Hey everyone, and welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother, the man who probably has more browser tabs open than any human in history.
Herman Poppleberry, at your service. And for the record, Corn, those tabs are all essential research for the deep dives we do here. But you are right, the fan on my laptop is currently sounding like a jet engine. I think I am actually thermal throttling just trying to load the latest labor market statistics.
Well, hopefully it stays on the ground for this episode. We have got a really fascinating prompt today that our housemate Daniel sent over. He was talking about the state of the job market, specifically for remote work, and he used a phrase that I think perfectly captures the current moment. He called the conventional recruiting process broken.
It is worse than broken, Corn. It is an arms race where both sides are losing. Daniel pointed out this cycle of financial desperation leading to these elaborate, multi-stage interview processes that just grind people down. We are seeing companies demand multiple rounds of interviews, sometimes up to six or seven, just to mitigate the risk of a bad hire, while candidates are more stressed than ever.
Right, because we are seeing this surge in low-effort, artificial intelligence generated applications. People are using tools to just spray and pray, sending out hundreds of resumes a day. I read reports that some entry-level remote roles are getting thousands of applications in the first forty-eight hours. It is impossible for a human to read those.
Exactly. And then, on the flip side, the companies are forced to lean even harder on their Applicant Tracking Systems—the ATS—to filter out the noise. But the ATS is just looking for keywords. It is like two robots shouting at each other in a dark room while the actual humans are left wondering why nobody is getting hired. It is a signal-to-noise disaster.
We touched on some of the broader implications of this back in a recent episode when we talked about the Great Hollowing of the career ladder. But what Daniel is asking us to look at today is the fundamental framing of the marketplace. Instead of defining it by need, as in, I need a paycheck or we need a warm body in this seat, what if we framed it by wants and desires?
It is a bold shift. It sounds almost idealistic, right? Like, who does not want to work in a culture that perfectly aligns with them? But when you are staring at a stack of bills, need usually wins out over want. However, from a technical and research perspective, there is actually a way to build a bridge between that idealism and the reality of the market using what we call agentic workflows.
Agentic workflows? Explain that like I am your brother who just wants to know how to get a job without crying.
Fair. Right now, matching is binary. Do you have five years of experience in Python? Do you live in this time zone? It does not capture the nuance of how a person actually works. If we move away from the spray and pray model and toward a model of deep profiling, we could use large language models to act as a sort of matchmaker that understands intent and semantic overlap.
So, instead of a resume that says I managed a team of ten, you are looking for something that describes the actual experience of that management? Like, did I enjoy the coaching aspect or did I hate the administrative overhead?
Precisely. Imagine a system where, instead of a standard application, you provide a rich, narrative profile of your ideal workday. What kind of problems make you lose track of time? What kind of communication styles make you want to pull your hair out? When companies do the same, defining their actual culture through examples of how they handle failure or how they celebrate wins, the matching becomes much more deterministic.
I like that word, deterministic. It implies a level of certainty that is completely missing from the current process. But let us push on this a bit. If I am a job seeker and I am following Daniel's suggestion to define my wants and desires, where do I even start? Most of us are conditioned to think in terms of what we can offer the company, not what the company can offer us.
That is the psychological hurdle. We have been trained to be commodities. For anyone looking for their next remote role, the first step is building what I like to call a Reverse Job Description. You are not looking at what they want; you are writing down what you want. And you have to be incredibly specific. It is not enough to say I want a good culture. Everyone says that. Do you want a culture of radical transparency where everyone knows everyone else's salary? Or do you want a culture of quiet execution where you are left alone to do your work?
That is a great distinction. I think people often forget that one person's dream culture is another person's nightmare. If you are an introvert who loves deep work, a high-energy, constant-collaboration culture is going to burn you out in three months, no matter how much they pay you. I remember we talked about this a bit in an early episode, when we were exploring how artificial intelligence can act as a mirror for our own philosophical identities.
Exactly. And that is where the second part of Daniel's question comes in, which is defining what you do not want. This is actually often easier for people to identify. Think about your last three jobs. What were the moments where you felt the most frustrated? Was it the lack of clear direction? Was it the performative busyness where people stayed online just to be seen? Was it the way decisions were made behind closed doors?
Using AI tools to help us articulate those frustrations can be really powerful. You can literally feed your past experiences into a private instance of a large language model and ask it to identify patterns in your dissatisfaction. It is like having a career therapist who has read every Slack message you ever sent.
That is a brilliant use case, Corn. It helps you get past your own biases. You might think you hated a job because of the product, but the model might point out that in every job you disliked, the common thread was a lack of autonomy. Once you have that data, you can build a profile that explicitly screens for those variables. This is where vector embeddings come in.
Okay, nerd alert. Explain vector embeddings for the non-engineers.
Imagine a giant map. In one corner, you have jobs that require high autonomy and deep technical skills. In another corner, you have roles that are all about team coordination and fast-paced communication. When you create a profile based on your wants and desires, the system places you on that map. Then, when a company describes their actual needs and culture, they get placed on the map too. The closer you are to each other on that map, the better the match. It does not matter if you used the word manager and they used the word lead. The system understands the underlying shape of the role and the person.
