The year 2025 – a year of many advancements but even more losses: political, humanitarian, and perhaps more ironically, the loss of basic human etiquette, especially in the corporate world.
One might assume that, as the world continues to evolve and as the human resources (HR) department rebrands itself with buzzwords like ‘talent acquisition’, we could expect the recruitment process to become more humane. Instead, this department seems to have become the playground of agony aunts – not advice-givers, but those more interested in gatekeeping than fostering growth; and many individuals occupying these roles, with labels slapped across their LinkedIn profiles, seemed to have missed the memo, becoming desensitised to the very people they’re meant to support. My only question to them: how do they sleep at night knowing how many lives they toy with daily?
Candidates today are no longer treated as individuals worthy of serious consideration, but rather as guinea pigs, who are first approached with overflowing enthusiasm, called in for interviews, and then, after what seems to be a successful interaction, ghosted entirely. Not even the decency of a follow-up, especially if you decide not to proceed with their application.
If we backtrack a little, picture the moment mid-interview: the agony aunt who serves no real purpose but to sit across the candidate, close enough to judge silently, having already made up their mind, despite the candidate doing a brilliant job in presenting themselves to the relevant person they have to actively work with. With little to no understanding of the work itself, this HR figure becomes judge, jury and executioner, placing the candidate on a weighing scale, measuring every aspect of them in the span of minutes, with no real insight into their background, experience or capability.
The only task HR seems to have nowadays includes sipping tea while rehashing interviews the day before, casually passing judgment on people they hardly know, and most importantly, pushing for lower-scale hires, despite the budget allowing for better, simply so they can walk into the next team meeting with an imaginary feather in their cap.
There isn’t a single person reading this, specifically those authentically navigating the job market, who hasn’t at some point in their career trajectory felt exactly what I have expressed above. The job market, not just in Pakistan, but globally across the world, is in shambles. People who used to be passionate about their work now sit disheartened – made to endure relentlessly long and arduous application processes, forced to provide irrelevant personal details, just to be antagonised at the hands of HR, because well, that is how agony aunt is born: through small, repeated acts of disregard and unchecked power.
To be absolutely clear, I have been talking about qualified candidates, often overqualified, who fulfil the criteria a little too well and apply with genuine interest, but are passed over because offering them what they’re worth offends the egos of HR personnel who would rather push through someone cheaper simply to show they saved the company a few bucks. Note to all such personnel: excelling in your career on the expense of someone else’s loss (that someone being a well-suited candidate you interviewed for a good 50 minutes but then left hanging with no response) will not take you too far.
Might I remind all such aunties: you were in a similar position not very long ago, desperate for someone to show some faith in you, and grateful when they finally offered you the role that you now hold with such pride. So, unless someone is coming for your role, perhaps grow a bigger mind (and heart), and try putting your degree to actual use (if you even have one). Because truth be told, it feels like anyone with a clipboard and an opinion can now slide into HR, with little knowledge, zero emotional intelligence, and no understanding of what real ‘human resource’ looks like.
And to all the companies out there, you are at a far greater loss than you realise for letting go of quality resumes and potential game-changers, simply because you’ve handed over control to someone incapable of performing the very job they’ve been hired to do. If you can’t even be bothered to listen when the candidate is answering a question posed by you and would rather check your phone while you are (unfortunately) sitting in a seat that decides not just a random candidate’s job, but the course of their future, then you have no business being in that chair.
So, the next time you wonder why passion is dying, why talent is walking out the door, why your company’s turnover rate is so high or why your team can’t seem to rise above mediocrity, look no further than the gatekeepers you’ve empowered. Because when the people in charge of finding humans for your company forget how to be human, everything else falls apart.
The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore.
