Why don't they love me?
There are limits to the virtual world, and those limits are most manifest when a potential employer says: come right on down this afternoon so that we can talk about the job. Skype? I meekly respond. When you’re competing with a thousand other out of work, semi-talented writers for the same job, the ability to show up for a spur of the moment job interview can mean the difference between moving on to the next round of interviews or not. Skype just doesn’t cut it.
Speaking of virtual worlds, I’ve applied for dozens of jobs via Linked-In. “Employers prefer candidates with recommendations,” I am told. I have five now. They prefer to be introduced to potential candidates via their network. I have used my network to get introduced. They prefer active tense to passive tense. Well, damn it, so do I. They want can, not could. Will, not would.
Every time I log in to the site, however, I am greeted with a notice of how ineffective my Linked-In profile is. Three people have looked at it in three months: an attorney in California (my cousin), someone in a leadership position at Manchester University (a fellow blogger), and a senior executive in the arts industry in the San Francisco Bay Area (is that you, Ruthie?). What about that recruiter at Wikimedia? Or at Nike? Or at the other companies I’ve applied to? Why don’t they care about me? Am I too desperate?
Is the job search the new singles scene? Should I be playing hard to get? Have I been too promiscuous to catch a good employer? Volunteering services I should have been paid for? Being indiscriminate in my search for a good career? What was it that my grandmother used to say about cows and milk again?
I would be willing to serve coffee or make change, but since I have not received a work permit in the Netherlands, I am limited to accepting jobs that pay about 4000 euros a month and prove that I am a “skilled worker.” Never mind that even in these times of crisis, there are plenty of low paying jobs available, and I would be happy to do one of them; or that the salaries in the Netherlands are generally fairly modest; or that doctors here make about that.
This month, I am applying for several “skilled worker” jobs a week. I have applied for three research and evaluation jobs at three different non-profits, two UI designer jobs, about five development (non-profit) jobs, and a job as a community planner for a pretty cool sounding project involving highway one, Big Sur, and California history. The thing is, I really want almost all of these jobs. I *do* genuinely feel that I would bring unique skills to each one and that I have been developing the necessary skills for each particular job my whole life. I am sooo multi-talented. Just in case any of my future employers is reading this, I want your job more than any other that I have applied for. Oh yeah, and I do have a home in California.
I had only one recent interview. That one was obviously a flop or I’d have a job now. The interviewers were tough and knowledgeable, and I totally deserved to be knocked out of the running. Especially when I screwed up an answer to a question about the importance of supporting groups that target sex workers. I said something silly like “They’re not going away, no matter what you think.” What kind of answer was that? In addition, one of the three interviewers told me that they were concerned that I was too focused on Iran and not enough of a generalist. Wow! That was a first for me: being accused of NOT being a generalist.
When I asked why I was not selected, though, the director of that particular non-profit told me that it had to do with my weak evaluation skills. Maybe she was too tactful to tell me that I was an idiot or that she just did not like me. Especially given the fact that we did not delve into my evaluation skills, which are, in fact, pretty damn good for a non-academic. I know they are, because I have actually been alive long enough to see how effective some of my evaluations have been. But maybe those reports just have not been public enough.
My Facebook friends might know that I have decided to elevate my search for employment to an art form. Yes, why not? I might as well enjoy my, as yet, fruitless search.
So we’ll start with this story. I went to an interview for an interaction design position at a major publishing firm in Amsterdam. This was my first interview since returning to Amsterdam from Iran, and I was a bit nervous, especially since I had not yet gotten accustomed to being on-time for appointments. The Dutch are on-time when they arrive 5 minutes early. Iranians are on-time when they arrive 2 hours late. After four years of living on Iran time, Dutch time was proving a bit of a struggle for me. But I managed to arrive just a couple of minutes late despite a delay on the metro.
I was led upstairs where two baby-faced young men waited to interview. Here I am interviewing for a tech-design job, and my interviewers have barely read my resume, let alone googled me. Not only that, they felt that our time was best spent discussing my college education. Uh. College? I graduated 17 years ago. Seventeen. (valedictorian, btw.) S e v e n t e e n.
In the end they told me that I was too “American” for the job. What does that mean?