My name is Alex, and I created The Interview Games to study the modern hiring process by experiencing it firsthand. Over the past year, I have applied to and interviewed with more than 100 companies across different industries, organizational sizes, and levels of responsibility. Rather than relying only on surveys, secondhand stories, or generalized advice about recruiting, I decided to go directly into the process as a candidate. I test application systems, different resume strategies, ATS behavior, salary expectations, recruiter communication, assessments, interview structures, panel interviews, executive conversations, and the overall candidate journey from the moment someone clicks Apply through the final decision.

The purpose is simple: understand what hiring actually feels like from the other side of the table. Companies regularly talk about culture, transparency, communication, respect, and candidate experience, but those values are ultimately measured through real interactions. An application portal, a recruiter call, a scheduling email, an interview, or even a rejection can shape how a candidate views an organization. Some of my experiments reveal processes that are unnecessarily complicated or frustrating. Others introduce me to recruiters and hiring managers who are prepared, professional, thoughtful, and genuinely impressive. I document both, because The Interview Games is not about criticizing companies. It is about observing the process honestly, recognizing what works, identifying recurring problems, and creating better conversations about how people are recruited and hired.

My professional background is in leadership, operations, and multi-location management. Throughout my career, I have hired employees, interviewed candidates, developed managers, coached teams, managed performance, and participated in hiring decisions from the employer side of the process. I understand why companies need structured interviews, assessments, approvals, compensation ranges, background checks, and consistent hiring standards. I also understand the operational realities behind filling positions quickly while still trying to make the right hiring decision. That experience is important because it allows me to look at recruiting from both perspectives rather than simply viewing the process as a frustrated applicant.

What became interesting to me was the growing difference between how organizations describe the candidate experience and how that experience sometimes feels in practice. A company may describe itself as people-first while asking applicants to spend an hour re-entering information already contained on their resume. A position may be described as urgently hiring while remaining open for months. Candidates can complete assessments, speak with multiple leaders, prepare presentations, attend panel interviews, and then receive little or no communication afterward. I wanted to better understand why those experiences were happening, how common they were, and what separated an excellent hiring process from one that leaves candidates confused or discouraged. That curiosity eventually became the foundation for The Interview Games.

Every experiment begins with a real application. I select opportunities across different companies, industries, and levels of responsibility, then document the process from beginning to end. Some experiments are designed to better understand the application stage itself. Others focus on recruiter behavior, response time, salary expectations, resume presentation, interview structure, or communication between rounds. I may test different resume versions, modify the way experience is presented, compare keyword strategies, or observe whether a change in salary expectations appears to influence whether an application progresses. The objective is not to claim that one variable controls an entire hiring decision, but to identify patterns through repeated experiences.

I also recognize that one interview cannot define an entire company. Large organizations may have thousands of recruiters, managers, locations, and departments, each with different hiring practices. That is why the project continues across many organizations. A single experience is simply one data point. When similar experiences appear repeatedly across dozens of companies, however, they begin to reveal meaningful patterns. Those patterns can help candidates understand what they are encountering and help employers see how certain practices may be perceived outside of their internal recruiting environment.

The Interview Games is therefore not a ranking system and it is not designed to divide companies into categories of good or bad. The more useful question is whether a process is clear, respectful, efficient, and consistent. When something works particularly well, I highlight it. When something feels unnecessarily complicated, I examine it. And when the same issue appears again and again across multiple organizations, it becomes worth discussing more broadly.

The hiring process begins long before a candidate meets a recruiter. For many applicants, the first experience with a company is the job posting and application portal. I pay attention to how clearly positions are described, whether requirements appear realistic, how much time applications require, whether information must be entered repeatedly, and how quickly a company responds once an application has been submitted. These details may seem minor internally, but they can significantly influence whether candidates remain engaged with the process.

I also experiment with different resume approaches. I compare wording, formatting, keywords, experience descriptions, and other variables to better understand what may influence whether an application advances. Applicant tracking systems are frequently discussed as though there is one universal formula for getting through them, but in reality different organizations use different platforms, configurations, workflows, and recruiter practices. My goal is not to claim that I have found a secret method for defeating an ATS. Instead, I test practical variables, compare outcomes, and share what appears to work more consistently based on real applications.

