Anyone who has ever applied for a job will tell you how slimy and demoralizing the process feels, but also how confusing it’s become since the widespread introduction of technology — the way we have to ensure our resumes contain keywords so they aren’t dismissed by the applicant tracking system, or the way we have to upload our resumes only to fill out every single detail provided on the resumes again using an online form. It’s enough to make you think that the sole purpose of applying for jobs is to waste everyone’s time.


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A former Google employee, Jerry Lee, discovered as much after he conducted a little experiment in which he applied for over 100 jobs using the name “Kismma D. Nhuhts” and actually found himself being offered 29 interviews. It wasn’t just the pseudonym that should have tipped off potential employers, but plenty of red flags scattered throughout the resume itself, too, including the fact that he majored in “Sugondese Studies,” or that he’s an expert in both Python and Mia Khalifa, which makes sense since one of his previous jobs required him to host orgies on Fridays and another involved creating campaigns with OnlyFans influencers.


Lee cited the “six-second rule,” which states that most recruiters will only spend about six seconds reviewing a resume, and the range of interview offers from big, medium and small companies showed that this rule applies across the board (fun fact: two companies that offered him interviews included Reddit and Robinhood).



Since his job is helping other people find jobs, Lee’s thread is pretty detailed in explaining the right approach to crafting a good resume, including the simple fact that as long as your resume looks like a good resume, you’re already halfway there.


I get it: HR departments around the country are probably being inundated with resumes they don’t have time to carefully study before deciding whether or not to proceed with that applicant. But not even looking at the name or addressing you as Kismma in your emails, is wild.


Maybe it’s a good thing, though — if people ignore insane names like Kiss My Nuts, maybe they’ll be less likely to discriminate against foreign or Black-sounding names. Instead, they can just discriminate based on where you went to school, because as we all know, Stanford’s Sugondese Studies Department is highly esteemed.