The right grade of steel

A colleague is job-hunting right now and sent ’round a really frustrated e-mail. Seems he’d found a job ad that matched his qualifications perfectly. He was so excited that instead of sending a cover letter with his resume he sent a detailed table listing all the requirements on one side and the many ways he fitted them perfectly on the other. (Can you tell that he’s an engineer?

So after a couple of weeks he gets a polite letter saying “while your qualifications are impressive we’ve decided not to pursue…yada yada yada…”

Now ya gotta give this guy props–at this point most jobseekers would shrug and send out another 10 resumes to somebody else. But his engineer blood was up so he calls the HR guy managing the job and asks him to get the hiring manager to tell him why he wasn’t selected.

Answer comes back: no hands-on experience (which is clearly not true in his case). Again he doesn’t give up, points out the flaws in this conclusion and asks them to reconsider considering him. The response was a terse “go away, please.”

At about this point in his story it occurred to me that the only thing more soul-searing than job hunting is perhaps standing on a playground with a bunch of other kids choosing up sides for baseball. (Well, baseball was soul-searing for me because I could never remember NOT to throw the bat when I connected with the ball–regularly took out the catcher, the umpire and any stray batters warming up…so it was generally a cold day in hell before anybody would choose me.)

Come to think of it, the two situations are remarkably similar, especially for people like this guy, who carries a pretty significant measure of his self-worth around with his profession. When the job is your identity, rejections hit hard.

I told him that it wasn’t that he wasn’t perfect for the job, it was that the company’s hiring practices were less than perfect and it sounded like the manager wanted something besides what was in the job description. (Writing a job ad is an art that, alas, many managers will never master–now THERE’s an opportunity for some great software.)

Anyway, just ’cause he’s not the grade of steel these guys want doesn’t mean he’s not a superb grade of steel. I don’t think he really believed me but maybe the sympathy helped.

–sigh– Poor guy. He’s a skilled professional so he’ll find something soon. But I really feel for him.

I remember when I was first starting out in journalism–it took me a year and nearly a thousand resumes to land my first reporting job. I became a connoisseur of fine rejection letters; most were bland, impersonal things but once I received this:

“I’m sorry but we’ve hired someone else for this position. I know this must be a disappointment for you but I would like you for just a moment to stop thinking about yourself and put yourself in my shoes. Imagine how terrible I must feel right now. It’s not easy to send out a letter denying someone the means of making a living and I don’t sleep well every time I do it. So before you think badly of me, just think about how badly I’m feeling right now.”

When I finished that letter I couldn’t decide whether to apologize to him for not getting his job or slap him. Still, it could have been much worse–this guy came into the BBC for a job interview and wound up on TV by mistake. Nothing like getting “TV interview” and “job interview” mixed up.

Later–

–cynthia

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