In a surprising twist, an entire HR team was let go after a manager uncovered that their automated hiring system had incorrectly rejected all job applications, including his own. The job search often feels like a challenging journey, with numerous applicants submitting countless applications and many receiving no feedback. Experiencing immediate rejection emails can be disheartening, indicating that applications aren’t even being reviewed. This was precisely the scenario for one manager, who took to Reddit to reveal the shocking error that led to his HR team’s termination.
While addressing a job seeker’s complaint about receiving an instant rejection, the manager shared his own frustrating experience. Both he and the job seeker received rejection emails at exactly 10:56 a.m., raising red flags about the review process. “Auto rejection systems from HR make me angry,” the manager expressed. “In three months, we couldn’t find a single qualified candidate.”
Determined to uncover the truth, the manager embarked on an unexpected experiment. “I created a new email and sent them a modified version of my CV with a fake name,” he explained. The results were shocking: he, too, was automatically rejected without any human evaluation of his qualifications. After reporting this issue to upper management, “half of the HR department was fired in the following weeks,” he noted.
The manager, who works in the tech sector, was attempting to hire developers, but the HR team had programmed the automated system to seek candidates with skills in the wrong software. They were searching for an AngularJS developer instead of candidates with expertise in Angular, which is a different framework altogether. “The truly infuriating part was that I was consistently told they had candidates who didn’t pass the first screening process, which was false,” he added.
The incident has attracted considerable attention online, with users flocking to comment on the situation. Reactions varied from labeling the recruitment team as “lazy” to showing support for the manager. One user remarked, “This is why automated systems should never replace human judgement,” while another noted, “HR should be more vigilant; this is embarrassing for the company.”
