Blog: Hiring Without Humanity

Hiring Without Humanity

What broken hiring processes reveal about organizational health

12/6/26
By: Kenny

There’s a growing mismatch in how hiring is experienced.

Candidates are told to show up prepared, curious, thoughtful, and engaged — to research the company, understand the role, articulate their value, and demonstrate care.

Organizations, meanwhile, often show up rushed, disengaged, or unprepared.

Not because they’re intentionally dismissive.
Not because they’re overtly cruel.
But because hiring has been reduced to a task.

A meeting to get through.
A box to check.
A process to complete.

That mismatch matters.

When one side is asked to bring intention and presence, and the other treats the interaction as administrative, hiring stops being a conversation. It becomes a test of endurance.

And that’s where something essential breaks — not just rapport, but trust.

Poor interviewing has become normalized.

That mismatch becomes most obvious in how interviews actually begin.

I’ve joined calls with no introduction. No handoff. No context for who is in the room or how the conversation is supposed to work.

There’s an assumption that the candidate should immediately perform — explain themselves, justify their presence, prove worth — while the organization offers no equivalent effort in return.

Candidates are expected to arrive prepared, composed, and informed.

Organizations often arrive mid-stride.

The call starts abruptly, as if the conversation were already in progress and I’ve simply dropped into it late.

This isn’t just awkward. It’s instructive.

It signals that the process itself isn’t valued — that care and intention are expected in one direction only.

Research shows that nearly 60% of candidates report poor hiring experiences, most often due to lack of preparation, weak communication, and interviewer disorganization — not rejection itself (CareerArc, 2021).

What feels personal in the moment is often procedural.

But procedures still communicate priorities.

Performative enthusiasm creates a different kind of disconnect.

Detachment doesn’t always look cold.

Sometimes it shows up as one-sided excitement.

I’ve been in interviews — including with creative agencies — where I wasn’t asked questions at all. Not about my work. Not about how I think. Not about how I approach problems.

Instead, the interviewer talked. At length. About the company. The culture. The momentum. How great everything was.

It felt less like a conversation and more like a presentation I didn’t consent to.

Curiosity disappeared.

When that happens, even enthusiasm becomes hollow. Without exchange, there’s no evaluation — just noise.

Candidates want to be understood, not sold to. Data shows that 74% of candidates want meaningful opportunities to present their skills and experience during interviews (LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 2022).

When that opportunity isn’t offered, hiring stops being about fit and starts being about filling time.

When hiring becomes administrative instead of relational

In many cases, interviews aren’t conducted by people who are disengaged on purpose.

They’re conducted by people who are:

balancing multiple responsibilities
operating under staffing pressure
untrained in interviewing
uncomfortable in virtual settings
unaware of how their demeanor is perceived

Disengagement, in these cases, isn’t personal.

It’s structural.

Only 17% of organizations actively measure candidate experience throughout the hiring process, while many assess it only after onboarding — if they assess it at all (Starred, 2023).

Disengagement is rarely about indifference.

It is far more often a byproduct of system design.

The alternate failure mode: performative enthusiasm

Disengagement does not always present as coldness.

Sometimes it shows up as enthusiasm — just not the right kind.

In some interviews, the imbalance appears as one-sided excitement. Extended explanations of company culture, growth, vision, or momentum, with little curiosity about the candidate sitting across from them.

The interviewer talks.
The candidate listens.
Time passes.

What’s missing is inquiry.

It stops being a conversation and starts feeling like a presentation the candidate didn’t ask for.

Different tone. Same outcome.

When curiosity disappears, enthusiasm turns into noise. There’s no evaluation, no exchange, no real sense of fit.

Data from LinkedIn Talent Solutions shows that 74% of candidates want opportunities to actively present their skills and experience during interviews (LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 2022). When that opportunity is absent, connection doesn’t form — even if the energy in the room is high.

Different delivery. Same failure.

Limited evaluation.
Limited connection.

Why candidates exit before they’re rejected

Some exits happen long before a formal decision is ever made.

Not because the candidate wasn’t qualified.
Not because they weren’t interested.
But because the process itself signaled misalignment.

When hiring feels slow, opaque, or careless, people don’t wait around to be told no. They quietly disengage.

Research shows that over 60% of candidates abandon hiring processes they experience as slow, unclear, or misaligned with expectations (JobScore, 2022). Another 58% have declined job offers specifically because of poor interview experiences — regardless of pay or title (Starred, 2023).

These exits aren’t dramatic.

There’s no confrontation.
No explanation.
No feedback loop.

Just a decision made privately: this isn’t worth it.

And by the time organizations realize what happened, the candidate is already gone.

Say next when ready.

Workplace breakdowns don’t begin at onboarding

Hiring experiences often mirror internal realities.

They are not isolated moments. They are previews.

Across roles, I’ve left positions not because I couldn’t do the work, but because the environment became unsustainable after I raised legitimate concerns — about safety, unclear scope, or basic team stability.

What showed up later in the job was already present in the interview: lack of clarity, discomfort with questions, avoidance of accountability.

Organizational research consistently links low psychological safety, unclear authority, and unmanaged stress to higher attrition and lower performance, regardless of individual capability (Gallup, 2023).

