Abe B.

Over the past decade, I've tried on and off to find work via Indeed.com. You can read reviews about the job application process from many other Indeed.com applicants on Indeed's own review pages. Very many of us have the same experience. You find jobs you're qualified for. Whether you're the first person applying or the last, whether you apply early Monday morning, on the weekend, late at night--no matter what you do, you don't hear back from anyone.

Unless it's a minimum wage dangerous position no one else will take. The only two job apps I've heard back from in the past YEAR during the pandemic are from residential care facilities. I have a master's and a doctorate (not boasting--multiple degrees are now VERY common among online job applicants since so many of us followed the advice to become "more educated"...) in health sciences, but apparently the only thing I'm qualified to do is be a nurse's aide or young child behavioral aide trainee. Each position was both in a state with frighteningly quickly spreading COVID-19 cases AND at facilities where so many employees had recently become sick that the facilities were DESPERATE for workers. Still, they both offered near minimum-wages for dangerous work that involved double-duty (caring for children AND elders at a company-related nursing home--not advertised in the job ad!). And still, the interviewers for both positions were denigrating and condescending--as if throwing the applicant the possibility of a life-threatening job were sign of the employer's beneficence.

I follow the online job gurus' advice to research companies, craft a "pain letter" cover letter, tailor my resume to the keywords in the job ad... Nothing.

Then, I started limiting my search for jobs requiring "no experience" or for companies explicitly stating "Urgently Hiring!" Or companies that INVITE applications from "career changers" or "retirees" (to avoid the ubiquitous specter of age discrimination). Still NOTHING.

Recently, I completed an application in which I had to count the words in each paragraph, change each paragraph's font AND color, all while answering very specific questions in a specific order. I thought it was a test to see who would actually follow the instructions. I felt like a performing circus animal. It was humiliating--but I did it and triple-checked that I'd followed the instructions. I never heard back from the company. And, of course, nothing from time-wasting Indeed.com.

Indeed acts like so many other portals in the internet age: they wash their hands of any responsibility for what happens to the people using their services, instead currying the favor of the people PAYING (supposedly) to use Indeed.com--the employers.

Research the history of the US Labor Movement. You'll see that many employers/corporations will do anything, no matter how unethical, to make money. Many don't care about the human beings they use for labor--and even hold those applying to be laborers in special contempt. Maybe this is common human nature--the way those who are safe and have survival resources treat those who aren't and don't. But Indeed's complicity is unforgivable.

The US government and international watch dogs all report that an unprecedented number of people have slipped into joblessness and poverty due to the pandemic--all while the wealth of many corporations and the super-wealthy has exploded. And how has Indeed responded to these extraordinary circumstances? By continuing to do what countess throngs of frustrated, dehumanized job applicants have been complaining about for decades now--making it easier than ever for uncaring employers to savagely waste job applicants' time by forcing us to jump through demeaning hoops because we're desperate for work. All the while, the same jobs get reposted a few weeks later despite never extending the simple courtesy of letting applicants know that we weren't selected or WHY we weren't selected so we could understand how to improve our odds in the future.

Yes, Indeed is a statistical scam at least--and quite possibly something far more malevolent than that.