#he's older. more stable. more frequently manic but a lot less angry.

[elytrafemme]

sometimes i wonder if things would be better if klavier was the host of this system. 

[ice-cream-nekogirl]

Amy Martinez (Character Sheet TV Tropes Style) K-O

Kick The Dog: Several times…

When she and Midoriya fought each other over how he handled the debacle with Overhaul, he attempted to apologize to her and give her an All-Might figure as a gift (Shinsou’s suggestion), but she rejected the gift and crushed it with her telekinesis.

Much like with Midoriya, Aizawa attempts to appease Amy when she’s upset with him for not taking her in after her parents died when he and the other pro-heroes could have, by apologizing and buying her a cat plushie, but Amy tells him it’s too late, denounces it as garbage and incinerates it with her pyrokinesis.

At the Christmas party, after Eri ate her cookie not knowing it was hers, an incensed Amy pretends to call Santa on her to not give her any presents.

Amy also wrote everyone angry letters (not knowing she wasn’t supposed to send them) and she simply wrote for Eri to “Get out.”  

As stated, Amy wrote angry letters to most of her classmates, but ended up accidentally sending them as her classmates end up reading her actual, cruel opinions of them and she later says them word-for-word which made Iida,Yaoyorozu and Ojiro cry:

Calls Uraraka a ‘basic bitch’.

Tells Kirishima that he’s an idiot if he thinks being manly means anything.

Says that Yaoyorozu is ‘really stupid for the smartest girl in the class’ and is a ‘privileged bubblehead’

Similarly she calls Iida an ‘uptight robot’ and a ‘priveleged rich boy with no real meaningful goal’.

Asks Sero what he’s even doing in the Hero Course because he’s a “fucking human tape dispenser”

Calls Ojiro the “worst one in the class” because he’s “boring”, then insults his hero costume on top of it all.

Really just about anything she and Shinsou do to Ojiro as they relentlessly mock his generic personality by calling him ‘boring’ or steal his things for no reason other than amusement.

When she, Midoriya, Todoroki and Bakugo intern with Endeavor and visit his family at his house, she calls Fuyumi an idiot for being so forgiving towards Endeavor.

Kick The Son Of A Bitch: She always punishes Mineta for his perversion usually in the form of groin attacks, tossing him out the window or using him as an expendable decoy in battle.

She also beats the shit out of Tate Langdon with Shinsou before letting the former be dragged to Hell when together them and Madison free the residents in the Murder House from their purgatory and let their souls move into the afterlife.

Kiddie Kid: She’s a high schooler and yet she tends to act MUCH younger than that as it shows through her fondness for toys and My Little Pony, her excitable attitude and her dislike of work. Iida even frequently tells her that she needs to grow up.

Shinsou straight up says that having Amy as a friend is the same as having a child, one that he and Ashlen constantly look after with him being the ‘dad’ and Ashlen being the ‘mom’. 

Kill It With Water: Her second death at the hands of her ex-boyfriend Damien as he drowned her in a bathtub. Much like above, she gets better as Madison this time revives her.  

Killer Rabbit: Small, cute and for the most part sweet, but Amy can and WILL kill you if you cross her, if you’re lucky, she’ll just curse you or hex you. 

Knife Nut: She’s handy with a knife and clearly gets a high out of using them.

Lack of Empathy: While she IS capable of feeling empathy for others, Amy can also easily show a disturbing lack of empathy for others due to her selfish nature and sense of entitlement as she can easily dismiss other people’s problems and feelings.

Amy: Greenie I’m not some urchin you found on the street I matter.

Lady Swears A Lot: She’s VERY foul-mouthed and has an affinity for F-bombs and other vulgar language. Iida has frequently told her to watch her language, denouncing it as unladylike while she just says “Shut the fuck up” in return.

Lame Comeback: Although she and Shinsou are normally very witty and quick to come up with a smart remark, when they are too angry to come up with anything clever, their insults are... less effective.

Large Ham: She’s super dramatic and almost always at 11, not to mention she loves to dramatic sing songs when she hears anything that even remotely sounds like a lyric to a song she knows.

Laughing Mad: Since she’s not very stable to begin with, Amy has a habit of bursting into laughter at inappropriate times. As she laughs during her fight with Midoriya after he punches her, which greatly unsettles him.

