All in a Days Work

Set aside how long the whole thing takes from start to finish, the most frustrating part of the hiring process is trying to figure out what they want from you.  From your resume to the interview to all those annoying personality tests they make you take, you never know what they're looking for in you. 

Having many years of management experience and a habitual job-hopper in my youth, I have interviewed hundreds of people and have been interviewed, so I know both sides of game.  I immediately look around the room and size up the interviewer to find some common ground and figure out who they want me to be.  If interviewing, I try to trick people into telling me things about themselves that they normally wouldn't have brought up to find out what they are about as a person.  One time, my ex and I were up for the same job... he got it because he had wing-tip shoes on that reminded the interviewer of his Dad.  It's a crap shoot... it doesn't matter what your skills or experience is, it all comes down to their connectivity with you, and if it's positive or negative.

Recently, I went on an interview for a job with a 'progressive' company (which basically means they hire people with facial hair and tattoos).  Little of the 45 minute interview was about my 25 years of business experience or skill set or whether I could do the job.  We talked about what I did outside of work, etc. to the point that it felt like I was being interviewed to be his best friend and how easily I could obtain a keg, rather than someone he was going to hand the keys to the million-dollar business.  The second interview, had I not told them to forget it, would have been me being interviewed by the 18 year old kid who takes the garbage out at the end of the night, because 'everyone's opinion counts'.  Now I have to have a skateboard to get a job? 

Green INFJ-A Activator Guardian.  Those are some of the results from the many personality tests I've taken;  The Color Test, Meyers-Briggs, Gallup, Keirsey... and you might as well throw in Gemini and Goat... to round it out with my astrology signs.  As silly as they all are, they are eerily accurate.  I'm not sure if they are vague enough that they fit a whole bunch of different kinds of people or if there really is some science to it, but suddenly, it all seems like an interview I once had at a restaurant where they made me get up on the stage in the middle of a packed room and do the worm dance while singing "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener" to see how extroverted I was.  As an introvert, I obviously didn't get the job (although I did as I was told, and well, I might add).. but I thought it was pushing the limit of trying to be different than every other applicant.  Hell, it was cutting edge back in the day to print your resume on colored paper or with rounded edges.  In a stack of hundreds, it was supposed to make you stand out. 

Nowadays, you need a Vaudeville act and a nose piercing before you're going to get anywhere.  My ability to entertain shouldn't be the criteria for how well I would run a company, although dealing with millennials, I would surely need a lot of Bayer children's aspirin, some Highlights magazines and some gold stars to hand out. At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy (ok, well that became a self-fulfilling prophecy, just using that term), what's this world coming to?