Salary expectations are another area I study. Many companies ask applicants to provide compensation expectations before any meaningful conversation has taken place. Candidates may not yet know the complete responsibilities, bonus structure, benefits, travel requirements, or overall scope of the position. I have tested different approaches to these questions to better understand whether compensation expectations appear to affect whether an application progresses. Sometimes the results are informative. Other times, they simply reinforce how much influence one small field on an application can potentially have before two people ever speak.

Once an application becomes an interview, the experiment becomes much more detailed. I have participated in recruiter screens, hiring manager interviews, panel discussions, recorded video interviews, assessments, executive conversations, presentations, and multi-round interview processes involving several different people. During those conversations, I pay attention not only to the questions being asked but also to the way the process is managed. Was the interviewer prepared? Did they appear familiar with the resume? Was the role explained clearly? Did the questions actually relate to the responsibilities of the position? Was the candidate told what to expect next?

The quality of an interview often has less to do with elaborate systems and more to do with preparation and communication. Some of the strongest interviews I have experienced were simple conversations with leaders who were prepared, professional, direct, and genuinely interested in understanding the candidate. Those experiences felt natural while still allowing the company to evaluate qualifications thoroughly. Other processes involved several conversations where the same questions were repeated multiple times, expectations changed from one round to the next, or communication disappeared once the interview concluded.

Those differences matter because candidates are evaluating organizations at the same time organizations are evaluating candidates. An interview is not simply a test of whether someone deserves a job. It is also one of the strongest opportunities a company has to demonstrate its leadership style, communication standards, culture, and level of professionalism. Whether a candidate eventually receives an offer or not, the way they are treated during that process often determines what they remember about the organization.

Candidate experience is much larger than the interview itself. It begins with the job posting and continues through every interaction that follows. The application, confirmation email, recruiter outreach, scheduling process, interview, follow-up, rejection, or offer all contribute to the candidate's perception of the organization. Even silence communicates something. A company may have an excellent employer brand publicly, but the recruiting process is often where candidates decide whether that brand feels authentic.

For the organization, one candidate may be one name among hundreds of applicants. For the candidate, however, the opportunity may carry far greater significance. It may represent financial stability after a layoff, a career change after twenty years in the same industry, an opportunity to advance professionally, or simply the hope of finding a better environment. Candidates may spend hours researching the company, tailoring resumes, preparing examples, completing assessments, arranging schedules, attending interviews, and following up afterward. Understanding that difference in perspective is one of the most important parts of this project.

The Interview Games looks closely at that gap between internal process and external experience. Many hiring systems are built around efficiency, compliance, or organizational convenience, but candidates experience those systems emotionally and personally. Recognizing that reality does not mean employers must remove structure from hiring. It means structure can still be designed and communicated in a way that respects the people going through it.

One of the most important parts of The Interview Games is highlighting companies, recruiters, and hiring managers who create strong experiences. The project is not built around negativity, and some of the most memorable experiments have been the ones where I expected a complicated corporate process and instead encountered people who were prepared, professional, engaging, and respectful. Those experiences deserve attention because they demonstrate that hiring does not need to feel transactional or impersonal.

A positive candidate experience usually does not require another expensive recruiting platform or a complete redesign of the hiring department. In many cases, it comes down to basic professional standards: communicate clearly, arrive prepared, explain the process, respect the candidate's time, provide realistic expectations, and follow up when you say you will. These are simple principles, but they can dramatically influence how a candidate views an organization.

When I experience an excellent interview process, I share that as openly as I share the frustrating ones. The goal is not merely to point out problems. It is also to show examples of what effective hiring looks like in practice and to recognize the people who are doing it well.

As The Interview Games has grown, the project has become about much more than my own applications. I regularly hear from professionals across industries who share their experiences with layoffs, unemployment, interviews, ATS systems, salary negotiations, ghosting, age-related concerns, career changes, and lengthy hiring processes. Some have submitted hundreds of applications without receiving meaningful feedback. 

