INTERNAL MEMO: Cromulent AI adopts new resume screening protocol

FROM

Talent Acquisition, Cromulent AI

TO

All Hiring Managers

DATE: June 25, 2026

SUBJECT: Updated Resume Screening Guidelines — Q3 2026

Following the Q2 retrospective on our "zero-hire, five-hundred-interview" quarter, we have conducted a root-cause analysis of our resume screening pipeline. Key findings:

1. Our AI-powered ATS screened out 94% of applicants in under 90 seconds. Among those auto-rejected: three former staff engineers, a published researcher in our exact domain, and someone who literally built the open-source library we depend on.

2. Meanwhile, our system advanced a candidate whose resume listed 32 years of experience at age 30, a PhD from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, fluency in 97 languages including "Binary and Sarcasm," and the title "Supreme Code Overlord" at a nonexistent quantum computing division of Google. This candidate received five interview callbacks before a human noticed.

3. The candidate's real resume — which is, we now understand, genuinely impressive — was previously rejected by our system three times.

Effective immediately, we are implementing the following corrective actions:

- All ATS keyword filters will be replaced with a single question: "Did a human read this?"

- The "Years of Experience" field will now accept rational numbers. Minimum requirement for entry-level roles remains 7+.

- Hogwarts will be added to our target school list. Coursera remains under review.

Please direct questions to the "Supreme Code Overlord" alias, which IT assures us has been disabled.

From the Satire Desk at goodbye, interview. All companies and people in this memo are fictional. Satire is always labelled and never names real companies — the true stories do that on their own. Spotted an error of fact in our non-fiction? Corrections.