Content
Skip to Main ContentAccessibility Help
Cost of Living

Move over, quiet quitting. 'Rage applying' is the latest form of worker revenge

A booming job market and frustration with working conditions are fueling the #rageapplying trend. A recent survey found up to half of Canadian professionals polled may look for a new job this year.

A booming job market and frustration with working conditions are fuelling the #rageapplying trend

Adam Killick · CBC Radio ·
A man with a beard works on his resume on a large computer monitor in an open office environment.
A booming job market and frustration with working conditions are fueling the 'rage applying' trend on TikTok. A recent survey found up to half of Canadian professionals polled may look for a new job this year (Shutterstock / Rawpixel.com)
Cost of Living4:51#rageapplying is the new #quietquitting

First it was #QuietQuitting. Now it's #RageApplying.

As Canadians continue to evaluate their working conditions and flexibility during the pandemic, this latest trend has emerged thanks to a confluence of frustration and opportunity in the workforce, say some HR professionals.

"Essentially I was underpaid and overworked," said Amanda, who worked in digital marketing for an Ottawa brewery. Then she found out her employer was going to hire someone she didn't feel comfortable being around.

CBC has agreed to withhold Amanda's last name over fear of retribution.

"I was sort of hurt," Amanda told The Cost of Living, "very upset with the situation and how my boundaries weren't being respected."

So she started applying for jobs. Amanda applied for at least 15 positions.

"It was probably a week [of] rage applying," she said. 

And the result of her rage? A new job with a $25,000 increase in salary. She posted a video on TikTok about her experience, with the hashtag "RageApplying." It's been viewed more than two million times and shared more than 20,000 times.

Other videos with the #rageapplying hashtag have been similarly successful.

It's a job-seeker's market

Vancouver-based HR consultant Cissy Pau says "rage applying" is just a new way to describe something that workers have done for a long time: telling an employer to, as Johnny Paycheck so famously sang,  "take this job and shove it."

However, applying for jobs online is much simpler now, she said. 

"You can just go on to LinkedIn … and you just kind of click, click, click and you apply."

The fact that it's very much a job-seeker's market also helps. 

A woman of east Asian descent in a maroon dress poses for a headshot.
Cissy Pau is a human resources consultant in Vancouver. She says 'rage applying' is just a new way to describe something that workers have done for a long time. However, applying for jobs online is much simpler now, she said. (Jonetsu Studios/Submitted by Cissy Pau)

"We've had a lot of people retire; we don't have enough professionals coming up to replace them," said Evangeline Berube, a vice-president at recruiting agency Robert Half.

Robert Half routinely conducts a "job optimism" survey. The most recent survey, conducted in October and November, interviewed 1,100 professionals working in finance, tech, marketing, creative, legal, HR and customer support. 

The company — which specializes in matching workers in those fields with potential employers — found that half the respondents said they planned to seek a new job this year. This was up from 30 per cent of respondents in a smaller survey done six months earlier.

Every day I go to work, and I'm so grateful that I got mad that one day ...- Amanda

That's a noteworthy uptick, said Berube, adding that besides higher wages and better benefits, the results showed workers are seeking jobs that continue to offer better flexibility.

But Pau urged people not to let their emotions drive their search for a better job, suggesting it's better to wait until you can consider your options analytically. 

"It's not necessarily going to be better at the next place," she said.

But Amanda has no regrets about making her move.

"Every day I go to work, and I'm so grateful that I got mad that one day [and] that it made a huge difference in my life." 

Produced by Jennifer Keene.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Killick

Adam Killick has been a producer at CBC for more than 20 years, and his work has been featured on almost every CBC national radio current-affairs program. He has won Canada's National Magazine Award for his long-form journalism twice.