BigDaddyCool

So should I even bother applying again?

By now most of you may have heard this, but for those of you who haven’t, let me inform you. Wal-Mart has announced that they will be creating 22,000 new jobs in the coming year ranging from cashiers and stock clerks to management and clerical positions.

Now if they are going to be creating those new jobs and if some of them are going to be in the clerical area, which I am trying to get back into – are any of them going to be available in the Boise, Idaho area? If so, will I finally be able to avoid the psyche-killing “we feel that you are overqualified to work here” excuse that I’ve gotten before? In other words, if Wal-Mart is going to be creating 22,000 more jobs, is there any chance that I can get one of them so that I can keep a roof over my family’s head and food in our stomachs? If I send you my resume and cover letter through your online application process, will you take an honest look at it this time or will you just toss it away because you think that I will become bored working there and quit as soon as I got a better offer?

That’s the problem with HR these days – they make false assumptions about qualified candidates for jobs that they have to fill because of past history or because of reports that are dated and have nothing to do with applying them to what is going on today. HR honks, for the most part, seem to be behind current economic realities. Of course they are going to get applicants who are “overqualified”, it’s because for the most part the jobs that they are qualified for are gone now, and they’re not coming back!

Now I know that a lot of you who work in HR want the best candidate you can get for the job but let’s be honest – sometimes the best candidate is the one that you won’t even bring in for an interview, and make to feel as if they are absolutely worthless to any potential employer.

Unfortunately, job hunting is like High School in that way for some of us.

Stand aside knaves, Human Resources is coming through!!!

Remember back in High School the kid who was liked by most, if not all the guys in school because he was on the “Spirit Team?” You remember, that was the club that made all the signs and posters for the Football, Basketball and Baseball games and went to the games and cheered on the jocks? They were the guys who were the equivalent of the Tailgaters who would paint their bodies in the team colors before the game, remember that guy? Well he may have been liked by the guys and was a friend to the jocks, but he was loathed by the girls in school who made sure that he went to the Senior Prom without a date. See, there was nothing wrong with the guy – he actually was a good guy and he would have been a good boyfriend for someone – but he was never given a chance to prove himself. So he left High School with some fond memories, but they were colored by his rejection of every girl in town, and he was branded a “loser” by not only the girls in school, but also by their parents who when he started applying for jobs with them – wouldn’t give him a chance either.

That is what going out and trying to get a job today feels like – it feels like dating in High School when no girl in town will look at you once, let alone twice.

That’s who HR is to most of us – Mean Girls who destroy people’s lives and reputations for their own, sadistic, orgasmic pleasure. At least that’s what it feels like when we answer an ad on CareerBuilder, Monster, HotJobs or Craigslist these days.

But there is a post from Craigslist that was highligted on Unemploymentality that seems to capture all of the frustration that a lot of us are having with this process. I just have to re-post it here because it hits the nail right on the head:

Dear employers with job openings,

I just want to take a moment or two to thank all the companies that now only use online applications for the jobs for which I am best qualified. I’m so happy to know that in the past eight years, you have dropped the very impersonal practice of requesting well written resumes (which took the place of having me come into your place of business in person and fill out an application by hand) and now for convenience, give me the opportunity to waste my fucking time trying to guess what it is you want me to write in your online application fields in eight words or less, what work I’ve done that will make you call me for an interview. Because of this new-found simple-mindedness of yours, I can guarantee that you will have the weakest, most uninteresting, unmotivated new-hires EVER!

Because I have had to have more than three jobs in the past eight years, at which I have excelled, some of which I was laid-off from due to down-sizing, and most of which are your competitors in the marketplace, you will never know what I have done because you only allow three previous employers in your simple, automated application program or only want experience from the past five years.

 Because I have always been capable of doing more than one thing at a time, you will never know that as a free-lance writer/costume designer/photographer, what I have done Monday through Friday to support myself quite well, thank you, is to be the most efficient, bright, hard-working, easy-going, intelligent and dependable administrative assistant an employer could wish for. But you will never know that because your measly-ass job application program is only looking for words your witless HR staff has programmed it to look for and then spitting out applications by people like myself with a form email thanking me for my interest and wishing me luck.

Thank you also for the Myers-Briggs psychometric type test to see if I actually would be able to sit next to another person and not drive them crazy.

Thank you for sparing me the waste of my time outshining most of your other staff in their presence by having me come in to your office in person, dressed to the nines, flashing my intensely alert eyes at you, and shaking your hand with confidence, yet sensitively. You wouldn’t hire me anyway because I’m probably more interesting than you and therefore a threat.

You have saved me from the humiliation of taking a position with a company that probably has the dullest, most unadventurous, most boring staff that has been hired through this elimination process of an online application to which you have given ultimate authority to decide, only by the selection of some dozen or so “key” words, to interview.

And we wonder why there are banks going under, businesses making toxic loans, stock market losses, medical errors, corruption, Bernie Madoffs in the world, and police who can’t allow a family to be with their dying mother so he can write a ticket.

Yours very truly,

The one that got away

A-freaking-men!!!

There are so many of us out here that can do the jobs that you are advertising openings for, you’re just not giving us a chance!

How are things supposed to get better if you keep tossing us – and by extension, our families – aside in favor of someone who will do half the job that we will? Why go after the jock with the movie-star looks who will only cheat on you numerous times and will bail on you after few years, in favor of the not-bad-looking “nice guy” who is better “husband material” and will give you a lifetime of happiness?

If you just keep acting like this is a High School popularity contest, then don’t act surprised when you have to keep filling the same vacancy every three months because the flake that you hired “just wasn’t a good fit” and is just not that into working for you. For every one’s sake, as well as your company’s bottom line – take a good, long, hard look at someone who you think might not quite have “what it takes” to work in that position. You might be pleasantly surprised in the end…

…but if you treat this like some sort of “Dating Game” you’ll never know. Will you?