#54 You Are the Raw Material: The Recruitment Process Was Never Designed for You

She'd been a senior UX lead for seven years. Two rounds of layoffs in three years, neither her fault. Sharp, experienced, the kind of designer most teams would be lucky to have. We'd been talking for half an hour.

She asked me what I thought she should do.

I didn't know. I had some vague suggestions. A few names I could drop. That it’s a numbers game. I told her the market was difficult, which she already knew, and which didn't help at all. I left that meeting feeling hollow. Thirty years in this industry. Close to 500 interviews. A growing company. And I had nothing useful to give her. A few days later my former colleague Boris Kehr called, asking about our recruitment processes, and that got me thinking.

You are the product

During these years the technology has advanced. Applicant tracking systems sort and rank candidates before a recruiter has read a single application. A 2021 Harvard Business School study found that 88% of employers admit their own systems exclude qualified candidates (p.3) who don't match the exact wording of the job description. And if you make it through all of that, you get an "unfortunately, we have chosen to move forward with other candidates" email, or a "tyvärr, hoppas" mail as my friend Nazir Ashmar calls them, drafted most likely by the same system that rejected you.

The recruitment process is designed almost entirely for the employer. SaaS companies sell recruitment tools to HR departments on monthly subscriptions, with ROI calculated in efficiency gains. The job seeker is not the customer. The job seeker is the raw material being processed.

LinkedIn, even though it is the primary job platform for many professional groups, can't fix this. It's not in their business model. Yes, they will take your money for a "premium" experience, but the employers are the real customers. You are the product.

What if you were the customer?

What would a platform look like if it was built for you? Not for the HR department. Not for the recruiter's quarterly targets. For the skilled professional who needs a new job now, or who's thinking three years ahead, or both.

Proper user research would have to come before any money goes into it. But to get us started, here are a few ideas.

Short-term and long-term

Sometimes you're in job-seeking mode. You've been laid off, or you've simply had enough. You don't need more job boards, especially not since most of them seem to be posting the same jobs. You need a system that actually works for you.

Other times you're in career-planning mode. You know what kind of role you want in three years, or ten. Head of Design somewhere that actually values design. A move from execution into strategy. Or a complete switch to something different.

LinkedIn shows you jobs, courses, and (AI) think pieces, but it doesn't help you build toward anything. Your manager might support your development, or might not. A mentor helps, if you're lucky enough to have one. Mostly, career planning happens in your own head, without any long-term support.

Most of us move between these two modes, sometimes more than once in a year. A service worth building would work for both situations, and keep working in the background even when we're not thinking about it.

Your life, your data, your terms

If we were to build this from the ground up, you should own your own data. Your CV, your target role, your long-term goals, your values, your salary expectations. All of it in your own account, under your control. Work is a huge part of our lives. It doesn't make sense that a company owns all the data about who we are, and even our dreams about who we hope to become.

When in job-seeking mode, the system scrapes job sites and company career pages continuously. When something relevant appears, it analyzes the job description. What they're actually asking for. Which parts of your background map directly to it. From there it drafts a tailored application. A cover letter written in your own style, a CV that leads with exactly what this employer is looking for, a portfolio selection matched to the brief.

You review the suggested applications, add your final touch, and decide whether you're actually interested. The system doesn't apply on your behalf. It does the groundwork so you don't have to.

Will everyone start sending better applications? Probably. Will that make it harder for employers to filter? Possibly. That's their problem to solve.

Interviews and personality tests

Before the interview, the system gives you a summary of the company, the most relevant links to read, and a set of suggested questions to ask. Questions that both make you look sharp and that actually matter, built from what this specific company is hiring for and what you'd genuinely need to know.

The system also helps you navigate personality tests. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and DISC are still used by HR, despite failing basic criteria of scientific validity and despite leading researchers concluding that their validity for predicting job performance is low. It's good business, though, for HR consultants, management book authors, and SaaS companies looking for a recurring revenue stream.

Getting filtered out by one of these tests has nothing to do with whether you're good enough for the role. A system built for you could help you understand what's actually being measured, and how to present yourself clearly regardless.

Keeping track

Every application, at every stage, lives in a built-in pipeline, similar to the one I've seen Tiago Almeida share. Suggested. Not for me. Shortlisted. Applied. In review. Interview scheduled. Portfolio review scheduled. Offer received. Rejected. And, hopefully, Accepted.

Your entire job search at a glance, more sustainable than the spreadsheet you stopped updating three weeks in.

Long-term planning

In career-planning mode, the service works on a different timeline. It starts by mapping the gap between where you are now and the role you're working toward. Which skills you have, which you're missing, which experiences would make the difference.

It would also help you connect the dots between where you've been and where you're going. A year leading a cross-functional project, a period working client-side, a role that felt like a detour. The system surfaces these as directly relevant practice for the position you're aiming for. It helps you see your own story, maybe even more clearly than you could yourself.

From there it builds a path. Courses worth taking, certifications that matter in your field, the kind of job move that sets you up for what comes next. When a new skill starts appearing in job descriptions for the role you're aiming for in three years, it tells you.

Most people plan one job ahead. This system would help you plan three.

The business model

The model is simple. A monthly subscription, priced for individuals. No employer-side revenue. No selling of user data. LinkedIn makes its money from employers. This platform makes its money from you, which means, for once, it actually works for you. Whether anyone would believe that is a different problem entirely. And probably the hardest one to solve.

Will it create new jobs? No. The market is what it is. But it would give people navigating a genuinely difficult process a little more dignity and a lot more leverage.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the one to build this. But I'd sign up on day one. And I have a long list of people who probably would too.