2025 was supposed to be the year the economy bounced back—but browsing LinkedIn gives a different impression. Peppered amidst the “some personal news” job announcements, #NowHiring and bloviating attempts at thought leadership, are plenty of dispiriting tales involving companies stealing unpaid work from job candidates or automated rejection notices sent minutes after applying for a job. 

While Statistics Canada reported an increase in 76,000 new jobs in January 2025, representing a 0.4 per cent increase in employment, numbers remained flat in February, with the unemployment rate holding at 6.6 per cent. Between tariffs, inflation and high interest rates, many businesses’ proverbial purse strings have been double-knotted shut. The economic uncertainty has made many companies adopt a much more conservative approach to hiring, making it harder to find a job. 

The demands of job interviews at tech companies have spiralled out of control, Wired reported last year, citing days of unpaid assignments and intense live-coding exercises. Now, the phenomenon has become widespread across many white-collar industries, resulting in a glut of qualified candidates competing for the same stale, lukewarm positions. 

“I’m calling job hunting now the Hunger Games,” says Sandy, an #OpenToWork communications professional in Kitchener, Ont. (She asked to be identified by only her first name to avoid hurting her future job prospects, as did the other job seekers The Logic spoke to.) The first time she underwent a prolonged hiring process only to be rejected, she chalked it up to a fluke. Then it happened again. And again.

In 2020, she went through several rounds of interviews for a communications position at a boutique hotel that stretched out over three months. She got the job, but a day before starting, the hiring manager called to rescind the offer. Then, in 2022, she was halfway through interviewing for a marketing specialist position at a tech company when the job description pivoted from marketing to project management. 

The third time, in 2023, she applied for a communications specialist job at a telecom company and was asked for three writing samples: a blog post, a media release and a communications plan. After submitting the work, she never heard from the company again. She has since seen the role reposted every month or two for the last two years.

Sandy isn’t the only one who has been “ghosted”—that is, applied to a job only to receive radio silence in return. Once a faux pas consigned to the dating world, the word has barged into the professional sphere too. 

Jill, a social media specialist in Toronto, applied for a role at a wellness company in October 2024 on the recommendation of a friend, who is close with the founder. After an hour-long call in which the founder strongly insinuated she had the job, she had two other calls with employees at the company and was asked to submit an extensive assignment involving a content strategy and user-generated content scripts for an influencer campaign. The company went quiet for months before responding to a follow-up to confirm she had not landed the job.

HR experts told The Logic that long interview processes and ghosting are most common when the job market is tight. Companies are often dealing with hundreds, even thousands, of applicants per open position, and may deprioritize communication. Anastasia Zarusskaia, a career coach based in Vancouver, said one job candidate she works with was referred to a position at Vancouver-based startup Clio that had 7,000 candidates. 

Due to the dour economic mood, businesses have become incredibly risk-averse and prolong the job interview process in search of the perfect candidate. Zarusskaia calls this “the unicorn effect.” Based on data she collects from her clients, she has noticed that the average time it takes a client to receive an offer has gone from six to eight weeks prior to 2023, stretching to eight to 12 weeks after 2023.

Job candidates are seeing the same thing. Christine, a public policy professional in Calgary, went through a 10-step interview process for a position at a think tank—including an automated phone interview she was linked to immediately after submitting her application—that ended up stretching out over two months. 

Meanwhile, Brianne, a recent PhD grad in bioethics, applied for a job at a U.S. hospital network in September and didn’t hear back about a first interview until January. “I had forgotten I even applied to it,” she says. After a whirlwind four interviews in five days, she waited two weeks before receiving a stock email alerting her that her candidacy had been unsuccessful. “It’s very disheartening,” she says. 

It can amount to days of uncompensated labour. Jill, the social media specialist, estimates she spent approximately 10 hours putting together the strategy deck. “I’ve had assignments where [companies] say, ‘Don’t spend more than three hours on it.’ That’s nice, but if you really want the job, you’re going to create a deck and a presentation and take time to do it,” she says. The next time she’s asked to complete an onerous free assignment for a job she’s not super stoked about, she plans on pulling out her application. 

This back and forth is bad for employers, too. Paola Accettola, CEO of True North HR Consulting, points out that asking candidates to jump through seemingly endless hoops can end up driving away top talent. Candidates can be, well, candid, when it comes to discussing negative experiences with peers or on platforms like Glassdoor, which have the potential to damage a company’s reputation and deter future candidates.

Some major tech companies outline interview processes in advance, which at least offers transparency on how long everything will take. Shopify has published guides to its technical interviews, including a “Life Story” call, a one-hour interview “about your past personal and professional experiences.” Google now tells candidates it uses work sample tests and structured interview questions instead of the infamous brainteaser questions that it stopped using in the early 2010s, admitting they didn’t predict how well someone does on the job.

But none of this helps if companies aren’t sure what their hiring plan is. Martin Hauck, HR expert and founder of The People People Group, says recruiters often find themselves working to fill roles that end up being canceled. 

“If you’ve been doing [recruiting] for long enough, you kind of know when it’s going to happen, but you can’t reach out to candidates and say, ‘I think this role is going to get canceled,’ because you’re trying to make sure that you’ve got a warm pipeline of people,” he says. This internal miscommunication can end up spiralling outwards, causing confusion and disappointment, and candidates bear the brunt of it.

True North’s Accettola recommends companies define what they’re looking for—from salary expectations to personality to team dynamics—before circulating a job posting. She also cautions against relying too much on digital tools, and suggests proactively sourcing candidates through referrals and networking instead of online job ads. “My biggest advice is to go back to a little more of the personal touch when it comes to recruiting, and I guarantee you’ll find the best candidates.” 

She similarly advises companies to trim down onerous hiring processes to three interviews and one hour’s worth of testing for most roles to determine if a candidate is a fit—and to improve their communication. “Even a simple ‘we’ve moved forward with another candidate’ email is better than silence,” she says.