Leitmotif:

La la la la la da…

All the good girls go to hell…

so what if i’m crazy? (the best people are)

Like Brother and Sister: Her and Shinsou have known each other since they were four years old and have a very close friendship built entirely on trust and unfiltered honesty to the point where it’s almost inappropriate but it nonetheless displays that they only love each other like family and have nothing romantic between them whatsoever as they found out during a so-called date and they realized that while they love each other, the thought of being together repulses them.

Light Feminine, Dark Feminine: Although she’s just as wicked as Madison is, Amy’s definitely a Light Feminine compared to Madison’s Dark Feminine.

However, Amy is the Dark Feminine to Ashlen’s Light Feminine, as well as her other female classmates, especially Ashido, Uraraka and Yaoyorozu.

Light Is Not Good: While Amy wears black like many of her witch sisters, she also is fond of light clothing such as pink and other pastel colors, but she’s not exactly the most heroic girl in the world.

Limp and Livid: When pissed off beyond belief, Amy slouches even more to signify her very fragile stability and fights even more viciously, letting her rage literally take control in battle. 

Little Miss Badass: Ever since she was 11 years old Amy’s enter a world of bloodshed and action and has gotten VERY good with her powers and magic, and only gets stronger as she gets older.

Living Emotional Crutch: She’s one to Shinsou as he broke down hard when she left for New Orleans and fell into a depression. While he managed to pick himself back up he never stopped thinking about Amy, imagined that she was there with him and made her one of his motivations in his goal to become a pro-hero. And he’s absolutely elated when she returns and gains even more drive to fulfill his dream with his friend back to him. And Amy is one of the few people that Shinsou trusts enough to turn to when he’s at his lowest point and his loneliest and Amy is quick to give him all the support and comfort he needs.

And vice-versa when Amy returns, Shinsou is easily the only living being that keeps her from going insane as she thinks about him whenever she’s having a meltdown as he can reason with her before she acts recklessly while at the same time comforting her and reassuring her. It helps that he’s the last piece she has from her childhood that reminds her of a time where things were easy, innocent and fun for her as she thinks fondly of their happier times where nothing other than having fun mattered.  

She’s one to Ashlen as well, who has expressed of fear of not having her best friend in her life anymore to the point of crying and panicking. She even tearfully begs Amy to not leave her alone, because she can’t be without the person she views as her best friend in the world. And vice-versa, Ashlen becomes one to Amy, as she falls right back into insanity and depression when she thinks she’s hurt her and can’t bear to live with herself with that fact knowing that she harmed her. Amy even says that she doesn’t think she’d be able to live in a world without Ashlen, and confesses that she’d probably have gone on another homicidal rampage she’d never come back from without Ashlen in her life. 

Logical Weakness: Amy might seem like the lucky one with her variety of powers, but in actuality having more powers also forces her to utilize more energy depending on the power she’s using and thus leaves her very vulnerable when using too energy to fuel her powers drains her and renders her weaker with nosebleeds and headaches, and she’s even realized that should she overdo it with her telekinesis that she could suffer brain damage.

Love Makes You Evil: Not quite as bad as Toga, but still very present.

The Mad Hatter: Amy goes insane during her time in New Orleans, is well aware that she’s no longer sane by the time she gets to UA, but embraces her insanity as part of who she is and how she’s grown. While it unnerves her friends at first, they wouldn’t have her any other way.

Amy: (laughs) I wouldn’t be nearly as fun if I were sane. All the best people are crazy~.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl: She can sometimes act like this, especially for Ashlen surprisingly enough, as her wild behavior encourages her to loosen up a little bit and find more confidence in herself. 

Manipulative Bitch: Fiona did raise her for a short-time, but boy did she rub off on her. Amy’s learned how to use her appearance and earn sympathy from others while also bending the truth to get people to do what she wants or fall into her traps. Shown during the end of the Culture Festival where she pretends to be remorseful to Aizawa, only to blind him with a potion and begin her rampage. 

Masculine Girl and Feminine Boy: She has this dynamic whenever she’s with Midoriya. Amy might dress and act femininely, but she’s far more ruthless, vulgar and crude compared to the soft-spoken and gentle Midoriya. Although Midoriya isn’t really effeminate, he’s the one who has to keep Amy from acting too rough and aggressive. 

Likewise, while Todoroki and Iida aren’t anymore feminine and masculine in their own ways, they’re much less crude and shameless than Amy is so she’s also the Masculine Girl to their Feminine Boys. 

