I'm trying to get a STEM job (entry/mid) and after 6 years of studying physics (at least 50 exams, 4 theses, one 150-hour internship) and 5 years in a PhD (with a published research article in a 4.5 impact factor journal), they still ask me to do technical tests. Hell, I could be lecturing them on certain subjects. I thought a diploma is a certificate from an accredited organization saying you know something, you have abilities, etc.

Do companies really expect to fill every vacancy with an employee who has done the exact work they need?! Also, what stops them from just using your submission to the test and telling you they found someone else, in essence receiving free labor/consulting? I did a "test" for a company that appeared really open ended, with the ideal solution actually just appearing to be the solution they are trying to develop by hiring someone knowledgeable.

I understand that there should be some form of filtering candidates, but come on, I am not applying to become European Commissioner or an astronaut or something.

Addendum rant: I also applied for a data science position at some company, and I got a counter offer to be a software engineer (so basically the data science job but with all the quantitative stuff stripped, and just the coding part). They just completely ignored my physics & statistics background. I know how to write some code, but that's not my main selling point! My main skills are statistics & modeling, coding is just a means to an end! I really want to reply and tell them that that vacancy overlaps less with my profile than the data science position I applied for, but maybe that'll just make them ignore me for any future applications. Another recruiter only noticed "Linux" in my CV (literally ignoring just about everything else), and now she thinks I should become a sys admin. What?! No!

I understand that recruiting is hard, there's thousands of skills and you can't know all of them, but the specificity & sensitivity of some recruiters is just utterly terrible.