Back in early January I made the mistake of targeting all those companies with the most painful application processes. You know the ones - they make you write essays about “describe a moment when you overcame adversity” and “if you could have dinner with any historical figure who would it be” and other ridiculous stuff like that.

I put genuine effort into roughly 45 of these applications over few days. Wrote custom responses for each company, made sure I hit every qualification they listed, only applied to fresh postings from that week. Some applications took me almost an hour because they had so many random questions.

The results? About 18 sent me automated rejections within days. The rest just went silent - around 27 companies that never bothered responding at all. A couple even reposted the exact same position two weeks later while my application was still supposedly “under review.”

What really gets me is spending 45+ minutes crafting thoughtful answers about my “greatest professional challenge” only to get completely ignored. Not even a form rejection email.

As psychology student, I find it fascinating how these companies create such elaborate screening processes but then don’t follow through on basic communication. Maybe they’re just collecting data or testing how much effort people will put in.

Anyway, lesson learned - stick to quick applications from now on. These lengthy ones with creative writing prompts are just waste of time.