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Aug. 11th, 2011 09:10 amGuys, wish me luck today. I have an interview at lunch and a duck racing in the Rubber Ducky Derby at one.
The whole interview thing, it's...amusing, yes, okay, but also so frustrating to me. I basically have a lock on BossBoss's job, which I've already interviewed for, but Overboss is really paranoid about HR finding out, so he won't actually come out and say it, and I can't be seen to be anticipating it too much. So when HR told me to apply for this other job, which is basically administrative, I couldn't really say no. Especially since if HR found out about the BossBoss job thing they might interfere because, I can't stress this enough, this company really, really hates it when admins get promoted out of admin positions. And that can be all the illegal, but it still might happen and there's not much recourse I have if it does.
These people I'm interviewing with today know me, and I know them. I have to work with them. Even if I don't get the admin job, I will have to work with them as New BossBoss. And they're so excited about possibly getting me for their team.
I want to tell them, look, I have another job impending so please don't depend on me as your Golden Future Admin, take some other candidates seriously. But of course I can't do that because 1) it isn't done and 2) if the BossBoss job does for some reason go south, this admin job would be a nice backup. So now I'm wasting the the time of people I like and have worked with for three years -- I'm lying to people and there's no way they're not going to eventually know that I was lying from the start when I take another job.
It's just a small part of a larger annoyance, though, which is that however you want to cut it or argue about details or semantics, the process of hiring and being hired is essentially rooted in dishonesty. You can have all the accomplishments in the world and be proud of them and be good at what you do and perfect for the job you're applying for, but you still have to know the "right" answers and you still have to sell yourself, and a great deal of salesmanship is dishonesty. Spin, if you want to give it a nicer name. It's not the dishonesty that bothers me -- I can appreciate a good lie, and even a good lying competition -- it's the fact that a process meant to evaluate a person's actual strengths and compatibility is a process in which everyone, on all sides, lies through their teeth. And everyone knows they're lying, so it becomes a competition for who can lie the best.
Wouldn't it be nice if, when I applied for this job and was asked where I'd be in five years, I could just have said "We both know this is not a job people make a career of. I won't be in this job in five years, but nobody you hire will be, and I have a better work ethic than they do." But you can't say that. Even if the other person would be relieved to hear it.
It's a fundamentally broken system, and I know there's no real way to fix it without radically redesigning our entire culture. But it still frustrates me that we have to go through this pointless ritual, which stresses out everyone involved and doesn't actually do much more than weed out the drastically inappropriate, leaving the rest of the field to see who can sell themselves the best.
And people wonder why I don't date.
The whole interview thing, it's...amusing, yes, okay, but also so frustrating to me. I basically have a lock on BossBoss's job, which I've already interviewed for, but Overboss is really paranoid about HR finding out, so he won't actually come out and say it, and I can't be seen to be anticipating it too much. So when HR told me to apply for this other job, which is basically administrative, I couldn't really say no. Especially since if HR found out about the BossBoss job thing they might interfere because, I can't stress this enough, this company really, really hates it when admins get promoted out of admin positions. And that can be all the illegal, but it still might happen and there's not much recourse I have if it does.
These people I'm interviewing with today know me, and I know them. I have to work with them. Even if I don't get the admin job, I will have to work with them as New BossBoss. And they're so excited about possibly getting me for their team.
I want to tell them, look, I have another job impending so please don't depend on me as your Golden Future Admin, take some other candidates seriously. But of course I can't do that because 1) it isn't done and 2) if the BossBoss job does for some reason go south, this admin job would be a nice backup. So now I'm wasting the the time of people I like and have worked with for three years -- I'm lying to people and there's no way they're not going to eventually know that I was lying from the start when I take another job.
It's just a small part of a larger annoyance, though, which is that however you want to cut it or argue about details or semantics, the process of hiring and being hired is essentially rooted in dishonesty. You can have all the accomplishments in the world and be proud of them and be good at what you do and perfect for the job you're applying for, but you still have to know the "right" answers and you still have to sell yourself, and a great deal of salesmanship is dishonesty. Spin, if you want to give it a nicer name. It's not the dishonesty that bothers me -- I can appreciate a good lie, and even a good lying competition -- it's the fact that a process meant to evaluate a person's actual strengths and compatibility is a process in which everyone, on all sides, lies through their teeth. And everyone knows they're lying, so it becomes a competition for who can lie the best.
Wouldn't it be nice if, when I applied for this job and was asked where I'd be in five years, I could just have said "We both know this is not a job people make a career of. I won't be in this job in five years, but nobody you hire will be, and I have a better work ethic than they do." But you can't say that. Even if the other person would be relieved to hear it.
It's a fundamentally broken system, and I know there's no real way to fix it without radically redesigning our entire culture. But it still frustrates me that we have to go through this pointless ritual, which stresses out everyone involved and doesn't actually do much more than weed out the drastically inappropriate, leaving the rest of the field to see who can sell themselves the best.
And people wonder why I don't date.
