In 2024, I applied to be a software developer intern at one of the big banks. I sent my CV, cover letter and filled out the application form, all as usual. A couple of minutes later, an email came back with a link to play some mini games. Strange, but I went along with it and popped a couple of balloons. Within seconds, I got a report back (which I am pretty sure was AI generated) telling me I lacked leadership skills.

How demoralising.

And that was not the only strange part of the entry-level application process I had to get used to.

What Applying For An Entry-Level Job Actually Looks Like

I always assumed a job application was simple: send your CV, and if you are lucky, someone invites you to an interview. Silly me. The actual thing looks more like this:

CV and cover letter
Application form (usually the same information as your CV, because some companies want both)
Pymetrics-style games assessment
HireVue
Leetcode or HackerRank (if the role is technical)
Technical interview
Behavioural interview
Assessment centre

Eight stages. And for more than half of them, you are not dealing with a person at all. Software is used to rank your CV. Mini-games score your personality. An AI grades an interview you record alone in your room. The first real human shows up near the very end, if you are lucky enough to make it that far. By then you have poured hours into each step and got nothing back but automated emails.

Honestly, it is exhausting. And it is driving applicants to change the way they apply to jobs (and not for the better).

Beating The Machine

After a substantial amount of rejections, I decided to research how to actually get past the software and the AI layers. These are some of the most common entry level application tactics I picked up:

Spray and pray.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it is when applicants make one generic CV and fire it off to every company and every kind of role without tailoring anything. I know plenty of people doing exactly this, and plenty more advising me to play the numbers game too. Their excuse: there is no real person reading it anyway, so why bother?

AI-written CVs.

When I was applying for internships, I found out that most CVs go through an ATS (applicant tracking system) that scans them and ranks them on how many keywords match the job. That system decides whether your CV ever reaches an actual human. So once I started using AI to write mine with the ATS in mind, I got a lot further. Ironic, is it not? The same companies that tell you not to use AI have built a process that rewards the use of it.

What I noticed about these tactics is that they make you care less about the actual job and the company behind it. The whole thing had started to feel less like applying for a job and more like beating a system.

What A Good Application Process Looks Like

Thankfully, there are still a couple of good companies out there. When I applied for an internship at Taught by Humans, a few things stood out.

First, they did not use a third-party ATS like Workday or any of the big ones. Just send your CV and a cover letter straight to Laura. And for the first time in ages, it made me sit down and write a real CV instead of letting AI do it.

Second, I got a reply from a real person, not some generated email.

Last but not least, the interview was a project-based task. No HireVue (self recorded interviews), no pymetrics games (mini-games to assess personality). I was given something to complete within a set time frame, and it was the kind of work I would actually do day to day.

That, to me, felt like a real application process. I was measured on whether I could do the work, and there was an actual person there to judge whether I would fit the company.

And these are things most companies seem to have forgotten. They do not need to pour money into cleverer software or a third-party games assessment. They just need a person on the other side of the screen.

This is not to say AI should be banned from hiring. When you are dealing with thousands of applicants, it does have some time saving benefits. The human parts (e.g. judging personality, behaviour, whether someone actually fits) should stay human.

How Popping A Balloon Told Me I Lacked Leadership Skills

Want to put this into practice?