This essay is based on a conversation with Tony Tellez, a 49-year-old IT professional. Based in Indianapolis. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I started my career at entry level and worked my way up to running an IT company essentially in managed services. Oversee IT operations for multiple clients in your space. Recently, I decided to start job hunting for the first time in 10 years. It’s changed a lot.
I immediately had several interviews, but I also received many rejections. No one likes being rejected. I have kids, rent, animals to take care of, and those responsibilities start to weigh on you.
One Sunday night, my frustration reached breaking point. I applied for a senior position at a managed services company around 11:15 p.m., and I was very qualified. About 6 minutes later, I received an email saying, “Your application has been declined.” The company also did not provide any reason why it was “pursuing other candidates.”
It made no sense. I applied at a time when it was likely that no one would manually review and reject resumes. When I re-read the job posting, it clearly stated that a bachelor’s degree, which I don’t have, was preferred but not required.
Also, my best friend is a human resources consultant who made sure my resume included all the keywords I needed. We also ran it through an open source applicant tracking system to ensure it was properly optimized.
So when I saw that rejection email, I went to the company’s LinkedIn page, found the HR director, and sent this message.
Hello, I applied for a service desk manager role at your company and was immediately rejected. I have spent 17 years growing and improving in the IT field, including the healthcare field and lab environments. For the past six years, I have been involved in service delivery and operations management. I am well qualified for this role, but the A.I. […] I don’t have a bachelor’s degree, so I get denied within minutes of applying. Just to be clear, you’re missing out on great candidates because you rely on AI. I agree that AI has its place in our field, but I think it is proving that AI is failing. To better evaluate my candidacy, I ask that you manually review my resume and credentials. Thank you for your time.
I am also sending this message because it is already frustrating for someone to lose their job and have to look for a new one. It’s even worse when you have to deal with rejection from robots.
Another reason is that I have developed and implemented applicant tracking systems and understand what it takes to properly configure a system. The problem here is that company management may not realize that they may be missing out on high-quality candidates.
I haven’t heard anything back and probably never will. The job information is no longer posted, so I don’t know if it’s filled or not. But I know I’m not ready to retire anytime soon. I love working. I love fixing things.
Since then, I’ve started using AI to make my resume AI-enabled. Fire must be fought with fire. But I also started targeting companies that stated in their job postings that all resumes submitted would be reviewed by a human. In several of my past jobs, I was in charge of recruiting and took pride in reading every resume that came my way. It’s amazing how the job market has changed.