The Rat Race

While each of us is expected to support him or herself in some way, not everyone is designed to be employed. It seems every entrepreneur I’ve ever known or worked for has been someone who simply couldn’t last long in someone else’s employ. For the most part, these are people with serious skills and creative problem-solving abilities who have been trampled and squeezed by a micromanaging boss. The internal conversation of the “creative” is this, “You hired me for my expertise, my particular skill set, knowledge, problem-solving, what have you, but every time I start to use it, you reign me in, to both your own detriment and mine.”

Even if this is never spoken, the attitude is sensed and a parting of the ways is almost inevitable. After a few of these mismatches, the creative person realizes that although he is a hard worker with much to contribute, he might just be unemployable. He or she must go into business for himself. The other side of the coin is that this individual is also often hard to work for because his creative skills often outweigh his people skills. Be careful if you are seeking work at a small company in a creative field. This is whom you will probably be working for.

But few people start off as entrepreneurs. The truth is, most people, no matter what they say, prefer the relative security of being gainfully employed to the sink-or-swim risks of creating their own business. This means they must tackle the job market and hit the streets with applications, resumes, and cover letters in hand.

I just read an article by an MBA who has sent out more than 1200 job applications over the past year and a half (after being downsized in a company buy-out). His article was in defence of writing a stone-cold cut to the chase cover letter. He was so tired of pouring his heart out over and over again into each accompanying cover letter, which statistics have now shown have a less than 0.49% chance of ever being read by a human. This is heartbreaking.

When I entered college in 1970, I was advised that virtually any degree would shoehorn me into a job at almost any business because a degree would show I was a person of letters, able to read, learn, and creatively adapt to whatever circumstance was necessary.

Either things changed rapidly during my four years on campus, or I was given bad counsel from the get-go. With a degree in Music Education, I was asked why I didn’t major in Business if I wanted to apply for any job outside of the classroom. It was a good question that I was not expecting to be asked.

Theoretically, unless your goal is to work in a specialty, like rocket engineering, medicine, or yes, teaching music, a basic business position should benefit from pretty much any line of study. The TRUTH, I have discovered, is that even if you land a job in your field of study, 99% of the information you need to perform is learned on the job, not in the classroom. OTJ is the very best training anyone can have.

This brings me to a more recent and impersonal job hiring practice by Human Resource personnel. They often skip the reading the work history and go straight to the degree conferred. The most qualified, best candidate for a given job might be the person with a degree in an unrelated, or barely related field, or even one without ANY degree, but with life and job experience related to the published position. But, that person will never get an interview because the letters after his or her name are not what has been laid out in the job description, especially in a crowded field of applicants.

So, there is that. It’s very frustrating for the applicant and regrettable for the one hiring.

If you get through the initial cuts and are invited for an interview, you will always be asked why you left the last job. This can be dicey because sometimes it comes down to a personality conflict. Not once, but twice I have been hired (from the outside) for positions only to discover that the assistant assigned to me was quietly and persistantly sabotaging me in a variety of ways. I had to bluntly ask my employer(s) why this was happening. In both instances, before being assigned as my assistants, these persons had applied for in-house promotions, for my position, and been passed over for me. That is never a good place to find yourself and can create irreparable tension where a smooth partnership is needed.

No matter the facts, situations like this always sound like sour grapes. You will sound like the bad guy however you try to explain the situation. There are other reasons for job movement that might be difficult, especially if you are older and more experienced than the HR person interviewing you. If the interviewer is half your age and feels intimidated by your experience he or she may not recommend you for hire. Yes, age discrimination is alive and well. Let’s face it, a new hire must feel like a “good fit,” and that is ALWAYS subjective. We are all human, and sometimes personality is actually more important (or at least as important) than credentials.

I’ve been on all sides of this conundrum. I have been the one advertising for a new hire and tasked with the entire hiring process, an equally harrowing experience. During an economic downturn, I advertised for a general receptionist for the business where I was second in command. No advanced degree was required. However good oral and written communication skills were of primary concern, as well as organizational, multi-tasking, and people skills.

I must have received 200 applications in the first week, and they kept piling up. Anyone who couldn’t properly address an envelope or properly format a business letter, anyone who couldn’t string together three sentences with proper spelling, grammar, and syntax was eliminated immediately without notification.

I had no training in HR, and this was in addition to my already massive list of completely unrelated duties. I’d prepared no automatic postcard to send out acknowledging receipt of the applications. I had so many to plow through that it took me a couple of weeks to do the first round of eliminations. Meanwhile, people were calling me on the phone to ask if I’d received their applications, wanting to know their status.

Finding applicants who met the obvious basic requirements didn’t seem hard. The problem was the huge number of overqualified applicants, people with Masters and Doctorate degrees who were desperate for ANY work. I understood where they were coming from. I’d been there, myself, desperate to save my mortgage and keep my children fed. But I also knew I needed to find the person who was not going to go through a month of specific training and settling in just to leave suddenly when a more appropriate job opened up for him or her.

In the end, I hired a very pleasant mature woman who had the people and communication skills. Her references were glowing, even when I made the follow-up phone calls. What had not been obvious during the interview process soon became apparent. She lacked the physicality to perform certain requirements of the job like raising and lowering the flag each day or stocking the shelves in the supply room. Others in the office resented having to do these things for her. This latent revelation occurred because of employment rules that forbade me asking certain questions in the interview, and because I was not savvy enough to know ways to work around them. Within six months it was revealed that my hire had serious health issues and had to be out of work for surgery and rehabilitation for more than four months.

In her absence, my boss made arrangements with a temp agency for a cute, friendly, young woman with atrocious grammar, who spent hours on the phone with her boyfriend. But he liked her, made her full-time, and laid it upon me to let the recuperating hire know that she would not be returning to her position after her convalescence. By the way, the cute, young hire got married and was gone within six months of gaining full-time status.

So, the best laid plans of mice and men….

I’ve been self-employed for the past fifteen years. I might be barely scraping by, but I bring my dog to work and can be late as often as I need to be, and the boss never fusses at me. It appears I might be one of those unemployable autonomy-seeking hard-heads, unless hired as an independent consultant.