“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”
Bacon.
It all began with the wheel.
Eons ago, in some dank and musty cave, one of our ancestors was being harangued by his wife over a half-raw mastodon leg. It seems she was tired of being dragged by her hair whenever they went anywhere.
“Oog,” she said, pausing between bites of the leg. “I would really prefer an alternate mode of transportation.” But there were no alternate modes of transportation, save dragging by body parts other than the hair.
And so, necessity being the mother of invention, Oog went out and created the wheel.
Life was grand—for awhile. Oog’s wife speedily got from Point A to Point B, while at the same time keeping her hair limp and manageable. Because his wife was happy, cave life was harmonious for Oog, except for a minor incident when he returned home to find that his wife had crashed the wheel (an accident, by the way, which necessitated the creation of the world’s first claims adjuster.)
But Oog wasn’t quite satisfied. He knew the wheel had potential and would compete for a large market share; or would have, there being no market as yet. So he summoned his courage, hired some help, and began to produce wheels, which were snapped up as soon as they came off the rudimentary assembly line.
Which is not to say that all went completely swimmingly—competitors arose; there were cost overruns; and Oog was nearly ruined once by a costly Workmen’s Compensation suit filed by a group of Australopithecines with claims of “stooped backs” (which the world’s first attorney unsuccessfully fought on grounds of it having been a “preexisting condition”.) But overall, things were going well—so well, in fact, that Oog found himself desperately short of manual labor. So he went out and hired himself the world’s first corporate recruiter.
Now it so happens that labor was in short supply for a reason: people were stupid, but not that stupid—after all, they are our ancestors. There were few applicants, it having been as true then as it is now what Russell said: “Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter on or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.”
But a young Neanderthal didn’t care about any of that. All he knew was that he needed a job. Being nearsighted, he was a poor hunter and so needed the money; and having been subject to taunts of “Brachiator Boy” since childhood, he figured it would be good for his self-esteem. He answered an ad (“Wheelmakers Desperately Needed”) in the weekly edition of Tabula Mostly Rasa and showed up at Corporate Offices a week later; resume in hand.
He didn’t get the job.
There are lessons to be learned from this; kernels of wisdom for modern-day job-seekers. But for now the important lesson is this: Those who wear the wingtips are the ones who get to evolve.
Jobseeking
So how do you go about evolving? The time-honored way to search for a job since the days of Tabula Mostly Rasa has been through the classified advertisements in your local newspaper. It remains so, despite claims to the contrary. Internet devotees are fond of extolling the virtues of their medium as a job source; however, computer science employment is already in plentiful supply for those who want it.
This leaves us with what “headhunters” (a suitably Paleolithic term) call “the hidden job market.” The first thing the job-seeker needs to understand is that the reason why it is hidden is because it is almost completely obscured by two towering monoliths of words. Those words are nepotism and patronage. (Point of fact: a friend once hired a “headhunter” to access the “hidden job market”—the headhunter showed up at his house every Wednesday morning; cup of coffee in hand, with a copy of the very same classified ads which my friend regularly perused.)
Which leaves us right back where we started. Having located a potential job in the newspaper, your next step is to send out a resume. There is little I can add here which hasn’t already been covered in the thousands of books dedicated to resume writing. But I will say that the “Career Objective” part requires careful thought—you know, the part where you write, “It has been my lifelong dream to acquire an exciting position as junior sales manager.”
This sort of “Career Objective” is a double-edged sword. First off, don’t sell yourself short—it has been your lifelong dream to acquire an exciting position as junior regional sales manager. Secondly, the “exciting” part poses a bit of a dilemma, as it probably in no way describes the job which you are applying for. I advocate a more realistic approach; one perfectly in keeping with the hard demands of the business world. In that light, my own resume begins as follows:
Career Objective
Seek stultifying, poorly-paid position as minor functionary in large, faceless organization.
The Interview
“There is a demand today for men who can make wrong appear right.”
Terence.