Meaningful Name: Amy means “beloved” or “worthy of love” which may have to do with her loving nature as despite all of her flaws, Amy loves VERY strongly and her powers are connected to her strong emotions including her capacity to love others as she even states that she wants to become a hero because she believes in love and wants to fight for it. Also, Amy herself is very beloved by several that she is close to such as Shinsou, Ashlen, Bakugo, Madison, Todoroki, Cordelia, and many more.

Martinez is derived from ‘Mars’ which is the Roman name for Ares, the God of War, which MAY allude to Amy’s love for fighting and affinity for violence and chaos.

Her middle name ‘Ophelia’ also means ‘help’ which ultimately refers to her helpful nature as she becomes an ally to the heroes, women, witches and other groups she wants to fight for and support. Also could refer to the character ‘Ophelia’ in Shakespeare’s Hamlet who slowly lost her sanity after her father’s death and Hamlet’s behavior, much like how Amy herself lost her sanity after her parent’s deaths.

Mood Swinger: Can go from cheerfully happy and sweetly smiling to fuming and screaming angrily to bitterly cold and threatening murder to crying miserably and sulking sadly all within the span of a single hour or day.  

Morality Chain: Shinsou is one of the few people she actually treats with equal respect and genuinely cares about enough to stop during a meltdown. Similarly, her coven and her classmates serve as hers as her friendship with them kept her from going over to the villain’s side or returning to New Orleans. Shinsou, Bakugo, Midoriya and Todoroki in particular are some of the only people that she is willing to reason with, likewise, Kaminari, Hagakure, Kouda, Shouji and Aoyama are the only classmates she consistently treats nicely.

Her new best friend Ashlen is one of the few people aside from Shinsou and Todoroki that she is willing to reason with, is always respectful towards her aside from teasing, and the only person who can get her to behave and be nice to her other classmates. And thus far is the only one who’s inspired Amy to treat people around her better as she reflects on her actions after following Ashlen’s example and has learned to be kinder and more respectful.

Morality Pet: She’s one for Madison, as the older, crueler witch will hold back on her meaner impulses when tormenting her classmates, most of the time, for Amy’s sake and will go out of her way to make sure the younger witch is happy. Likewise, she also served as one for Fiona, the former Supreme who treated her like a granddaughter, it didn’t stop her from attempting to murder Amy, but she feels regret for it and still cares for the young witch and watches over her to ensure she is safe and being treated well. Lastly, she’s one for her Ax-Crazy friend Darcy, who became less violent due to Amy’s influence. 

More Deadly Than The Male: Witches are stronger than warlocks, and it shows in that Amy was always stronger than her ex boyfriend Damien. And when she interns with Endeavor alongside Midoriya, Bakugo and Todoroki, the three strongest males of 1-A. Endeavor reluctantly admits to himself that despite being the only female, Amy’s unpredictable temper, array of powers and tendency to fight from a distance makes her the most dangerous of the group.

The Music Meister: Sort of. When she breaks out into song and dance she can get some of her more outgoing friends to sing and dance along with her. Even Shinsou, especially when she starts singing Panic! At The Disco. 

My God What Have I Done?: As she fights Midoriya and gains the upper hand by trapping and grabbing him with her Sentio Compassios form, she’s ready to maim him in her form’s hands but as soon as she sees him crying and pleading with her to stop, Amy finally pauses when she remembers that she protected him first, only to hurt him and as she lets him go she leaves without a word but it’s clear she felt horrible for intending to maim him. And then she feels even more horrible when she stops to see the damage she’s done to UA and all the heroes she’s harmed. Despite claiming to be sick of UA, Amy mostly withdraws from the school because she felt too guilty to return. 

Never My Fault: Would rather shift the blame onto something or someone else even when it’s clearly her fault. Not only that but Amy generally doesn’t take much responsibility for her actions nor is she willing to own up to her mistakes. 

However, this is ultimately subverted as Amy is well aware when things are her fault and DOES apologize for them, it just takes a while for her to admit it due to shame and guilt.

Nice Hat: Just like her sisters, Amy has an affinity for wearing some very nice black hats in the style of witches.

Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Of The Zombie Trio, she is more the “In-Between” to Ashlen’s “Nice” and Shinsou’s “Mean”.

However at times she and Shinsou either switch roles where he becomes “In-Between” and Amy becomes “Mean”, but then they are also capable of both being the “Mean”. Amy and Shinsou are both only “In-Between” whenever they are joined by Madison or Bakugo.

