The Application: a job application game

Entry level, five years required

Some “entry-level” job posts ask for up to 5 years of experience. In those ads, entry level describes the salary, and the experience section is written for someone senior. Rule 3 asks for more than 5, and the posting still says entry level.

Remote jobs that come with a city

A remote job ad can turn out to mean remote from somewhere else. Read to the end and it names the one city you have to live in, sometimes with a relocation offer and pay that wouldn’t cover the rent there. Hybrid has slipped the same way, one office day at a time, until WFH means the day a week you’re allowed to.

Ghosted after the interview

61% of job seekers in the US, UK and Germany have been ghosted after an interview, up 9 percentage points since April 2024. The interview went well. Then nothing, apart from an automated email about your application to say there’s no news yet.

Some of those jobs were never going to be filled. Three in five job seekers suspect they’ve met a ghost job, a posting with no plan to hire anyone. One hiring platform counts 18 to 22% of its own postings as ghost jobs in any quarter.

The rejection that describes someone else

Some rejection emails are more honest than they mean to be. They list what the team wanted. The ideal hire already knows the internal tools, needs almost no onboarding, works at full speed from the start and is comfortable with ambiguity and long hours. That describes the person who already works there. The job was posted because policy said so, and the interviews were for the paperwork.

Comfortable with ambiguity is the line to read twice. Translated out of corporate jargon, it means nobody has decided what the job is yet. And a new hire who knows every tool on day one is the hiring version of trying to boil the ocean.

Handwriting tests, chatbots and late-night calls

Some applications open with a chatbot texting to ask about your dreams, and the next round is an interview with software. Other hiring steps are older and odder. Some employers want a handwriting sample so a graphologist can read your personality in the loops, or a drawing of a tree. Some hiring managers ring about your application late in the evening, which at least tells you when they’ll ring once you work there.

Getting the offer doesn’t settle it. Offers get pulled when a duty nobody mentioned, like overnight conferences, turns out to be compulsory and the new hire can’t do it.

Applying from your desk

23% of US workers have applied for jobs on a work computer, and 19% have snuck out of work for an interview. Play The Application at your desk and your browser history shows a job application too. It’s ours, so you can say so.

The Password Game

Neal Agarwal released The Password Game on neal.fun on June 27, 2023. It sets 35 rules for one password in a fixed order, and the later rules can clash with the earlier ones, much like the requirements in a job ad. The Application does the same to a job form, with 16 rules.

Scoring the job application game

Each rule that passes when you submit is worth 100 points. The speed bonus starts at 600 when you open the form and loses a point a second, so an application sent in 5 minutes keeps 300.

Submit with all 16 rules passing and you get the offer letter, written from your own answers, plus whatever speed bonus is left. Withdraw and you get the rejection email and 100 for each passing rule, with no speed bonus. Your best score is kept in this browser.