The job hunter

Getting a job in 2025 doesn’t feel like a professional process anymore—it feels like I accidentally auditioned for The Bachelor.

The moment you click “apply,” it’s basically the limo entrance. You show up with 299 other contestants, each armed with their carefully crafted résumés, LinkedIn profiles, and a desperate hope that the ATS overlord won’t eliminate them before they even step onto the driveway. The system is the first rose ceremony, and most of us never even make it inside the mansion. Rejected before the champagne has been poured.

If you survive that brutal cut, you get to the recruiter phone screen. That’s the equivalent of pulling you aside by the firepit. You’re asked the same questions everyone else hears: “Why are you here? Tell me about yourself. What makes you unique?” And you do your best to smile through the phone, praying that your answer doesn’t sound like you copied it off a career blog written in 2014.

Next is the group date, otherwise known as the panel interview. Suddenly you’re in a room with five people staring at you like you’re competing for one-on-one time. One manager is intrigued by your enthusiasm, another is testing if you’ll break under pressure, and one is silently deciding if you look like the kind of person who would microwave fish in the breakroom. It’s not an interview—it’s Survivor with office chairs.

If you make it past that chaos, you’re invited to the hometown visit: the final interview. You meet the family, otherwise known as the team you’d actually be working with. They pepper you with questions like, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” while you’re silently wondering if the office coffee tastes like gasoline. You do your best to charm them, because you know one wrong answer could send you packing before fantasy suites—or in this case, the benefits package discussion.

And then comes the rose ceremony: the offer. Except here’s the part they don’t show on TV. Most of the time, you don’t get the rose. You’re left standing there while HR delivers the classic line: “We really enjoyed getting to know you, but we’ve decided to move forward with another candidate.” It’s the corporate equivalent of “We had a stronger connection with someone else.” You pack your metaphorical suitcase, log out of the applicant portal, and try not to cry in the Uber ride home.

The cruel twist? Sometimes the producers, otherwise known as the company, already knew who was getting the final rose before filming even began. The internal candidate, the nephew of someone in accounting, or the person who used to work with the hiring manager at another firm. The rest of us were just there to fill airtime.

But here’s what keeps me from flipping the table in true reality TV fashion: we’re not actually contestants. We are the prize. We are the rose. If one company doesn’t see it, that doesn’t make us any less valuable. It just means their season finale wasn’t meant to include us. And while it feels brutal in the moment, somewhere out there is another company, another story, another finale that ends differently.

So yes, getting a job in 2025 feels like being on The Bachelor—awkward group dates, long dramatic pauses, rejection speeches, and the constant fear of being eliminated without warning. But when the right company finally looks you in the eye and says the words we’ve been waiting for—“Will you accept this job?”—that’s the moment everything changes.

Until then, we keep showing up. We keep telling our stories. And we remind ourselves that even without the rose, we’re still worthy of the win.