The Nicknamer: Much like Bakugo, but her nicknames are far (most of the time) less insulting as she likes to give everyone nicknames that are usually affectionate and cutesy as she tends to especially use ‘cat’ or ‘bear’ in their

Ashlen: Ash, Ash-bear, Ash-chan

Izuku: Greenie, Zuzu, Deku-bear

Bakugo: Katsu-kitty, Katsu-kun, Kacchan (like Izuku)

Shinsou: Hito, Toshi, Tosh, Toshi-bear, Toshi-cat

Madison: Mads, Maddie

Tsuyu: Tsu, Tsu-tsu, Tsu-kun

Todoroki: Toto, Sho-kun, Sho, Shoto-cake, Shoto-bear

Iida: Ten-ten, Tenya-bear, Four-Eyes

Uraraka: Raka

Hagakure: Toorun, Ruu

Yaoyorozu: Momo-bear

Kaminari: Den-kun, Den-kitty, Denki-bear

Kirishima: Kiri-kat, Kiri

Aoyama: Twinkle-Toes

Ojiro: What’s-Your-Face

Tokoyami: Toko, Toko-bird

Sero: Sero-bear, Han-kun

Ashido: Min-chan, Mina-min

Kouda: Kody, Kouda-bear

Aizawa: ‘Back-hair’

Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Due to her love for horror, Amy is more than happy to scare the shit out of her classmates by telling them horrifying stories about death, torture and serial killers. Helps that Amy’s unsettling nature also adds to the horror whenever she makes gestures and adds sound effects to her stories and even shows pictures. 

Nightmare Fetishist: Enjoys horror-based things such as witchcraft, the occult, and also has a fondness for creepy creatures such as tarantulas, snakes and alligators as she coos at how ‘cute’ they are. She’s also ecstatic when she wanders around haunted sites with ghosts and blood-drinkers such as the Murder House, the abandoned Briarcliff Manor and the haunted Hotel Cortez.

No Indoor Voice: Prone to screaming at the top of her lungs when making a point. In fact, she’s the second loudest in the Hero Course behind Bakugo.

No Sense of Personal Space: Amy’s very hands-on and touchy, as she constantly puts her hands on her friends whether it’s on their shoulders, hugging them randomly, holding onto their arms or hands.  

No Social Skills: Downplayed. Amy’s perfectly capable of socializing with people, but doesn’t seem to see an issue with swearing in front of adults and strangers, nor does she see an issue with being overly affectionate and touching, especially shown when she happily greets Inko.

Not Good With Rejection: No... she’s really not. Just ask Midoriya.

The Not Love Interest: She’s one to Shinsou, as his best friend, she is the person he is closest to and serves as one of his motivations, thinks about her every single day, cares and looks after her and is seen with her the most out of anyone. Amy is also quite affectionate to him and Shinsou was her main reason for returning to Japan so she could see him again and rekindle their friendship. They are very comfortable with each other, aren’t against hugging and share almost all of their secrets with each other. Also, Amy is one of the few people who can bring him out of his shell as Shinsou feels very comfortable loosening up around Amy and has no issue looking foolish in front of her. However, Amy and Shinsou have NO romantic interest in each other whatsoever, comically express how disgusted they are by each other and Shinsou’s true love interest in Ashlen, Amy’s best friend who she happily pairs Shinsou with.

Similarly, she’s also one to Madison, as the bitchy witch becomes slowly kinder to Amy’s friends because of her care for the younger witch. Madison also goes out of her way to make sure Amy is happy because she can’t stand to see her sad, even rescues her from All For One and the League of Villains by herself and often consoles her when she is upset. Amy’s overall influence has made Madison something of a better person who has become more considerate of others, but she gets jealous of other people who spend time with her and ‘steal’ her away, despite having no romantic feelings for each other. Helps that they even argue at times like an Old Married Couple.

She can also be one to Ashlen at times, as aside from Shinsou, Amy is one of the most important people in her life, acts as her main emotional support as she allows her to talk about her feelings and vent to about her past whenever she is sad or feeling insecure and Amy becomes one of her newer inspirations as she gradually grows more confident and secure with herself due to her influence. 

