Fitting into a Box

Hiring people (and others) can try all they want to fit us into boxes, but what if we're too big for them?

We live in a time where everyone expects you to fit nicely into a box or category. My main focus is on careers and personal branding, but this trend goes far beyond the professional realm. I think it’s an indictment of human brain development that we are unable (or unwilling) to handle complexity in 2025.

Think online dating. It’s been several years since I indulged in that brutal game of chance, but I can easily recall the oddly specific requirements in some women’s dating profiles. Those selective singles wanted everything from a guy with a six-figure job to one that would let them eat off his plate at a restaurant. (It’s notable that few asked for starving writers.) One woman I had the good fortune to chat with even specified how many inches she wanted in a man—and she wasn’t talking about height.

I didn’t even mention the goddam quizzes some of those dating sites would put you through—as if the secret sauce to a lasting relationship or successful one-night stand can be quantified by the shared answers to arbitrary, user-generated questions. (I don’t know how OKCupid lured me in—I must have wasted weeks on that crap.) Does it really matter whether my date puts mustard instead of ketchup on her hotdogs and is only 20% “dominatrix” but 80% “femme fatale”? No, it doesn’t matter because you can’t measure such things. I’m 100% sure of this.

What killed me the most with online dating (until it finally worked) is the same thing killing me now on LinkedIn: In order to stand out, you have to “brand” yourself. This essentially means being creative, unique, different—even sexy. Yet, I just heard from a friend that he didn’t get a job he was highly qualified for because his personal brand was seen as “too radical” by the hiring people. I don’t think the fool who said that knows what “radical” means—but in any case, it was clear he was uncomfortable with someone going to the trouble to, you know, brand himself. Never mind that my friend comes off like a big, thoughtful teddy bear who manages to be lovable while getting the job done. His brand is authentic too: He simply lets people know who he is and does it in a fun way. Sometimes that involves witty critiques of a bad hiring practices (who can blame him, honestly). He won me over right away—and I’m not easily impressed.

You can’t force people to put themselves out there and then punish them for doing it well.

Then, there’s identity politics, which I could talk a lot about but don’t want to risk cancellation. When did everyone reduce themselves and everyone else to the categories of gender, race, disability, veteran status, and sexual orientation? I laugh inside whenever I fill out a job application and am asked about my sexual orientation. I could easily lie. How would they know? And maybe I don’t know. Maybe I’m still questioning. Maybe a sapiosexual, two-spirit writer with a slight disability isn’t quite the “brand” they’re looking for. It’s bad enough hiring people are asking me to write out long responses to questions that should wait until the interview stage—assuming it ever comes—why do I have to share all my intimate secrets with them?

Not everyone fits in a box. I would argue that no one does if they’re honest with themselves and others. But there’s no benefit to being honest with those “others” if they include hiring people or the AI systems they sloppily utilize. Better to just learn to contort your arms, legs, and head in such a way that you can fit into whatever container they have available—especially if the pay is solid and you get stock options on top of it. Forget everything you learned as a child about “being yourself.” It’s bullshit. Everything I learned as a child turned out to be a fucking lie as it relates to careers and job hunting.

The truth is that we’re in an employment crisis, and it won’t be solved by forcing job seekers to become acceptable to the know-nothing ATS—and the milquetoast man behind the curtain—so that they can potentially land jobs that might not even exist. (It’s no secret that there are scams and “ghost jobs” being posted every day.)

Instead of telling us to “stand out” and do better, why don’t they?