It’s Time to Reclaim Agency
Human beings are not meant to passively drift through life. We are at our best when we act, create, and contribute to something larger than ourselves. This drive to create is human agency—the ability to use our intelligence to reframe difficulties and willingly embrace challenges. Yet, in the modern workforce, agency is increasingly stripped away from individuals, replaced with rigid career paths, endless credentialing, and impersonal hiring processes that reduce candidates to checkboxes. This erosion of agency is not just frustrating; it has real consequences for human potential, job satisfaction, and economic innovation.
Agency is cultivated through action. Historically, the path to mastery and fulfillment was clear: young people learned trades, took on apprenticeships, or engaged in meaningful work that challenged them to grow. But today, much of what passes for career preparation delays real-world experience for as long as possible. Young adults emerge into the workforce having spent years accumulating education and credentials but with little exposure to practical decision-making, problem-solving, or ownership of meaningful projects. Instead of being encouraged to act, they are trained to wait—to follow instructions, meet predefined expectations, and hope that someone else will recognize their potential.
Modern Hiring Practices Don’t Work
Nowhere is this passive conditioning more evident than in modern hiring practices. The job search has become an impersonal, dehumanizing process, where applicants submit résumés into automated systems, hoping to beat algorithms designed to filter them out. Candidates are treated as interchangeable, judged not by their ability to solve problems or contribute in meaningful ways but by whether they have the right keywords in their résumé or the correct pedigree on their degree.
The hiring process has become a game of compliance, not capability. It rewards those who optimize their applications to fit artificial constraints rather than those who can actually do the work.
Employers, for their part, complain about a lack of qualified candidates while clinging to outdated hiring methods that obscure talent rather than reveal it. Instead of assessing a candidate’s ability to think critically, communicate effectively, or solve real problems, they rely on rigid requirements, arbitrary years of experience, and layers of bureaucratic screening that prevent them from seeing the best people for the job. The result is a system that stifles ambition and discourages initiative.
When job seekers are repeatedly ignored, ghosted, or rejected without explanation, it teaches them that effort doesn’t matter, that they have no control over their own futures. This is the opposite of agency—it’s learned helplessness.
The effects of this broken system disconnect people from meaningful work, becoming disengaged, indifferent, or worse, resigned to jobs that do nothing but pay the bills. Without the opportunity to take ownership of their work, to create, solve problems, or improve their environment, they lose the drive that makes work a fulfilling part of life. This isn't just bad for individuals; it’s bad for businesses and the economy. Companies that hire based on rigid checklists instead of actual capability miss out on talented people who could drive innovation and growth. A workforce stripped of agency is a workforce that lacks initiative, creativity, and the drive to grow.
Restoring Agency, One Job at a Time
The solution is not more layers of credentialing, nor is it a more sophisticated filtering system to further dehumanize the hiring process. It’s time to put real work back at the center of hiring. Employers need to stop hiring based on résumés and start hiring based on demonstrated ability. Real-world challenges should replace generic applications. Problem-solving should replace keyword matching. The best way to find the right people is not to force them through a bureaucratic maze but to allow them to show what they can do.
That’s exactly what VersoJobs was made to do. Instead of forcing candidates into the same broken system, VersoJobs lets them prove themselves through interactive mini-case challenges—real-world tasks that demonstrate their skills, thinking, and ability to contribute. Employers get a deeper, more accurate look at candidates, beyond the résumé and into what truly matters: their ability to act. By matching people to roles where they can thrive, VersoJobs restores agency to the job search, ensuring that work isn’t just a means to a paycheck, but a path to purpose, mastery, and fulfillment.