Not So Different: She realizes this with the League of Villains, particularly Toga and Twice, who she forms a bond with over feeling outcasted by society and lack of mental stability. She also manages to have a pleasant conversation with Shigaraki when she can relate to him on feeling like one of the ‘losers’ of Hero Society, it’s the reason why he tried to convince her to join his League, while she didn’t reply, she ultimately ends up staying with the heroes because of her friendship with 1-A.

She ends up bonding with Bakugo after they got kidnapped together, where she points out that they’re really not that different from each other because she has a similar goal and mindset which leads them to talking more despite Bakugo trying to claim that they’re ‘night and day’.

Oblivious To Love: Averted. Amy is well aware of who’s crushing on who, or who has feelings for her as she is clearly flattered by Todoroki’s feelings for her and Monoma’s even more obvious crush on her.

Odd Friendship: With many of her classmates but particularly Midoriya,Tsuyu,  Yaoyorozu, Tokoyami and Kouda.

Midoriya was the first friend she made aside from Shinsou, but while he’s a humble and shy nice guy, she’s shameless and arrogant.

Amy took a liking to Tsuyu as they are shown to work together quite well in combat and bond over tastes in aesthetics.

Despite mocking her in the beginning, she grows fond of Yaoyorozu even though they’re starkly different in terms of intelligence, personality and mannerisms.

Amy says that she likes Tokoyami because he’s a ‘boy witch’ and he’s fascinated by witch culture and they seem to get along relatively well despite him being low-key and collected and her being wild and hyper.

Kouda is the quietest student in 1-A while Amy is one of the loudest, but they easily become friends due to their love for animals and cute things.

To Bakugo’s horror, she hits it off with his mother Mitsuki due to their similarly loud, abrasive personalities and annoyance towards him. 

She also becomes quite fond of Natsuo when she’s interning with Endeavor and allows him to open up to her about how much he hates Endeavor while she happily tells him that she hates him too.

When she and Ashlen officially meet, their friendship shows to be quite odd but sweet. Amy’s off the wall with a varying morality, while Ashlen is grounded and is firmly on the side of good. 

Older Than They Look: Amy’s older than classmates such as Midoriya, Iida, Todoroki, Shouji and Ashlen, but acts MUCH younger than they do and certainly looks a bit younger than they do as she frequently gets mistaken for a middle schooler. 

One Woman Army: When Amy is provoked and at her more insane, she becomes too much for even the pro-heroes to handle as she merely pushes them away with very strong telekinesis and keeps them at bay. Even the Big 3, Amajiki, Nejire and Mirio (who was quirkless) are no match for Amy as she effortlessly beats the tar out of them when they try stopping her. However, she’s still clever enough to fight older, experience heroes at a distance but her array of powers and rage (fueling her Sentio Compassios) allows her to overwhelm them and take them by surprise, and with Concilium she’s able to make some of the stronger ones simply go to sleep. 

OOC Is Serious Business: Amy’s almost always upbeat and overzealous while also cracking jokes without a care in the world, but when she’s NOT acting happy-go-lucky or muttering a joke, it becomes clear that something is very wrong with her as her classmates are alarmed when Amy shows any instance of fear or nerves.

Seeing her acting unemotional or stoic is also an indicator that something is wrong with Amy, as Midoriya, Bakugo and Todoroki are each quite shocked upon seeing her so detached and cold during the Internship with Endeavor.

What further contrasts her from Bakugo is that while he drops nicknames and calls people by last name out of respect, Amy instead drops the nicknames whenever she is pissed off beyond reason.

The Ophelia: She was long, wavy dirty blonde hair, often sings at random times while dancing and appears to be out of touch with reality as she puts a positive spin on even the bleakest things. However, it’s played for horror when she goes on a rampage as she lets her hair down, singing all the while she’s causing mayhem.

As a bonus, her middle name is Ophelia, and she was even killed once in a manner very similar to Ophelia as she was drowned by Damien, not unlike how Ophelia died by drowning in a pond. 

[shirlleycoyle]

Cost Cutting Algorithms Are Making Your Job Search a Living Hell

Jeffrey Johnson was on one continuous job search, more or less, for 12 years.

After the recession shuttered the textbook publisher where he was putting his bachelor’s degree in history to use, Johnson worked office temp jobs and delivered packages, on an Uber-like gig basis, for Amazon and a medical testing company around his native Baltimore. He went back to school for a masters in screenwriting and then a law degree. Throughout, he scrolled through sites like Indeed and ZipRecruiter looking for better, more stable work—or just something to tide him over between semesters.

