Even HR leaders can’t crack the hiring process: Senior HR professional reaches four final rounds, still no offer

A post on Reddit’s r/recruitinghell talked about someone who ironically works in HR, typically at a head-of or senior level, and said that she no longer knows what hiring managers want.

At the end of a recent interview, she used a tactic often recommended to candidates: asking whether anything in the conversation gave the interviewer pause or whether anything needed clarifying. The answer was no. The interviewer said it had been a good conversation and that they could see how she worked and thought.

Then came the rejection. The reason: they would have liked to see more of a particular skill set. It was one they had never asked about, and there had been no point in the interview where it came up.

“I just don’t know what these people want anymore,” she wrote. “One interview I’m too much of something, another I’m not enough of that something I was too much on.”

She is not struggling to get noticed. She has reached four final rounds across different industries, two of them in her own field or closely related. She also questioned how processes have stretched out. “When did HR, or any job, require 5+ rounds?”

Some of the questions she has faced, she added, showed how chaotic and toxic the organisations were, but given the pay, she would have joined anyway.

What Reddit said

One commenter delivered the good news she asked for. After working hard from late spring into early autumn, they applied for one job earlier this month and quickly received an offer. “I am still in shock,” they wrote. “I had jumped through so many hoops at other companies just to get rejected. Hope your luck turns around.”

Another, who said they have run a tech business for 18 years, offered a starker view: “There is no human work left to do that won’t be replaced by AI or robotics now or in the coming two to three years. Applicants outnumber roles five to one.”

And one summed up a familiar conclusion: “It’s really who you know in this world, not what you know.”

Read also: Almost a year of applying, two panel interviews with four people each, then an automated rejection: 'It really is as bad as they say it is'