Apologies, Again

To the Candidate I Spoke to Yesterday: I am so sorry my cat was near-deafeningly dry-heaving while I was conducting your phone screen.

To Readers: I have no additional recruiting-related laffs this week as it has been a crazy time trying to juggle two jobs. I am not cut out for juggling two jobs; I am barely cut out for passing for mediocre at one. What I am well-suited for is either a) staring off into space (seriously, I'm like a champ!) or b) running around, you know, eating and drinking and making some merry. And the latter of which will be happening over the next few days as I will be ON VACATION, so I will be back here late next week and I am going to make a concerted effort to actually pay enough attention to at least one job to have more to write about.

Apologies

To Reader(s):

I was all set to post every weekday in earnest this week, but then I totally forgot to post yesterday. But I figure that the what? third day in a row of Britney flashing the photogs is like the blogging equivalent of a snow day: why bother posting when you know you cannot compete with that trainwreck?

To Candidates:

This week, it’s totally not you, it’s me, and in this particular case, I actually do mean me. No matter how many cups of coffee I drink this week, I cannot wake up. It’s like my synaptic clefts got exponentially bigger over the holiday weekend and my little neurotransmitters are pumping at the same volume and so cannot make the jump. Like they just disappear off a cliff. And I wind up just sitting here staring off into space for ten minutes before I realize: I’ve been staring off into space for ten minutes.

(Aside: when reading about how neurons and the brain works, does anyone else GET COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT like, is that IT? Like somehow you throw enough of those things together and all of a sudden I can read and/or write a sentence, have a personality, prefer cats to dogs, sing in harmony? That just wigs me out.)

But anyway, Candidate, so I am giving you a total pass for the rest of the week because, quite frankly, I can barely tie my own shoes, much less make a measured assessment of your abilities against the job description. As long as you don’t make any egregious missteps during the phone screen, you are probably getting through! (Streamers! Party hats! Confetti!)

To the Dude Who Wrote this Letter on Salon (you might have to watch a brief ad to read):

You are right. And I am sorry. And I'm being completely sincere. We do kinda suck.

Not so much an unfortunate name...

...but do you think a candidate with the first name "Wanwan" has to sit through endless meetings with a tight smile as people make terrible puns about "wan-wan solutions?"

Or is it just me that makes the terrible puns?

I'm deeply ashamed of myself, Reader, I'm sorry. I'll do better.

So it is written; so it shall be done.

On Friday, I spoke thusly:

"This week TRULY put the 'ill' in ill-suited."

And so of course now I am actually truly ill.

Nevertheless, no rest for those who are paid hourly and don't get sick time, so still recruiting. But what little energy my tiny mitochondria are able to squeeze out is completely taken up by the simply completing my tasks, so I have nothing left over with which to reflect upon (and get irritated by) said tasks.

(Sweet fancy corn how many prepositions were in that paragraph? I can't count that high.)

Anyhoodle, in short: I am even more tedious and boring than ever.

So here's something more engaging. This is a) a pretty awesome little project and b) what, when I am functioning at capacity, I am normally fantasizing about when being/talking to the corporate drones.

I'm sorry and I take it all back.

I'm sorry, Entry-Level Candidate.

I didn't mean what I said and I want you back.

I want you back with your misspellings and your atrocious grammar and your questionable judgment.

Because those things, aggravating though they may be, do not make me want to get a fifty-pound bag of rice and run off alone into the Alaskan wilderness as does one day of reading professional-level resumes.

The acronyms. The dizzyingly complex job descriptions that do not seem to have any relation to real-world activity. The corporate-speak. The buzzwords. The sense that you are in "The Emperor's New Clothes" and what you have in front of you is not a page listing someone's professional history but rather a joke to see if you get that they are ACTUALLY SAYING NOTHING AT ALL.

The flashbacks to days-long meetings in stuffy conference rooms, watching someone READ VERBATIM EACH BULLET POINT off the projected PowerPoint presentation, talking about "implementing process improvements" and "change management" and in general taking three minutes to say what could have been said in one sentence, and, by extension, the "team" taking three days to make one simple decision. Which, because it was by committee, was generally the wrong one.

I think I prefer despairing over the educational system over despairing over the corporate system. Because the educational system is at least something I can vote on, I feel like I have a pretense of control.

But this other stuff...oh, Entry-Level Candidate, I didn't know how good I had it.