It’s not just GenZ.

The entire employment system is broken.

Many places advertising for employees aren’t actually looking to hire people inasmuch as conducting market surveys.

Many employers are so used to seeing hundreds of applications today that they narrow their vision for what they’re looking for on such strict parameters that they forget they are hiring people and not selecting machines.

Employers often over-rely on agencies who aren’t in the least interested in team building or cultural fits but in spotting skill sets to narrow their candidate lists by algorithms rather than people exercising their judgements.

Most applications are ruled out before any human sees them and are ruled out by humans if their applications aren’t formatted in the manner they expect.

Companies will often advertise for people “who think outside the box” but are so intimidated by outside-the-box thinkers when they interview them that they immediately reject that candidate.

Making matters worse for people in technical professions is having their skills evaluated by people without technical expertise, who judge the candidate based on the limits of their ignorance. They’re incapable of comprehending what skills are transferable and how they contribute toward success in a different area.

Even worse are companies that place upper limits on the experience they’re willing to accept, which rules out highly experienced candidates. Meanwhile, they also often advertise a requirement of years of experience in a technology that’s only been on the market for a few months.

Then they complain, after ruling out qualified candidates, that they can’t find anyone to hire because no one wants to work anymore.

Many unemployed people struggle to find work while being rejected outright because they don’t fit neatly into narrow boxes of expectations defined by ignorance and bias rather than insight.

GenZ may be experiencing struggles unique to their stage in the employment mill, but the overall employment system has massively degraded over the last several decades.

I’ve been struggling for ten years now to land a simple junior-level job in graphic production work to regain balance after having a thirty-year career as an independent professional destroyed by people who are supposed to protect and serve, not scapegoat for political gain.