Companies love to say they value talent, yet their hiring practices often tell a different story.

One HR associate watched their company reject qualified applicants for reasons that had nothing to do with the job.

Eventually, they could no longer ignore how absurd the process had become.

Keep reading for the full story!

My boss rejects a lot of potential employees for the worst reasons

I work in HR and watch this happen constantly. Good people get rejected over stuff that has nothing to do with the job.

The reasons were more petty than you could even imagine.

Guy wore brown shoes with a black belt.

Rejected for “poor attention to detail.”

A woman asked about work-life balance.

Apparently that means she’s “not committed.”

Someone said “um” twice in a technical answer.

“Poor communication skills.”

A candidate showed up 2 minutes early instead of exactly 5 minutes early.

“Can’t follow instructions.”

One person brought a coffee to the interview.

“Unprofessional.”

This HR employee could no longer ignore just how dysfunctional this process was.

Half these people had better qualifications than our current team.

But sure, let’s hire based on shoe color instead of actual skills.

It’s exhausting watching good candidates get filtered out for crap while we struggle to fill positions.

But what do I know, I just work here.

No wonder this company can’t manage to fill positions.

Maybe it’s all because the role isn’t actually open.

Bosses can make up all sorts of nonsensical excuses when they don’t want to hire someone.

Some companies would rather encourage conformity than competence.

There’s no doubt this boss has ulterior motives for this behavior.

It’s asinine how companies complain about staffing shortages while tossing out perfectly good talent.

If this behavior is indicative of the job market as a whole, then applicants will need all the luck they can get.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.