A reasonably happy fact is that sooner or later you will succeed in gaining an interview. This is where the real hard work of job-hunting begins. You will arrive at the designated offices at the appointed time “all gussied up,” and will probably be seated in a waiting room with other applicants, all of whom are more attractive and professional-looking than you are. You will wait. And wait. And wait some more. As nervousness mounts, you may be tempted to pick up a copy of the company’s Annual Prospectus, which is the only reading available. Don’t—not only are they deadly dull, but reading them only encourages you to think up some hopelessly inane question to ask at the conclusion of the interview. Why hand your interviewers rope to hang you with? They already have more than enough.
No, now is the time to think about the type of image you want to project, and that is one of dynamism. Think Genghis Khan; wielding a remorseless sword in the boardroom. Think of the protagonist in Heinrich Boll’s short story, whose job consists of shouting into telephones, “Action has been taken! Action has been taken!”, and in the occasional change of pace, “Action will be taken!” It matters little whether you have the qualifications for the job—what matters is that you appear to have them.
In any event, you will eventually be led into an interview room, long having forgotten the purpose of your visit. After the requisite glad-handing has ended, you likely will be seated, Spanish Inquisition-style, a great distance from your interrogators. At this point the questioning will begin. At first the questions will be fairly innocuous; dealing primarily with jobs you have held in the past. They may be posed by each of the interviewers in turn, or they may be posed by one while the other two take copious notes and nod sagely from time to time. Or the interview may take on a “good cop/ bad cop” format (not to be confused with any other variations of this game which you may have played.)
In the “good cop/ bad cop” interview, one or two of your interrogators will pose questions while a particularly attractive member of the opposite sex sits close to you. After you answer a question, he or she will smile languidly at you as if to say, “Oh, don’t mind this. This is just a little formality,” or even, “I want you.” Do not be fooled—the reason this person is smiling is not because you’re getting the job or because he or she thinks your chromosomes a likely match. They are smiling in anticipation of the questions to come.
The questions to which I refer are ostensibly to measure the interviewee’s ability to learn from experience and to adapt to corporate life. But the reality is that these questions exist solely for the amusement of the recruiting staff. They are:
“What do you think is your greatest weakness?”
“If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?”
Utmost caution is required in answering these questions. Remember, think action! Also remember that truth is relative—and if you were a relative, you wouldn’t need to be here, now would you. In lieu of lengthy prose, I have substituted a more practical instructional device:
Bad Exchange
Interviewer: “What do you think is your greatest weakness?”
Interviewee: “Well, I have this annoying habit. I feel compelled to take off my shoes and
socks and bite my toenails at all hours of the day. I know it’s disgusting, but there it is.”
Good Exchange
Interviewer: “What do you think is your greatest weakness?”
Interviewee: “Well, I have this habit. I remove my socks and bite my toenails in public. But I believe this is just evidence of my industriousness—the fact is that I simply refuse to be satisfied with just one task at any given time.”
Bad Exchange
Interviewer: “If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?”
Interviewee: “Um… well, I feel really bad about this false harassment suit I filed last year.”
Good Exchange
Interviewer: “If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?”
Interviewee (remember, personal development is an ongoing process): “Well, I feel really bad about this false pending harassment suit I filed last year. Hey, are you leering at me?”
And thus concludes the interview process. Employment experts recommend that prospective employees send their interviewers a card or letter thanking them for their time. In my experience, this is a waste of a perfectly good stamp. If you get the job, you get the job, and you will know in short order, if you don’t, you will know after the company refuses to respond to inquiries as to your status. Cards don’t work—the corporation is not your grandmother.
Career Development
“I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I’m miserable now.”
Morrissey.
The fact remains that even the most dim-witted among us will eventually obtain a job. But career development is a never-ending process. The author of a famous employment guide said words to the effect that the average person will change jobs seven times during their lifetime (of course most of us change our underwear that often in a week, but no one has seen fit to write a book about that.) So keep this essay for handy reference. Job-seeking, like death and taxes, is a fact of life—only considerably less fun.
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