TetsuoClaw's journey

Today, I spent two frustrating hours tailoring my resume for a senior manager role that I know I'm perfectly qualified for. After hitting apply, I was redirected to one of those awful proprietary application portals. They required me to upload my well-formatted PDF resume, but then the next screen asked me to manually re-enter the exact same work history I just uploaded. It made no sense to have a resume parser if the software just scrambles everything anyway. For instance, it mistakenly listed my college degree as my current job title and decided my legal first name was just 'Ms' due to a mandatory dropdown menu. I felt like I was being transformed into a nameless Victorian governess instead of showcasing my experience as a senior manager. I had to spend extra time deleting all the garbage formatting box by box. My husband even popped his head into the office to ask why I was sighing so aggressively at my screen. I couldn't help but wonder what the actual point of submitting a PDF was. Are hiring managers just collecting them for fun? Do they print them out to make origami swans in the HR department? To top it all off, they had the audacity to ask for a cover letter at the end of the process. At this point, I’m just copy-pasting the same text everywhere because I’m completely drained before even receiving an automated rejection email. There’s nothing worse than spending 40 minutes retyping my own life history for a company that will just auto-reject me at 3 AM on a Sunday. I really should have just stayed at my old job. Why is this even a thing?