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Antiwork

If you’re skeptical of the Peter Principle, try hitting a few reqs

The Peter Principle basically said that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Now myself, I'm lucky to have been able to use my experience to work for myself essentially as a contractor, because I'm good at what I do. But out of curiosity, I applied to several jobs online, and for the most part, these HR people and “hiring managers” have no clue. Most of them are going down a list of canned questions, I'm not sure if they're writing things down or not, and then just a general “I'll pass this along”. You might get lucky and get an invite for a “personality” test. I look some of these people up on LinkedIn and they're full of themselves – they're exceedingly proud of their “leadership” experience managing KPI's etc. But how much do they actually know the job? Do they even know a an actual qualified candidate…


The Peter Principle basically said that people are promoted to their level of incompetence.

Now myself, I'm lucky to have been able to use my experience to work for myself essentially as a contractor, because I'm good at what I do.

But out of curiosity, I applied to several jobs online, and for the most part, these HR people and “hiring managers” have no clue. Most of them are going down a list of canned questions, I'm not sure if they're writing things down or not, and then just a general “I'll pass this along”. You might get lucky and get an invite for a “personality” test. I look some of these people up on LinkedIn and they're full of themselves – they're exceedingly proud of their “leadership” experience managing KPI's etc. But how much do they actually know the job? Do they even know a an actual qualified candidate when they come across one, or are they looking at a list someone gave them, checking off boxes? Looking for the “right” interview behavior? I could keep going.

Seriously, a great business idea would be something that could really connect applicants to their job success after the fact to actually track the real qualities for some of these people to look for.

But again, I'm kind of lucky I can work for myself, so I think I'll continue that. I know not everyone has that luxury.

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