When people leave under these conditions, it isn’t a failure of resilience or effort.

It’s a system revealing itself.

These outcomes are systemic, not personal.

When professionalism is misinterpreted

In one role, raising concerns about emotional regulation and team stability resulted in formal reprimand rather than reflection.

The feedback wasn’t personal. It wasn’t inflammatory. It was an attempt to protect the team and the work.

But in stressed systems, professionalism can be read as defiance.

Organizational research shows that when hierarchy feels threatened, systems often protect positional authority over functional effectiveness — especially when feedback moves upward instead of down (SHRM, 2022).

That dynamic doesn’t correct problems. It preserves them.

This isn’t an indictment of individuals.

It’s a governance failure.

A system with economic consequences

This discussion is not about feelings.

It is about inefficiency.

When hiring processes break down, the costs show up quickly and repeatedly.

Poor hiring experiences:

reduce offer acceptance rates
increase early attrition
damage employer reputation
waste recruitment spend
contribute to labor market friction

These are not abstract losses. They’re measurable ones.

Gallup research shows that positive candidate experiences significantly improve offer acceptance and long-term engagement, while negative experiences are strongly correlated with early turnover and disengagement (Gallup, 2023).

That makes hiring quality an economic variable — not a cultural luxury.

When organizations treat hiring as administrative overhead, they pay for it later in churn, instability, and lost capacity.

Shared accountability

No one enters broken systems unchanged.

Under pressure, I’ve acted in ways I’m not proud of. Stress, urgency, and survival mode distort behavior. That doesn’t excuse harm — but it does explain how it spreads.

Broken processes don’t just disadvantage candidates.

They deform everyone inside them.

People begin reacting instead of thinking.
Protecting instead of collaborating.
Enduring instead of improving.

That’s how dysfunction becomes normalized — not because people are bad, but because systems reward the wrong behaviors.

How to avoid absorbing systemic failure

Until hiring is treated as human work again, individuals can reduce harm by:

Separating disengagement from evaluation
Identifying patterns rather than internalizing blame
Maintaining boundaries around unmanaged stress
Practicing accountability without self-erasure
Protecting long-term capacity to care

These aren’t resilience hacks.

They’re not about becoming tougher, quieter, or more accommodating.

They’re survival strategies inside flawed systems — ways to stay intact while navigating processes that were never designed to support the people moving through them.

Holding onto care doesn’t mean absorbing damage.

It means knowing what isn’t yours to carry.

Conclusion

People don’t leave work because they’re fragile.

They leave when the cost of participation exceeds dignity, clarity, and the possibility of growth.

Hiring doesn’t need to be perfect.
Work doesn’t need to be painless.

But both have to remain human.

When hiring becomes detached, administrative, or careless, it doesn’t just filter candidates, it filters out the people who care enough to notice what’s broken.

And those are often the very people capable of making systems better.

If organizations want different outcomes, they can’t keep treating hiring like something to get through.

It has to be treated as the work.

Research context: this is not anecdotal

These experiences aren’t isolated, and they aren’t just perception.

Decades of organizational research show that how candidates are treated during hiring directly shapes organizational attractiveness, offer acceptance, trust, and long-term engagement. Poorly structured interviews, disengaged interviewer behavior, and low psychological safety are consistently linked to higher attrition, weaker performance, and increased burnout — not just at the individual level, but across entire organizations.

When hiring processes lack structure, curiosity, and emotional regulation, the damage isn’t limited to culture. It becomes economic. Retention suffers. Productivity declines. Friction in the labor market increases.

This isn’t a personal interpretation of bad moments. It’s a well-documented pattern with measurable consequences (Edmondson, 1999; Hausknecht et al., 2004; Levashina et al., 2014; Maslach & Leiter, 2016; Harter et al., 2002).

References

CareerArc. (2021). Candidate experience study.

https://www.careerarc.com/blog/candidate-experience-study-infographic/

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Gallup. (2023). The lasting impact of an exceptional candidate experience.

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/651650/lasting-impact-exceptional-candidate-experiences.aspx

Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., & Hayes, T. L. (2002). Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(2), 268–279.

https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.2.268

Hausknecht, J. P., Day, D. V., & Thomas, S. C. (2004). Applicant reactions to selection procedures: An updated model and meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 57(3), 639–683.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2004.00003.x

JobScore. (2022). Interviewing statistics: Candidate experience and drop-off rates.

https://www.jobscore.com/articles/interviewing-statistics/

Levashina, J., Hartwell, C. J., Morgeson, F. P., & Campion, M. A. (2014). The structured employment interview: Narrative and quantitative review of the research literature. Personnel Psychology, 67(1), 241–293.

https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12052

LinkedIn Talent Solutions. (2022). Global talent trends: The state of candidate experience.

https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-acquisition/candidate-experience

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: Recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), 103–111.

https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20311

Society for Human Resource Management. (2022). Designing an effective interview process.

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/designing-effective-interview-process.aspx

Starred. (2023). Candidate experience statistics, benchmarks, and insights.

https://www.starred.com/blog/candidate-experience-stats-facts-and-data-you-need-to-know