We’ve all been in that place where you need a job and you’re out hunting for a good fit, but the days of beating the streets to shake hands with managers and fill out applications in-person are gone. When you walk into a business and ask to fill out a paper application they refer you to their online resource. After filling out the application online, you are simply placed on filtered lists that are ever growing, but this begs the question, are these lists really helping businesses?

With this increasingly less humanized approach to recruiting many candidates are lost in the shuffle because a check-box was clicked. Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of the biggest proponents of automation, and improving lives through helpful software, but I believe we are losing a part of our humanity by treating others like ingredients on a menu. Profits tell managers that they’ve done good, and we all understand that businesses are in the market to make money; however, we are all only here because of those around us. It’s vital that we not forget that people are our most important resource. When we forget that, by leaning so heavily on automation and numbers, we lose a sense of what those such as Dale Carnegie tried so desperately to teach us.

Coming out from behind our monitors and speaking to people is what being a manager is all about, not being stuck up and reliant on technology to make our decisions for us.