Chapter 1: The Ruse

At one point, I was convinced that not only was there a great job out there for me, but that I would get it. While I wasn't immediately disabused of this notion, my first application process for a full-time, long term position pretty much signaled that finding a job was going to be somewhere between sticking your hands in boiling water and eating nails with chopsticks on the fun meter.

This ordeal, like many, began at a job fair. I went up to a table on an organization that I had already done research on that was offering a position that appealed to me: political research. Upon approaching the table, the designated talking head/recruiter attempted to give me the same shpiel she presumably gave everyone, but there were two problems: one, I had already done my research and didn't need any convincing to apply; two, she looked about as terrified of being there as Strom Thurmond was of racial integration.

Employer Fail #1: Your organization's representative is too busy contemplating fleeing from her table in terror to effectively communicate with prospective applicants.

I signed up for an interview, jotting down my phone number and email address. This didn't seem to reduce her terror, but at least it didn't increase it, either.

I heard nothing back from these guys until the afternoon before the day my interview was scheduled--about 22 hours before I was supposed to show up at a location of their choosing. As can be expected when an organization achieves a Jabba the Hut-like bloating, there was absolutely no one to contact concerning my interview, its location, or anything of that sort.

Employer Fail #2: Resembling Jabba the Hut in any way, including being so large that the diseconomies of scale really start to sting. Corollary: Actually being Jabba the Hut.

The call I got confirming my interview luckily established its location as pretty close by, a surprising measure of hassle-reduction not usually seen by employers. Additionally, I recognized the person placing the confirmation call as someone I had shared a class with. Even though she must have seen and said my name multiple times, she apparently didn't make this connection, despite the fact that we regularly interacted within the context of said class.

Nor did she make this connection at the interview, at least not while it was officially ongoing. The interview itself was pretty standard fare: "Why do you want to do this position?" "What do you know about carrying out political research?" When it came to her talking about the job itself, she focused on the not-that-generous pay (albeit with health insurance!) and the fact that each job had a "canvassing" requirement that was to be done for about two weeks. No big deal, right? Then, towards the conclusion, in what would turn out to be a profound verbal sleight of hand (sleight of tongue?), she said that I was obviously smart enough to be considered, and that she had no qualms about extending me an invitation to a second-round interview that Saturday right then and there. Sounds good, I figured. She promised to send along directions/instructions for said interview as soon as she could. I asked how long it would take, to which I received an answer of: "Oh, two, maybe two-and-a-half hours."

(In case you were wondering, as I was getting ready to leave the interview room, she finally did realize that we had a class together. I had to remind her which class it was, though. At that point, it had been less than a year since that course ended.)

Things began going downhill soon after, but I didn't quite recognize it in time to save myself any trouble. The interview site was about an hour away; that's more like the insensitive employers I've come to know and loathe. Additionally, I was sent a notification that I would be required to produce a document, a speech on a topic to be given later, and I would have 24 hours from the time this assignment was sent to write it up and send it in. For reasons to be soon revealed, I doubt anyone actually read these--it was more a measure to weed out applicants by exacting a pound of flesh.

The thing with giving someone a 24-hour window to complete some kind of evaluation assignment is that it doesn't make sense. If your goal is to judge how well an applicant responds to deadlines and time pressure, why not give them a time period that is just long enough for the assignment to be completed? If your goal is to see an applicant's top level of performance, that is, a quality of work that does not take time spent as a factor, why have it be time-sensitive at all? As it is, such assignments are rather pointless and serve only to disrupt one's schedule: you have to put in a maximum of effort in case another applicant has less on their platter and is going to do so anyway. This ends up evaluating nothing other than applicant's willingness to put their other obligations aside for the sake of being considered for the position: a better candidate might have less free time to spare in the window you arbitrarily chose.

Employer Fail #3: Time-sensitive evaluation assignments.

The Saturday of the interview, I headed out to make the trek over. Braving traffic and unfortunate urban-planning conundrums, I get dropped off outside of a gigantic, sprawling building with an equally sizable empty plaza attached to it to boot. The building is completely unmarked, and only after seeing dozens of other people ostensibly headed somewhere does it become clear that the entrance to said building is actually on its side. Well, no, the entrance is in the front, but apparently since it's a weekend said entrance is closed, and no one thought to put up a sign of any sort.

Employer Fail #4: Your detailed interview directions fail.

At this point it already dawned on me that this was some kind of unconsidered animal. Like a mix between a lobster and a hammerhead shark, only of the interview variety. It was a group interview, and then some. As we were led through an elevator lobby and to a different floor, I calculated about 40 people there with me. By the time everyone had filtered in, the number was probably closer to 60. Walking into the door for the cramped set of suites to be utilized as the staging ground for said group interview, we were handed agendas. The eyesore: the interview was supposed to run from 11:00 (when I got there) to 5:15. Maybe two-and-a-half hours indeed. Furthermore, nowhere on the agenda was there anything about food. Everyone that bothered to ask about length had been lied to, and as the afternoon wore on people were scavenging in their backpacks for leftover granola bars and sharing handful of trail mix to ease the hunger pangs.

