My week days are often filled with time spent wondering what I should be doing. I don’t mean this in some preposterous existential manner but rather I really don’t do anything at work and figure I should be doing something to occupy my time, even if it’s not work related. My problem, apart from lack of work to do during work, is that you can only surf the web for so long. After a while, despite the vast hole that is the internet, articles and columns and pieces congeal into an unintelligible amoeba. So I’ve taken to other internet activities to fill my day up.
I’m not afraid to admit that a large portion of my day is dedicated to perusing job postings on various websites. This exercise serves firstly as a basic job search looking for greener grass, but also as a voyeuristic escape imagining myself with new coworkers and new responsibilities, sharing funny anecdotes that I might have tired with old coworkers but who new coworkers would be so eager to listen to. I start imagining myself during the interview, nailing questions rapidly like a the protagonist in a Billy Wilder movie while sprinkling hints of humor throughout and finishing the interview with a high-five (or a fist bump for a brotha cause I’m all about equal opportunity) to the hiring manager.
Simultaneously, however, the exercise also serves to make me feel terrible about myself and question what is valued by firms. The algorithm which produces the line of work I do usually includes a sum of various factors including an Ivy League education, amazing grades, and/or a professional certification, neither of which I possess. This creates a vortex where I’m at once good at what I do (when I have stuff to do) and qualified to do other things yet no hiring manager would dare look at my resume. Further, while I have the current job I have, I do so with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for having a foot in the door in the form of my aunt knowing my firm’s founder.
Still, I do my best to go through job postings. One firm I tried applying to has the following passage on the careers main page:
“If you have strong analytical skills, business-level fluency in the language of the region where you wish to work, international work experience, and hold a degree with an outstanding academic record from a world-renowned academic institution, we encourage you to apply…”
I happily submit that I fit the first three criteria but I worry that the small shitty school where I attended University in the backwoods of Jersey wouldn’t qualify as a “world-renowned academic institution.” It’s not even a Jersey-renowned one in fact. Don’t confuse this with me decrying Ivy League institutions or those fortunate enough to have attended them. I’m merely wondering how important one’s education is if there is 4+ years of superb work related experience in one’s canon. Fine, I wasn’t taught by decorated professors, but I somehow managed not to embarrass myself or get caught picking my nose (what picking one’s nose has to do with education is beyond me, but it seemed like the appropriate analogy to make) like some dunce.
Even more amazing was the one firm who after accepting my years of experience still asked for my SAT scores from 10 years ago (FUCK I’m old). Don’t we have enough evidence to show that standardized scores mean nothing in terms of one’s intelligence? What does a test score from 10 years ago demonstrate about my propensity to perform my job at a high level? Ten years ago I had a Spanish afro, wore pajama pants to school twice a week, spent weeknights playing NFL2K with friends and watched Saturday morning cartoons (fine I still do, but still). The scarier proposition is that this firm is world renowned and provides management consulting and analysis to some of the most important firms in the world and yet they still rely on meaningless 10 year old test scores to predict future performance. But whatever, fine I’ll play your game prestigious firm, but you better believe I lied my ass off when I put down my SAT score.
So I don’t know what the answer is. Growing up we are told to work hard and go to school in exchange for promises of upward mobility. BE ALL YOU CAN BE! YOU CAN BE ANYTHING YOU WANT! But what happens when that’s not enough? A small block of text of my resume determines if anyone will even look at my resume. Should I try to go to business school and get my MBA, even though it certainly means over 150k in loans and no guarantee of future employment? Are we effectively saying that the select few that attend prestigious schools will the only ones able of finding higher-paying jobs? Will we be ruled by the brainy minority?
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