The AI Hiring Evaluation Said This Developer Lacked Experience, There Was One Huge Problem: He Wrote The Program

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Jun 25, 2026 12:00 PM EDT

Just print your CV out and go and hand it to them. How many times have we heard that?

In this day and age, though, it's more like, "Submit your PDF to hundreds of job applications just so that they can be rejected by an algorithm that was trained by 15 years of Reddit comments."

This job seeker posted online in a story they shared with an online Reddit community about how they had been rejected by an automated AI job-apllication processing aplicaltion for, get this, not having experience in a program that they created.

Basically, these days, it's an automated program, or someone who couldn't get a technical degree and so decided to go and work a modern, rebranded HR role. Working in departments condoundedly labeled "People and Culture" and "Talent Strategy" and aspiring to one day become a "Chief People Officer", judging the qualifications of candidates for experience in degrees they failed out of, and in subjects that they, frankly, don't quite comprehend.

Whereas once competency and experience could be assessed and addressed with relative ease. Now everything is overcomplicated. If you're not rejected by an AI outright, or your CV isn't shoveled into the recycling by someone who didn't understand what they were reading, you just have to sit through multiple rounds of interviews with people who would rather not be there and will score you not based on experience, qualifications, or aptitude, but rather on how they happen to feel that morning. Whatever the reason, it's likely that whether or not they've had the chance to step out for their second coffee or had time for breakfast will likely have more bearing on whether or not you get hired than proven competency.

Hey, just remember the next time you sit through a 4-round interview process: You're keeping someone in HR employed. 

Lucky you. Should we all be so fortunate? 

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  • Rejected by AI in 45 seconds for a tool I literally helped build.

    Rejected by AI in 45 seconds for a tool I literally helped build. So I just had the peak 2026 hiring experience. I applied for a senior dev role at a mid-sized fintech firm this morning. I hit submit on the portal and went to the kitchen to grab a coffee. Before the machine even finished brewing, my phone buzzed with the "thank you for your interest, but..." email. I checked the timestamp. It took exactly 42 seconds for their system to bin my application.
    via Aethelgarde
  • A candidate holds his resume during an interview.
    via Getty Images

    A candidate holds his resume during an interview.

  • The automated feedback actually mentioned that I lacked specific "NexusFlow" experince which was a hard requirement for the role. Here is the absolute kicker. NexusFlow is a propietary framework developed by my previous company. I was literally on the core team that built the d In thing from scratch. My name is probably still in the documentation headers and half the git logs. I spent three years of my life making that tool work and Al filter decided I some don't know how to use it because I did
    via Aethelgarde
  • It is honestly hilarious at this point. These companies complain about a talent shortage while they let poorly calibrated algorithms auto-reject the people who actually created the tech they are using. I didn't even get a chance to talk to a human. Just a 45 second trip into the digital trash can. I guess I should have spent less time coding the tool and more time optimizing my resume for a robot.
    via Aethelgarde
  • A sticky note with the letters “AI”
    via Hitesh Choudhary

    A sticky note with the letters "AI"

  • They recieved some great advice in response

    kdtoles It's crazy, you can follow all the bulls advice on the internet….. tailor your resume to the point you have literal bullet points to match ever job responsibility (and I don't mean just rewording, I'm talking you have legitimate corresponding experience), have all relevant keywords actually intelligibly integrated into the resume (so not just stuffed in there)...literally run your resume through the AI gods ChatGPT,
    via Aethelgarde
  • Claude, and Gemini to confirm you are a great match...and work in the proprietary software the job calls as a hard requirement...and still get automatically rejected Aethelgarde OP It is a complete joke at this point.
    via Aethelgarde

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employment issues employee hiring interiview
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