About two years ago, he started getting emails asking him to take online “assessments” for jobs after he applied. Some were tests of basic office skills, like spreadsheet use and typing. Others were for legal knowledge. Some were dippy personality tests. At first, Johnson was excited. “I thought it meant I’d gotten past a gatekeeper of some kind and was in the running,” he said.

Then the tests came quicker and more frequently. One in four jobs had an assessment attached, he estimates. He got emails prompting him to take an online test seconds after he submitted an application, a sure sign no human had reviewed his résumé. Some were repeats of tests he’d already taken.

He found them demeaning. “You’re kind of being a jackass by making me prove, repeatedly, that I can type when I have two writing-heavy advanced degrees,” Johnson said, “and you are not willing to even have someone at your firm look at my résumé to see that.”

Johnson also did phone interviews with an Alexa-like automated system. For one job, he was asked to make a one-sided video “interview” of himself answering a list of company-provided questions into a webcam for hiring managers to view at their convenience. Or maybe an algorithm would scan the video and give him a score based on vocal and facial cues, as more than 100 employers are now doing with software from companies like HireVue .

Until he started as a legal writer for FreeAdvice.com last month, Johnson, 36, said he was at potential employers’ whims. “I can’t imagine I’d move to the next round if I didn’t do what they said,” he told Motherboard.

Companies are increasingly using automated systems to select who gets ahead and who gets eliminated from pools of applicants. For jobseekers, this can mean a series of bizarre, time-consuming tasks demanded by companies who have not shown any meaningful consideration of them.

“Obviously, in our society time is money,” said Ifeoma Ajunwa, an assistant professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University and author of The Quantified Worker. “So if you are asking [job applicants] to spend so much time on an application then you are transferring the labor your HR department would be doing to the applicant, so it becomes an ethical issue.”

Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software has long been used by high-end firms searching for executives and HR managers at large corporations that receive thousands of applications. The systems are increasingly being adopted in various sectors of the labor market. ATS vendor iCIMS claims it revamped Footlocker’s process for hiring sales associates, and JazzHR brags that it helps a regional Pittsburgh construction company hire all its staff, including interns. (JazzHR and iCIMS both declined to comment for this story.)

Beating the Bots

Maneuvering around algorithmic gatekeepers to reach an actual person with a say in hiring has become a crucial skill, even if the tasks involved feel duplicitous and absurd. ATS software can also enable a company to discriminate, possibly unwittingly, based on bias-informed data and culling of certain psychological traits.

Lynne Williams, a Philadelphia-area career advisor, holds a seminar called “Beating the Applicant Tracking System.” Every time, she braces for a wave of anger from the audience. “I can feel their blood pressure rise when I tell them what they are doing wrong,” she said.

Their most important task, she tells crowds of jobseekers, is to parrot keywords from job descriptions. The most basic elimination function of most ATS software is searching résumés and cover letters for keywords. Many systems can’t—or don’t bother to—distinguish synonyms, like “manager” and “supervisor,” so she says to rewrite résumés with each application, mindlessly copying words from the job description. Countless online guides for “beating the bots” recommend the same.

People find this task frustrating and are indignant over its irrelevance to their fitness for the job, Williams said. Others fume about all the time spent carefully crafting applications that were probably never seen by a human.

Jack Wei, a director of product marketing for the job site SmartRecruiters, said that “the moment a candidate applies [for a posted job], a ‘smart profile’ scrapes résumé info into a digital portfolio by extracting keywords.” The employer then sees an automatically generated score, from 1 to 5, of their apparent fitness for the job. The platform distinguishes synonyms and word variances when making this score, but the employer can search using any narrow phrase or word they choose, Wei said.

According to data from the job site Glassdoor, 250 people apply to the average corporate job. Many ATS vendors sell their products on the suggestion that hiring managers are overwhelmed by applicants. When almost half of Americans work low-wage jobs, a good job of any kind will generate a long line of hopefuls, despite the official government unemployment rate being at a 10-year low of 3.5 percent.

ATS technology encourages applicants to find ways to cut in line, said Anjunwa. She has heard stories of people inserting common keywords in small white font on their PDF résumés, visible only to bots, to sneak into the next tier of candidates.

Applicants can also use services to help them beat the algorithms, like the website Jobscan, which will scramble words from a job listing into their customers’ résumés for $49.95 a month.