That sounds like it would solve the spray and pray problem because the system would literally prevent you from applying to things that are a poor match. It saves the recruiter time and it saves the applicant from the soul-crushing experience of being ghosted by a job they never should have applied for in the first place.
Precisely. It shifts the power dynamic from desperation to alignment. But here is the thing, Corn, for this to work, the job seeker has to be willing to be vulnerable and honest. If you pretend to be someone you are not just to get the interview, the whole system breaks down. You end up in that multi-stage interview process trying to maintain a mask, which is incredibly taxing.
It is the performative nature of the current system that is so exhausting. You are performing on your resume, you are performing in the screening call, and you are performing in the technical round. By the time you get the job, you are already halfway to burnout. And for remote work specifically, this is even more critical. We talked about this in a recent episode regarding what we called the Great Compromise of twenty twenty-six.
In a remote environment, you do not have the physical cues of an office to help you navigate a culture. You are relying entirely on the systems and communication styles of the company. If those do not align with how you actually function, you are going to feel isolated very quickly. So, if you are looking for that next move, start with three pillars.
Pillar one is your Operating System, right?
Exactly. This is how you work. Do you prefer asynchronous communication? Do you need a block of four hours of uninterrupted time every morning? Do you like having a very structured task list, or do you prefer being given a goal and finding your own way there? If you are an async-first person in a sync-heavy company, you will fail.
Pillar two is Value Alignment. This is not about the company's mission statement on their website, which is usually just fluff. It is about what they actually value in practice. Do they value speed over quality? Do they value consensus over individual decision-making? You need to define which of those you can live with and which you cannot.
And pillar three is the Growth Trajectory. But not just moving up the ladder. It is about what kind of skills you want to be using two years from now. If you want to become a deep technical expert, but the only way to get a raise at a company is to move into management, that is a misalignment of desire. You need to be explicit that you are looking for a company with a strong individual contributor track.
I can see how defining these things would make the interview process so much more productive. Instead of them grilling you on your past, you are coming to the table with a set of very specific questions. It turns the interview into a two-way consultation. But how do you communicate those deal-breakers without sounding like a difficult person or a diva?
It is all about framing. You are not saying I refuse to do this. You are saying I have found that I am most effective when X is not the case. For example, instead of saying I hate micromanagement, you say I thrive in environments that prioritize high trust and autonomy, where I am measured by my outcomes rather than my hours logged. It says the same thing, but it frames it as an optimization for performance rather than a complaint.
That makes total sense. It is about showing them how to get the most value out of you. If they hear that and think, oh, we cannot do that, then they have just saved you months of misery. They were never going to be the right fit anyway. The goal of a good recruiting process should be to get to a no as quickly as possible if the match is not there.
We are seeing the death of the resume in real-time, even if most of the corporate world has not realized it yet. The future is a living, breathing data profile that captures not just what you have done, but who you are and how you want to contribute. And for remote workers, this is the ultimate unlock. It allows you to find those pockets of excellence anywhere in the world that match your specific frequency.
I love that analogy of finding your frequency. It really changes the energy of the search from one of scarcity and fear to one of curiosity and alignment. It is about finding the right puzzle piece, not just trying to force yourself into any available slot. And with the tools we have in twenty twenty-six, there is no reason we should still be relying on a two-page static document designed for the nineteen fifties.
The spray and pray model is a dead end. It is going to reach a point where companies simply stop accepting public applications because the noise is too high. They will move entirely to these curated, AI-driven marketplaces where the matching is done before the first conversation even happens. It is already happening at top-tier tech firms.
So, the best thing you can do right now is to start building that narrative profile. Do not wait for the perfect platform to exist. Start articulating your wants and desires now. Use the tools available to refine your own understanding of what makes you tick. It is almost like a personal manifesto for your career.
And be honest about the don'ts. If you know that a certain type of leadership style triggers your anxiety, put that on your list. It is not being a diva; it is being a professional who knows their own limits. The more you can filter out the wrong roles, the more energy you will have to pursue the right ones.
This has been such a great exploration of Daniel's prompt. It really reframes the whole problem from a technical failure to a psychological and structural opportunity. I am feeling much more optimistic about the future of hiring after this chat, Herman.
I am too, Corn. It is about humanizing the process through the smart use of technology, which sounds like a contradiction, but it is actually the most logical path we have.
Well, I think that is a perfect place to wrap things up for today. If you have been finding yourself stuck in that multi-stage interview loop or feeling the weight of the spray and pray culture, we would love to hear from you. Have you tried building a profile based on desires instead of needs? What has the reaction been?
Yeah, get in touch through the contact form at myweirdprompts.com. We love hearing how these ideas play out in the real world. And a big thank you to Daniel for sending this one in. It definitely sparked some good conversation in the house this week.
Absolutely. And hey, if you are a regular listener and you are enjoying the show, we would really appreciate it if you could take a moment to leave us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It genuinely helps other people discover the show and keeps us motivated to keep digging into these weird prompts.
It really does make a difference. You can find all our past episodes, including the ones we mentioned today, on our website at myweirdprompts.com. We have a full archive there and an RSS feed if you want to make sure you never miss an episode.
Thanks for joining us for our latest episode. This has been My Weird Prompts. We will see you next time.
Until next time, keep those profiles honest and your browser tabs manageable. Goodbye everyone!
