Saw the position advertised through my college's career center and was excited to see an actual entry level position doing something interesting and well paying that was within my geographic limitations (can't move right now). Applied online and was initially impressed with how transparent they were about the process. I was pretty confident that I would at least make it to the second stage of the application process but when I received my first actual response from Progressive it was bad news. I was told that my application wasn't strong enough compared to other applications they had received. I was confused since I met or exceeded all the qualifications listed, and since the position I applied for was an entry level one. Hoping to contact and find out specifically where I had been out-competed to such an extent that it wasn't even worth it for Progressive to have me continue through the automated part of the application process I followed the instructions in the email for how to contact them. However this just led me to a page detailing the many ways to contact Progressive as a customer or prospective customer. It was extremely demoralizing to be immediately shut down when applying for an entry level position, and more so since there doesn't seem to be any way to get direct or constructive feedback from the recruiters. It's hard to stay optimistic when you can't even get your foot in the door for entry level positions. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to break into the labor market and start earning enough to live on, let alone find a career that is fulfilling and interesting.

Met the minimum requirements, then I got a link to the four part assessment. Once I passed the assessment, almost right away I got an invite to a HireVue interview. Finally, I got to interview with real people.