Nobrainer’s Think Tank

For those of you keeping track, I seem to have given up on my old plan to pursue “lifetime student status” in favor of “I want money, a lot of it, and right now.” In other words, grad school applications seem more difficult and much less rewarding than dropping résumés and chatting with recruiters.

However, I’ve been spending a great deal of time polishing the ol’ résumé, tailoring cover letters, and crafting thank you letters just like the people in career services say we’re supposed to. We’re supposed to look professional. Otherwise kiss high incomes and fancy cars goodbye and say hello to welfare, crack, and being a babydaddy (again, just quoting career services here).

This high level of perfection is, unfortunately a one way street. Half of the companies in which I am interested seem to have only a slight idea of what it is exactly they are doing. This is perhaps to be expected. It sucks that they get to be shitty and disorganized just because us kids need jobs. We’re going to put up with it, sign up for it, and live the Office Space life for at least a couple years until the new car is paid off and we start dating Jennifer Annston (still quoting career services here).

First problem: Every recruiter wants something different. “Write an objective statement.” “Never write an objective statement.” “Cover letters are wastes of time.” It goes on and on. The best thing seems to be — well remember the Ron White bit about what Osama Bin Laden will have to do to his new prison friend? — breaking out the jelly. That was over-the-top, but not by much. I really want to start calling recruiters and asking that they tell me exactly what I should write.

Second problem: Most HR people are clueless about anything technical. They understand degrees and GPA and that’s about it. I’m surprised if they actually penalize people for bad grammar and spelling because I doubt that they would recognize it. Many of the write-ups I read are chock-full of foul-ups.

Third problem: A lot of companies can’t meet their own recruiting deadlines. To participate in on-grounds interviews here, there’s a very simple process. Applicants drop a resume by a deadline. Then “preselect” candidates can sign up for interviews, followed by alternates a few days after that. (Why they are called preselects makes no sense; we’re only told of the decision once we’ve been selected, which negates the whole “pre” prefix.) Within another week or so the interviews take place.

Well at this point dates keep changing. One option is that the application deadlines get moved back, presumably when they don’t get enough interest.

Another is that the preselect sign-up date gets pushed back. I’ve seen that about 50% of the time. Either they got a lot more résumés than they expected, the quality was better than they expected, or they are just bad at managing their time. If they suspected that from me I wouldn’t get the job. I can’t complain to them about it. Bastards.

And the fourth and final problem: Half the companies just don’t seem to know what the hell is going one. We’re provided an online table of companies where we have submitted résumés. I now have 2 companies on there that I didn’t apply to. Apparently they found my résumé and added me. The first was for a “stockbroker / account executive” position. When I saw it I figured I had been drunk and applied accidentally. That wasn’t the case. They just added me for no reason and then told me that, sorry, I didn’t meet the qualifications for the job. The other is a large computer manufacturer who saw my résumé, added me to their list, emailed me to see if I was interested, then failed to add me to the preselect list. (I may have been able to make the list, but this large computer maker’s servers — they make servers too — were bouncing all the emails I sent to them.)

Oh well. There’s always grad school.

Of course you all know this. You actually have jobs. I’m going to shutup now. But don’t forget to put in a good word for me.