As I apply for yet another job, I look at the company’s website for context. I’ve now read their “what we do” section four or five times, and I have a problem – I can’t figure out what they do. There are two possibilities here. One: they don’t know what they do. Two: what they do is so pointless and embarrassing that they dare not spell it out in plain English. “We forge marketing systems at the forefront of the online wellness space” translates to something like “we use ChatGPT to sell dodgy supplements”.

But understanding what so many businesses actually do is the least of my worries. I’m currently among the 5% of Brits who are unemployed. In my six months of job hunting, my total lack of success has begun to make me question my own existence. Just like when you repeat a word over and over until it loses all meaning, when you apply repeatedly for jobs in a similar field, the semantics of the entire situation begin to fall apart like a snotty tissue. About one in five of my job applications elicit a rejection email, usually bemoaning the sheer number of “quality applicants” for the position. For the most part, though – nothing. It’s almost like the job never existed in the first place, and it’s possible that it didn’t.

In 2024, 40% of companies posted listings for “ghost jobs”, nonexistent positions advertised to create the illusion that the company is doing well enough to take on new employees. And this seems like an all-too-easy way to lie about your success. Regulation of job ads is mostly the remit of the Advertising Standards Authority, which – in all its might – has the power to … have a misleading job ad taken down. So with no particularly harsh consequences for employers, why not go on a pretend hiring spree? Ethics in the job market seem to have gone out the window, and the idea of wasting the time of thousands of hapless jobseekers doesn’t seem to matter much.

Even if the job you’re applying for exists, next comes the hurdle of the AI HR bot. While it’s difficult to find any hard data on just how many employers are using AI to filter applications (sometimes favouring men over women, if a now-scrapped algorithm used by Amazon is anything to go by), articles and Reddit threads about how to game the bots and get in the right “key words” now abound. According to an Atlantic article from earlier this year: “Young people are using ChatGPT to write their applications; HR is using AI to read them; no one is getting hired.” And let’s say your CV and cover letter do make it past the robot gatekeepers, it’s possible that your interview will be conducted by yet another bot. Although I haven’t had the pleasure of an interview, AI or otherwise, since I began my latest job search, the possibility of not coming into contact with a single human during most of the process to becoming the dodgy supplements social media marketing manager looms large and dreadful.

While this scramble for jobs is mostly being framed as a problem for graduates, I can confirm – as someone who graduated 15 years ago bang into a recession – not only is this the worst job market I’ve ever seen, but it’s also impacting people like me with many years’ experience. During my last period of job hunting, about three years ago, I was at least getting interviews. Interviews with humans, to boot. Given all the skilled people I know who can’t seem to land interviews for even entry-level positions, I’m certain that I’m not an outlier. I’m also convinced that we’re facing a crisis in which middle-class jobs have mutated into rare and disturbing beasts.

When, according to its job ad, an indie pet food company called something like Flopsies is looking for a “rock star” and a “unicorn” to revolutionise its social media presence, you know that the job market has become high on its own farts. Ill-defined franken-jobs, requiring everything from SEO expertise to video-editing skills (all for a salary of £27,000 and free protein bars that taste like hay) require cult-like dedication. First, you must convince the fine people at Flopsies that it has been your dream since exiting your mother’s birth canal to sell pet food. You would cut off your own hands for the privilege, and quickly learn to write copy for them by smashing your face into a keyboard. You will convey this in a 400-word cover letter, written in your own blood. This cover letter will then be redirected into the ether by an AI filter, because you didn’t use the phrase “optimising algorithmic relevancy” in it. You will never hear from Flopsies again. You will start this process again and repeat it until you are seen fit for an interview in which you have a few minutes to convince a bot that you’re fit for purpose as both a worker and a human being.

The hiring process has become so mechanised, both figuratively and literally, that it’s hard to believe that the people who end up being hired aren’t merely the best at gaming the system. And frankly, all power to them. It’s no skin off my nose if the dodgy supplement or pet-food jobs go to people who are incredible at creating the illusion that they live and breathe pet food and/or dodgy supplements. But in this oh-so-streamlined process, what happens to those of us who can’t or won’t play the game? Of all the applications I’ve sent out recently, I wonder how many have been looked at by humans. There’s only so much shouting into the void about your ability to use a CMS you can do before you give up and start Googling things like: “Can I sell a kidney on Vinted?”

• Eleanor Margolis is a columnist for the i newspaper and Diva