'Lazy And Mediocre': Company Fires HR Team After Manager's Application Gets Auto-Rejected

In today’s unpredictable job market, one company’s hiring process went off the rails when it rejected every single job application it received—including the hiring manager’s own resume. This wasn’t due to unqualified candidates, but an unfortunate oversight. The system, intended to streamline recruitment, was automatically rejecting all applications, including the manager’s test submission. The result? Almost half of the HR team was let go after the error was discovered.

The manager took to Reddit to share the bizarre experience, revealing that the HR department had been struggling to find suitable candidates for three months. Growing suspicious, he launched an investigation into the issue. With the caption “world record rejection,” the manager posted screenshots of the emails—one confirming the receipt of his application and another immediately rejecting it. The irony quickly captured attention online.

Further in the comment section, the manager added an elaborate account of the event when he decided to look into the matter after the company couldn’t hire a single person for a particular position. “I’ve created myself a new email and sent them a modified version of my CV with a fake name to see what was going on with the process and guess, I got auto rejected. HR didn’t even look at my CV. I took this up to management and they fired half of the HR department in the following weeks, the issue was they were looking for an angularjs developer while we were looking for an Angular one (different frameworks, similar names), this kind of silly mistakes must and can be fixed in minutes, and since the CVs were auto rejecting profiles without angularjs in it we literally lost all possible candidates,” he wrote.

He also revealed how he frequently followed up with the department for updates, only to be told that some candidates hadn’t made it past the initial screening. Frustrated by the lack of transparency, he vented in his post, stating, “People who work in HR are incredibly mediocre and lazy.”

Many reacted to the post, criticising such practices in companies, especially when hiring individuals. A user wrote, “It’s so annoying. I’m more annoyed about the fact I took 10 minutes trying to fill out each “tell about a time” entry field, only to get auto rejected .02 seconds later. They also left the “After careful consideration” part in. Ridiculous.”

While another commented, “Thanks for info, You‘ve given me a perspective I never knew before.”

“There should be no auto-reject on resumes. HR can just skim the freaking things. It’s not that hard,” a comment read.

The event draws attention to how companies have replaced the HR staff with AI tools, only to mess up the job market even further.