are more likely to bring your past experience and biases to the interview. This is bad for your company and for candidates.

> I say all this because people who are in job search processes should frame the process accurately in their mind. It hopefully will help with not taking the process so personally or not getting so infuriated with it.

For people who consider honesty a part of their identity, it's infuriating that the system has a selection bias for dishonest people. It's not selecting a random 10%.

> It may also help you strategize how to find your way into the roles you want, if crushing these tests isn't your strong suit. People who are vouched for get to bypass all of this. The more confidently you are vouchced for by a trusted party, the more benefit of the doubt you get in the hiring process.

Networking is still selection bias, but one that favors white men. Racial minorities have fewer social connections to hiring managers, and women in tech have fewer friends working in the same industry.