The Job

Starting your career should be one of the most exciting times of your life. It should be a time when you realize what it is you want to do - feel challenged and excited to be alive. It should be the time you taking important steps towards making something of your life.

Finding a job sucks.

It has to be one of the most thankless activities I have ever undertaken. You send your resumes to a thousand potential employers drooling over them, telling them how much you've wanted to work for their company since the age of 2, telling them that their organization is a model for the modern business world...telling them whatever they want to hear. That their job is #1, that their job is the only one that matters. Does it strike them, if one job was all we were ever after - we'd be putting our non-existant careers at serious risk?? Let's say you don't get that #1 job. Then I suppose #2 might move into the #1 spot. But it seems like an extremely tedious way to do things doesn't it? You can't ever just apply to the #1 job. What then, do you tell #2, #3, and God Forbid #336?? Do you pretend that their job is #1? Do you lie? So you make moves towards an honest and integrity rich career through a string of lies. Why does that seem counter-intuitive.

So you land the interview. You dress up to the nines, and sit facing someone in jeans. They ask you about your strengths and weaknesses. They ask you where you want to be in five years. What do I know? If you give me a job I'll tell you where I'd like to be! Without a job now, how can I worry about five or ten years from now? It seems pointless doesn't it? They ask you why their company. What happens if you hadn't really given it much thought. What if there is nothing really that compelling? What if it's just about getting your foot in the door? Is it the best bull-shitter then that gets the job???

So you take business cards and write Thank you's, telling them how much you appreciate their time, appreciate their interest and hope to hear from them soon. ie tomorrow. Tomorrow would be good. Today even. This is not dating. I won't feel scared of committment. I won't feel like we're moving too fast. I won't feel anything except relief that there is an end to the lies, an end to the pretense of it all. I'd feel happy just to know that somebody wanted me.

Then maybe you get called for a second interview. Maybe you get a template letter telling them how impressive they find my qualifications, and how much they enjoyed speaking with me, yet in spite of all this, in spite of everything good about me, I still do not meet their qualifications. What sort of miracle of modern creation they are looking for, eludes me.

And perhaps after the second interview you get the sad letter. Or you get yet another interview. Exhausted from the questions that you may or may not be asked..you go on tirelessly talking about yourself, what it is about you that makes you special and why it is that you, above all other living mortals, qualify for the job.

All this for that one special phone call, the one that you wait for, the one that you check your cell-phone eight times a day for. The one that wants you. The one that you will "think about" when you really know your answer. YES YES YES.