I don't think you need to be a feminist to say "WE ARE NOT THINGS".
I am not a resource.
I am not "human capital".
I'm a man who happens to need to work for a living. Deal with me as such or not at all.
It’s even worse compared with modern dating apps. Like dating apps, I can’t even trust that job applications are real and actually interested in finding someone.
And just as with dating no one I seem to like likes me and vice versa.
I got burned by this recently. A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn about a job opening at a company I had previously been interested in joining. One phone screening and one Teams call with two different external recruiters later I was informed that the company wasn't even hiring for that role.
Of course this was partially on me. If I had looked at the careers section of their website I would have seen that the role I was applying for wasn't listed.
Wish I could do something with that info. A deadpool where the posting that's been up the longest wins the daily pool?
We'd all like to be judged by our objective value, but the problem is, it's really hard to measure it, so we have to use some kind of heuristics. One of the heuristics is self-confidence which is supposed to come naturally with skill.
So if you hide yourself from the world, don't be surprised that the world doesn't see you. If you want the world to see you, it is your responsibility to sell yourself, in order to inform and assure others of your value. The valueable ought to be louder than the conmen, in order for world to work properly.
This is a very poetic and hopeful thing to say, but at the end of the day, it is simply not true. We don't get to just exist for the sake of existing. There has to be give and take with our external environments. There are a few relationships that bypass this (to SOME extent; see: mother/child) but by and large for the vast majority of human relationships, if you don't provide value—they aren't going to altruistically just give you money, love, time, etc.
So while you are correct that we are not things, we are humans, there is a level of needing to convey what wonderful human qualities you plan on bringing to the relationship. This is true in dating, interviewing, and making friends. There's no relationship you can voluntarily enter where the other party will be fine with you taking and not giving—and interviewing is simply outlining those terms—"selling" what you plan to bring to the table.