It's no secret that the job market is incredibly tough right now. But on top of competing with a highly talented applicant pool, prospective employees are dealing with a whole new problem; increasingly difficult, and annoying application requirements. 

One such process was shared by u/PotatoBoxx on the r/recruiting[heck] subreddit, where he exposed the company Canonical for an outlandish first screening assignment for a software engineering role. "Literally the most insane candidate screening for an engineering role," he wrote. "Why does my high school performance matter?" 

In an email, the "hiring lead" shared an outline of an assigned "written interview," which as one commenter put it, more closely resembled "War & Peace." At 37 questions long, completed in full the candidate would have something resembling a memoir, and a piece that no hiring manager in their right mind would have the time to read. 

"They want to know that you’re gonna do all the useless stuff they’ll ask you to do," one person theorized. "You would think so, but this company is known for this," another added. All I know is, you'd never catch me writing all that. u/PotatoBoxx agreed. And here I was thinking a Workday link was the worst a company could do.