Now Accepting Résumés, Blood Types, and 5-Minute TED Talks: The Modern Job Hunt Is a Full-Time Performance

Job applications in 2025 are no longer about résumés. Those are just the opening credits.

The real application? It’s a three-act play, a psychological experiment, and an unpaid internship in emotional labor.

These days, applying to a job feels less like trying to get hired and more like auditioning for a role in a corporate-themed reality show called “Do You Even Want This Job, Really?” hosted by a recruiter with ring light trauma and a Calendly full of broken dreams.

Let me walk you through the current hiring process, a.k.a. The Gauntlet of Professional Despair:

Step 1: Psychological Bootcamp

You’re asked to take three personality tests before you’re allowed to speak to a human. Not a hiring manager. Not a recruiter. An Executive Assistant who now moonlights as both a gatekeeper and a low-key behavioral analyst. Honestly, give them hazard pay.

Step 2: Pixar-Level Screening

You’ve made it to Round Two. The job is not VP-level. The salary is “competitive” (read: vague), and the benefits are “flexible” (read: nonexistent). But the application process was clearly co-designed by Pixar, the CIA, and maybe a cult.

Requirements include:

• A 5–7 minute video essay answering five existential questions, three of which require therapy, and the other two require a lighting setup.

• A book report. Yes, really. On the last personal or professional book you read. With five lessons. Because nothing says “hireable” like reliving high school English class at midnight while questioning your career choices.

• An Enneagram test screenshot. I’m apparently a Type “Emotionally Unstable But Still Submitting Applications.”

• And, of course, the open-ended request: “Anything else you feel we should know about you?”

• Which at this point includes your blood type, Wi-Fi password, favorite dinosaur, and willingness to donate a kidney to the CEO during Q3 if requested.

Step 3: The Hunger Games

If — and only if — you pass all that, you may be granted an audience with the COO.

And then, should you survive that sacred conversation (and the inevitable follow-up email titled “Circling Back!”), you’ll get a moment with the CEO, who has already watched your video, judged your bookshelf, reviewed your Zoom lighting, and possibly questioned your entire personality based on your Enneagram type and vocal fry.

All of this, mind you, is for a job that doesn’t even come with a parking spot, an office, or the emotional validation of a LinkedIn “Congrats on the New Role!” banner.

Here’s the part that hurts: people are saying yes.

Not because they’re excited to perform their résumé like it’s a monologue from Hamilton, but because they need stability. They need healthcare. They need to keep the lights on, the tuition paid, and their sense of purpose on life support.

So they say yes to the unpaid projects. They submit the videos. They answer questions like “What’s your biggest weakness?” while silently wondering if it’s still considered a red flag to say “this entire hiring process.”

Because behind every video submission is someone who’s trying to hang on to dignity while Googling “how to appear confident and unbothered in HD.”

Behind every Enneagram screenshot is someone doing their absolute best just to feel seen.

If that’s you, I see you.

You’re not desperate.

You’re determined.

You’re not behind.

You’re surviving creatively.

You’re not a “fit issue.”

You’re a highly capable, wildly exhausted legend navigating a hiring process that forgot it’s about people.

So keep going.

And if they ask for one more test, just tell them you’re a Type: Done.