Such tricks don’t show relevant job skills, but perhaps vital job-hunting ones, Anjunwa said. “People see that only people who are savvy get jobs,” she said, “and the others get shut out.”

How Often Does the Following Statement Describe You at Work?

The next round of the screening process is often an assessment test. Such tests have been around for decades, but ATS software has made it easy to deliver them automatically to an applicant’s inbox.

Indeed, the world’s most visited job site, has been pushing assessments in recent TV advertising. The company offers employers online tests for basic aptitudes, like attention to detail and memorization and recall; job-specific skills, like bookkeeping and first aid; and more abstract competencies, like critical thinking and problem solving.

Most take about 30 minutes. They still piss off jobseekers.

“I've been finding a lot of online assessments that come with the job applications I file, wrote a poster on the jobs subreddit. Every time I see one of those, I immediately cringe. I HATE THEM.”

“They're usually very long … and most of the questions I just. Can't. Answer," they added. "For example, a question such as ‘I prefer to work in team rather than alone’ completely depends on the situation and the kind of job I’m doing.”

Indeed declined an interview but told Motherboard in a statement that “Indeed's free Assessment tool is not a burden to job seekers, it helps job seekers demonstrate their full capabilities to prospective employers,” and that the tests “help job seekers stand out based on their skills instead of their previous titles, employers, or their highest level of formal education.”

Smaller companies also provide assessments, for a fee. Atlanta-based Berke offers both aptitude and personality tests. Neil Morelli, PhD, an organizational psychologist and vice president of product and assessment, said some of the applicant outrage can “come from older assessments that last an hour or two and they can feel clinical.” He added, “These large battery assessments are being replaced by more aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable assessments.”

Morelli admits “enjoyable” is relative in this context, but said a goal of his industry is to produce tests that feel game-like but still convey useful information about a candidate.

The Berke Marketing Free Personality Assessment is a 78-question sample test, where every question is the same: “How often does the following statement describe you at work?” Start it and then comes a flood of phrases and adjectives: “lively,” “disciplined,” “leader,” “angry,” “fearless,” “puts others at ease,” “soft hearted,” etc. The test-taker picks one of four options: “almost always,” “often,” “sometimes,” or “rarely.” Morelli said some of the terms in a test are virtual synonyms to suss out applicants trying to game it. Obviously, one would hesitate to tell a potential employer they are “often” “angry” at work and “rarely” “put others at ease,” even if true.

The assessment tests applicants on psychology’s “big five” personality traits of extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Some managers consider these traits for even minimum-wage work.

Why Robots Don’t Think Women Can Handle a Job at Amazon

In 2012, Kyle Behm took a break from university to deal with manic depressive disorder. He applied online for a low-wage job at a Kroger grocery store near Atlanta. A friend who worked there told Behm he didn’t get hired because of the results of a personality test. His father, an attorney, filed suit against Kroger and five other companies that tasked Behm with big-five personality tests for a low-paying job, alleging they illegally screened for mental illness. Sadly, Behm ended his life last year before the case was adjudicated.

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits “employment tests that screen out or tend to screen out an individual with a disability or a class of individuals with disabilities” unless necessary for the job.

Morelli said that Berke’s personality assessment is ADA compliant because it “does not meet the criteria for being a medical examination” and “is not invasive or used to infer mental health.” But asking a candidate if they are “fearless” or “comfortable with others” may produce results indicating a condition like depression or social anxiety disorder.

Some advanced ATS have “learned” bias by incorporating variables that favored people who are already advantaged. Amazon abandoned its development of an AI-based hiring process when the predictive models favored male candidates. The system was relying on résumés submitted to the company over ten years, and because of the prevalence of men in tech jobs, the system began to downgrade résumés that included all-women’s colleges or female-indicating phrases like “women’s chess club.”

The makers of more advanced applicant tracking systems are acutely aware of the bias problem, but are not certain of a solution.

Arya is a “recruiting platform” that uses predictive analytics to identify and classify job candidates. Madhu Modugu, the CEO and founder of its parent company, feels assessment tests are a poor indicator of job performance, and claims that Arya’s platform avoids placing a heavy time burden on applicants.

“[Arya] would look at my history and my past, what kind of organizations and what kind of cultures you are exposed to,” said Modugu. The system would then match the candidate against a composite profile of employees “who are the high performers in the culture of the company.” If a company can’t provide that information, Arya offers its own psycho-metric profile of who does well in the jobs that its customers are looking to fill.