Others have completed multiple interview rounds only to receive silence. Many are experienced professionals returning to a job market that looks completely different from the one they last navigated.

Those stories matter because they demonstrate that many of these experiences are not isolated. When the same concerns are repeated by candidates from different industries, locations, and career levels, it creates an opportunity to look more closely at the underlying process. My own experiments provide one perspective, while the experiences shared by others provide additional context. Together, they create a much broader picture of what modern job seekers are encountering.

I share these stories with humor because hiring can be stressful enough without discussing it as though every application is a corporate policy manual. Sarcasm allows people to recognize the absurdity in some of these situations while still engaging with the larger issue. The humor gets people talking, but the purpose behind the conversation remains serious.

The Interview Games uses humor, sarcasm, personal observations, and real candidate experiences to discuss recruiting in a way that is accessible and relatable. Anyone who has followed the project has probably encountered references to my inner raccoon, recruiter witness protection, the Employment Olympics, endless panel interviews, mysterious application portals, and the occasional hiring process that feels like it requires security clearance before anyone will explain the salary.

Those jokes are part of the storytelling, but the subject behind them is important. Hiring affects people's income, careers, families, confidence, and future opportunities. A poorly handled process can discourage qualified candidates and damage an organization's reputation. A well-run process can leave someone with a positive impression of a company even when they are not selected.

The goal is therefore not simply to make hiring funny. It is to make hiring easier to talk about. When candidates recognize their experiences in the stories, they know they are not alone. When recruiters and hiring leaders recognize aspects of their own process, it creates an opportunity for reflection and improvement.

The mission behind The Interview Games is to create better conversations between candidates and employers. I want candidates to better understand the systems they are navigating, and I want organizations to better understand how those systems feel from the outside. There is often a major difference between how a hiring process is designed internally and how it is experienced by someone trying to join the organization. Closing that gap benefits both sides.

I am not interested in presenting hiring as something that can ever be perfectly standardized. Recruiting involves people, technology, timing, budgets, business priorities, compliance, leadership preferences, and judgment. It will always involve complexity. But complexity does not have to mean confusion, and structure does not have to mean impersonality.

If a candidate reads one of my stories and realizes that their experience is not unique, the project has value. If a recruiter changes the way they communicate with candidates because of something they read, the project has value. If a hiring manager recognizes that an interview can be both thorough and human, the project has value. And if an organization takes another look at a process simply because it sees how that process feels from the candidate side, that is progress.

The Interview Games has also created opportunities to discuss modern hiring beyond written content. I participate in conversations around recruiting, candidate experience, leadership, job searching, applicant tracking systems, workplace culture, career transitions, and the challenges professionals face while navigating today's employment market. These discussions are relevant to employers, executives, HR leaders, recruiters, hiring managers, job seekers, podcasts, professional panels, and organizations interested in understanding how hiring is experienced outside of their internal systems.

My approach is practical rather than theoretical. I am not speaking about hiring only from the perspective of someone who has read about it. I have been on both sides of the table. I have hired people, led teams, participated in organizational hiring decisions, and now gone through the modern candidate experience repeatedly across more than 100 companies. That combination allows me to discuss what companies are trying to accomplish while also explaining what candidates actually experience.

The objective is not to lecture employers or tell candidates that every frustrating experience means a company is doing something wrong. The objective is to bring real examples into the conversation so both sides can better understand each other.

I am still applying, still interviewing, still testing different approaches, still documenting the results, and still listening to the experiences people share with me. Every new application provides another opportunity to understand how recruiting works in practice. Every interview provides another look at how organizations communicate, evaluate people, and represent themselves to potential employees.

There is still a great deal to learn about modern hiring, and the process continues to evolve alongside technology, artificial intelligence, economic conditions, recruiting trends, and changing expectations from both employers and candidates. That means The Interview Games is not a finished project. It is an ongoing experiment.

The goal is to study the modern hiring process by experiencing it firsthand, documenting what happens, recognizing what works, questioning what does not, and sharing those experiences so candidates and employers can have better conversations about the way people get hired.

Real applications. Real interviews. Real candidate experiences.

Welcome to The Interview Games.