Ruminations about Jobs and the Numbnuts Who Apply For Them

So, we've been on a mission to hire the new Literacy Dante's Virgil around the office. It's harder than it seems. For my job we got nearly 30 applications. That's tremendous for how small we are. I think it's a telling sign about the economy. But just like that saying "all that glitters isn't gold," all who apply are not interview worthy. Or even better, "some that apply are complete numbnuts."

I don't even know where to begin with the crazy. The best application we got looked like this. No cover letter, of course.

Dear Sir, (there are only women who work here)
I want the job. (Obviously not implied when you are APPLYING for it)

Computer repairman, Navy 6 years (and the rest of your work life??!?)
Clean driving record (Wtf?? We don't do literacy deliveries in this job.)

49 years old (can't ask, against the law!), single (wtf?), white (!!!!), male, 6 feet tall (literacy has a height requirement now??)

Bill Numbnuts
Address listed actually doesn't work (we got mail returned to us from the P.O.)

If only I had known that I didn't have the right dangly bits and I was too short to do the job when I first applied. That explains why this job was so frustrating. Wow. I'm pretty sure this guy did a stint in prison and is applying to things since his release. The hilarious icing on the cake to this application was today when the return letter we sent came back to us in the mail because his address was already invalid. He never bothered to leave a phone number. I'm sure he's never even heard of email, despite having supposedly repaired computers.

The rest of the applicants ran the gamut from day care workers to a woman with a Masters in Public Administration--it's basically the MBA of the nonprofit world. The top candidates weeded themselves out of the running after we told them a little more about the job. Which is sad, because if they were smart enough to figure out how overwhelming it was, we needed their brains to do the job! It's a rock and a hard place. So we went with the first three people on the list for interviews. There was a rocket scientist (seriously), a retired teacher, and a Harley-Davidson spokesgirl. Nonprofit attracts some weird people. We finally interviewed the rocket scientist today, but she was hard to pin down for the first two weeks. She's lucky D/B gave into me telling her she needed to keep interviewing people. The retired teacher seemed like a good catch--the question was whether she'd put up with our monkey business or not. And the Harley-Davidson spokesgirl drove all the way out to the office in her jeep, saw that we were working out of a trailer and immediately turned around and went home. Screw you too.

So we needed a second round of people, to make sure we did due diligence in the search process. After rescheduling the rocket scientist, I went to the "clutch" people--the second stringers, if you will. They included two university students. I called both of them, and they seemed a little surprised they would need to come in and interview during the summer and that training also took place during the summer. Would it be possible to do this later, you know, when school starts back in the middle of August? You have got to be shitting me. Why the hell did you apply for a job in the summer when you knew you couldn't do anything about it until the fall? Excuse me for disrupting your suntan lotion application. Meh. (Just for Meg's kids, a double Meh.) Obviously they have no clue about the state of the workforce right now, or they would've gotten off their blistering buns and made a way to come in for an interview. I spent about five minutes snorting and stomping around about that for a while and then I made a well placed call to the person in charge of keeping track of WVU students and the jobs they take in the community. I told her in a sticky sweet voice that I would have loved to have interviewed them, but they couldn't be assed to wash off the sunscreen. I said it much more professionally than that, of course. Sigh. How do you teach work ethic? Anyhoo.

So we went to the third stringers--the people we didn't really want to sign, but wanted to at least vet before we passed. The MPA woman came in and a preacher who was looking for part time work. I already knew that the preacher wouldn't really be a good fit for the office, but maybe that's because D/B isn't a good fit for a professional atmosphere. But the preacher was even extra weird; actually, she seemed like she was on some kind of downer--totally mellow to the point of not saying much at all. We were creeped out. The MPA woman looks good on paper, but she's a serious flight risk. I mean, if you went to school to get the nonprofit version of an MBA, why would you not jump at the chance to be an executive director? Why would you settle for assistant to the director unless you viewed it as a stepping stone? Everybody has to get experience somehow, but this woman seemed like she would jump at the first chance. And there are a lot of first chances in nonprofit. I'd been on the job for three months before a very powerful person started cajoling me about taking a directorship that had just come open. I finally had to say, look, lady, I've been in nonprofit a whopping three months now, I don't even have a social work degree and I'm still figuring out this geographic area. If a board did hire me, I'd think they were nuts and wouldn't want to work for them! And I meant it. It's hard work for below average compensation. Why make it worse for yourself? But this woman is essentially grooming for this position. And sure enough, when it came to the interview, it seemed to me like it was an immediate pissing contest. She has no clue how to work as a subordinate.

That may sound bad, but that's really what makes most jobs run smoothly--figuring out how to improve and grow and change things while keeping in mind who is in charge. Everybody wants to be their own boss, but that's not really practical. She didn't seem like the kind who could figure out how to work within a set of orders, but that's what makes the work world go 'round. That's not to say there is no room for creativity, because there certainly is. But without a chain of command, you get people doing the same work, doubling the job, leaving other parts undone, wasting time on territorial disputes, it just doesn't work. And D/B isn't the world's best boss, but she also knows a lot about what she's doing. It takes somebody who is sure of themselves to be the "assistant" person, somebody who doesn't need to define themselves by job power. Or somebody bright enough to see that the position has its own sort of job power. Do people really imagine they're going to get most things by D/B if I don't agree with them first? Who do they think she runs things by? One of the most important lessons I learned in the university very early on was that the secretaries are the ones with the real power. They hold the ultimate power: knowledge about your files and how the system works. I was always polite and nice to them, and they are good to me. When there was an administrative misfire with my degree, they stepped in and fixed it all on their own. It pays to be good to them. They give me things without making me go through the rigmarole other people have to, because I'm respectful of their power. When I applied for the job I currently have, they were so in my favor that they kept my direct deposit pay set up the way it was and had the paperwork literally completely ready to go before I had even been officially offered the job. All I had to do was sign on the line--that they had highlighted and X'd. Be good to the support staff. They know where the cookies and coffee (oh, and your personnel file) are.

So, to end this lengthy rumination on the job itself, we picked the retired school teacher. I like her. I think she can handle the job. When I told her we wanted her, she said "I'll put my affairs in order." I laughed a long time. That's basically the attitude to have--get your will together, because we're going skydiving tomorrow. She'll train with me for the next couple of weeks.

I have two and a half weeks left, which is kind of a melancholy thought. But I think a light weight just came off my shoulders when she said "yes." Let somebody else be the Grand Poobah of Literacy for a while.

-- DV