The term “culture” can have some problematic connotations when applied to who is suited for a job. Modugu insists Arya measures the work culture of past employers compared to that of the prospective employer.

But he said he is aware of problems like the one that plagued Amazon: If the system is fed data that shows white males have been the “best” employees—because prejudice allowed them into those roles more easily—it will conclude that white males are the “best” candidates. “The AI has interpreted the data correctly,” said Modogu, “but it has generated biased results because the information is biased.”

The solution is not simple, he said. Developers need to work out systems that can better fight bias and HR managers need to take active steps to increase recruitment from non-traditional pools.

On top of issue of discrimination, the emphasis on data in recruiting can make people feel stuck in a role. Data points come from past experience, and neglect factors like ideas, ambition and understanding of an industry.

Nick Thorch once worked in Microsoft’s inside sales division, selling the company’s products to other large businesses. He wanted to transition to product management. After spending time fielding customer complaints about Windows Vista, he felt he had insight into how software should be developed. He applied for thousands of product manager jobs in Silicon Valley.

“The only time a recruiter was interested in me was for another inside sales position, even if my cover letter, résumé and career objective statement strongly supported a range of business roles,” Thorch said. “ATS mentality keeps people pigeonholed in their past, rather than what they feel inspired to do.”

SmartRecruiter’s Wei saidthat the effect of ATS on narrowing career pathways presents a “good question” for the industry.

“On a technological level alone, there is only so much alone you can do,” he said. Recruiters need to identify people who might be viable for a career change. “You lead with people and process first, but with technology alone you can’t have lasting change.”

Asking Some Hard Questions

When it debuted in 2013, HireVue’s AI analysis of video interviews seemed like an endgame for job application automation. A candidate answers questions to a silent webcam and uploads a video. A program then scans their facial features, word choices and vocal indicators to determine—through some murky, trademarked science—if they should advance to the next round. The Utah-based company once had $93 million in venture capital and more than 600 clients, including Goldman Sachs and Hilton.

Last year, artificial intelligence scientists called HireVue’s methods “pseudoscience” and “profoundly disturbing” in a Washington Post article, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging it violates jobseekers’ privacy through facial recognition.

Cornell’s Ajunwa said AI analysis of mannerisms presents some of the worst potential for discrimination in the labor market. The process would be a roadblock for people on the autism spectrum and for many from foreign countries, as acceptability would doubtlessly hinge on neurotypical, American mannerisms. “What if your culture says not smiling is respectful?” she asked. “There are many cultures where people do not laugh and smile like Americans do.”

HireVue did not respond to a request for comment. Its website no longer touts AI analysis of videos as a service. But it is one of several companies that gather self-made recordings from job applicants answering interview questions. The applicants upload them for a manager to, perhaps, view at their convenience in another new task in the automated application process. VidCruiter and Modern Hire, two other prominent video interview companies, also declined Motherboard’s requests for an interview.

“It’s just your typical interview questions like, ‘What’s a time when you failed at work?’” said Jeffrey Johnson. He recalls a herky-jerky system that would beep to prompt him to stop mid-answer.

He’s not sure if an AI or a person looked at his video. He submitted it on a Friday and was rejected for the job the next Sunday.

VidCruiter’s website describes the appeal of having a limitless library of candidate interviews, on tap. In a video, a “senior recruiter,” likely an actress, complains of “spending eight hours doing phone interviews” and “pulling [her] hair out” over the lousy candidates. She then describes “a system that will allow you to ask an unlimited number of candidates as many questions as you want.”

“I’m doing something else while the system is interviewing my candidates,” she says with a smile.

The message is clear: She’s offloaded much of her work to someone else.

Ajunwa said automated systems will probably continue to amass between jobs and jobseekers. “I think that’s the way it’s going to advance,” she said. “Companies have come to count on it.” She has called for mandated auditing of algorithmic systems to ensure against “bias in, bias out” preferences like the ones that affected Amazon.

Should job applicants rebel? Should they refuse to take online assessments or to upload video faux interviews or engage the next faceless gatekeeper?

She encourages candidates to take a principled stand if they are in a position to do so, if they are already employed or have good prospects. Everyone should monitor tests that “echo mental health” or show other signs of bias, she said. But she doesn’t know where exactly to draw the line to refuse to comply with the process.

“That’s a tough question,” she said, “because if you need the job, you need the job.”

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