I don't like to go here because I know very little about your methods from our discussion, I've easily misunderstood some things you've said, etc. and I'm certa

I don't like to go here because I know very little about your methods from our discussion, I've easily misunderstood some things you've said, etc. and I'm certainly not talking about you as a person, you've obviously been completely polite and respectful of me and others here. (And the same goes for the recruiter in my story -- I'm sure he was not a horrible person either). And I don't want to throw out something you can't reasonably defend yourself against. So I'm talking entirely about my (surely incomplete and flawed) impression of what you've told me of your profession here. It comes across as being consistent with what workers dislike about the industry. Not reading people's resumes before you have them interview, preferring those who don't have obvious hobbies in the hope they will do more work, justifying this by talking about power dynamics and the applicant being powerless, they are "items" being filtered for, the love it or shove it attitude. So I'm sure outside the profession you don't think of people as numbers, and even in the profession you're having a side bar with me and my summary of impressions is probably uncharitable taken out of context. It could be that you are an unwitting or unwilling participant in the normalization of deviance in the HR industry regarding how to treat people -- this is just how things are done. And in what you say there are some kernels of difficult truth, for some companies and some applicants / employees. But it's not entirely and always true either. Firstly, no matter the power dynamics, people should be treated with politeness and respect. And personally I'm sure you do, but professionally I don't know that your industry does or necessarily even understands what that means. Secondly, that assertion about the power dynamic is not always true. I mean, if a company advertises an open position, then it's a signal that they want to buy (at least where I am I believe it's illegal to advertise for a position you have no intention of filling). So all else being equal, they're starting at a disadvantage right out of the gate if you make an adversarial analysis of it. It's true that FAANG companies have a power dynamic over 99.9% of their applicants because they have a huge oversupply. But for some fraction of that top 0.1% it is the opposite. They get head-hunted and fought over. Presumably the top talent in recruitment process are those who can find and sway and hire these people when the balance of power is not on their side. And down from FAANG and the top few companies in other industries, a lot of the time companies actually have much bigger problems attracting people. So the power dynamic can certainly fall the other way in any given hiring, as it was in my story. And the guy clearly didn't know how to cope with that. And I think that is also a symptom of this industry problem. I had the upper hand there. I was filtering him. Despite that, I was not rude, I was honest, didn't mislead him, I explained my position. And I read everything he wrote. It cost me very little to be polite and respectful.