Employer Fail #5: Lying about the length of an interview.

Employer Fail #6: Not providing food at your 6-hour interview that happens to run through lunch time.

The interview itself was generally as obnoxious as group interviews are, or at least I imagine them to be. Luckily, I've never had to attend one other than this fiasco. We were apportioned into smaller groups that rotated among different stations. At least, we were apportioned theoretically, as the brilliant planners behind this whole thing didn't account for things running a little long and eventually the schedule began to resemble an inner-city tunnel with corrections graffitied upon corrections. By 5:45 (yes, it ran that long) few people were able to even attend their last station, as the schedule had become unmanageable.

Employer Fail #7: Not considering issues of timing when creating a schedule for group interviews. Actually, bothering to create an intricate group interview schedule and failing in any way, because that's just annoying.

Employer Fail #8: Having your 6-hour interview run longer than expected.

The stations were your run-of-the-mill stuff. "Solve a problem together." "Write something responding to this prompt in the time alloted." There were two individual interviews, although they seemed pointless given that they were complete rehashes of the first interview, and that one of the stations involved watching an inspirational/motivational video about the organization and its employees.

Employer Fail #9: No one wants to watch your company's videos. Seriously.

This sort of stuff went on the entire time, with much confusion, schedule failure, and hunger.

I have saved the biggest fail for last, however. At about the halfway point, everyone gathered in the "conference room" (which probably had a maximum capacity of about 20 people, and was being used to fit 70) for an "exercise." What was this exercise? "Canvassing." Yep, canvassing in quotes. My first thought was, if canvassing was such a small deal, as described in the first interview, why are they bothering to devote over an hour of our interview time to it? As for why the quotation marks around the term were necessary, well, let's consult Wikipedia:

"The main purpose of canvassing is to perform voter identification - how individuals are planning to vote - rather than to argue with or persuade voters."

And, as someone applying for a job in political research, that definition makes sense. You need to know how voters are oriented before attempting to formulate policy. Yet, this organization had a very different outlook--we did the other kind of "canvassing," the obnoxious kind where you attempt to persuade individuals to support your cause, preferably financially. Pretty much none of the applicants there wanted to do this, and it showed. As the applicant pool was broken up into small groups and let loose on the local environs (which consisted of a predominantly Korean neighborhood), many chose to just kind of stray out of sight rather than go and bug pedestrians about supporting initiatives for public transit. If anything, it did create camaraderie among me and my cohorts, but the kind of camaraderie where we all just silently seethed at the organization for making us do this for a shot at securing a livelihood.

Employer Fail #10: Being duplicitous about the job's requirements, especially when they have less to do with the position than what is being advertised.

At that point I realized that me getting this job was a longshot--they didn't want me to do anything other than be a solicitation lackey. Which would be fine, as we all know that NGOs could use all the help they can get, especially from motivated people. But lying about it? Not a way to win points.

As the interview drew mercifully to a close, one of the head honchos told the applicants that if they had not yet sent in their evaluation assignment, they could do so at any point. So, why the 24-hour window that was stressed in the assignment prompt? Were these things even read, by anyone? Or were they just another way to weed out some and waste others' time? Someone probably knows the answer, although at this point I'm not sure anyone really cares as to what it is.

Employer Fail #11: Effectively discarding evaluation assignments that you asked for.

A few things emerged in retrospect. One was that, out of curiosity, I Googled the organization but went beyond pages describing it. I found news articles about former employees and disgruntled bloggers decrying such duplicity on an even grander scale: apparently, the entire position basically exists as a way to get you to serve as a petitioner/fundraiser. They withhold some of your salary unless you meet certain fundraising quotas, push the quotas higher again and again, and keep putting off your political research work by informing you that you have to meet (once more, say it with me) quotas before you can pursue other tasks. Wonderful.

Another was that one of my friends had missed his first interview with the same organization--he plain forgot. Yet, nonetheless, they sent him an invite to the second interview. Clearly, what my former classmate taught me was more sugar than substance.

Not that it matters, though--I don't speak Korean and hence wasn't able to be a solicitor very well in the hour allotted. Hilariously, a lot of female applicants walked away very successful from that exercise. Successful, but creeped out, as apparently many men agreed to sign statements of support if it meant being able to hit on them in the process.

I grabbed a ride home hungry, tired, and frustrated that I had been strung along. I'd be strung along again, albeit in a much less harrowing way.