Employer Fail #4.5: The Troika

After the uselessness that was interview prep, the next day I headed over to my on-site interview. Getting there was generally uneventful, except for a couple on the train that kept staring at me, only to notify me once we got off that part of my tie was crooked. Thanks, I guess, but I really could've gone without having you two ogle me the entire ride over. I found the company's monolithic headquarters without a problem--finding the proper entrance in such a large building was harder. I went in and came up to the front desk, staffed by two very disgruntled secretaries.

My explanation that I was there for an interview was met more with confusion than understanding. Probably not a good sign. This confusion, however, didn't discourage the secretaries from handing me a gigantic form on a clipboard, and telling me to fill it out. I grabbed a seat on a bench and proceeded go through five pages of really boring questions, all of which I had already filled out on the staffing agency's serpentine form a week ago.

Agency Fail #5/Employer Fail #27: How hard is it to require applicants to submit personal information in such a manner that it can be easily transferred to your clients with open positions they'd like filled? It's not like we live in an age where transmitting information electronically is free and instant or anything, right?

In another rather unfortunate sign, another applicant, presumably for the same position, that had arrived a few minutes after me, was sitting on another bench with his clipboard-bound application, talking loudly on his cell phone about "this bitch" and "that bitch" and generally not really putting any effort into looking presentable--or filling out his application. At one point, he actually just left the application on the bench and went outside so he could presumably elevate his voice. I'm not sure whether he just left then or actually returned for an interview--by the time I left mine, he was nowhere to be seen.

The initial interviewer, an HR rep for the company, was much more pleasant than I expected. She was nice and personable, which I guess is her job as a member of HR, but still jarring given the sneers of the front desk secretaries and the fact that she worked for a telecommunications company. She prattled on for a long while about the job, repeatedly asking me to make sure I was down with a lot of the job's unique qualities, including:

1) Being glued to a computer screen all day.
2) Doing "analytical" things. (More on this later.)
3) Working in a very quiet environment where noise was far from standard.
4) Working in a productive and efficient manner. (Who isn't down with that? Yes, hi, I'd like to apply for a job where you'll let me slack off and read NASCAR forums from 10:00 to 12:00 and 2:00 to 4:00...)
5) Working in an environment where my keystrokes would be logged as a check on my efficiency, and my productivity would be calculated, ranked against the other employees, and posted in the office for all to see?

It's not that I really had a problem with any of those, even the ridiculously-1984-like fifth point, but the more I heard about the position, the more I realized that a staffing agency was being utilized to find applicants because there was little chance that the company could easily attract any candidates to consider the position on its own. In an economy where getting a job is a little less of a pain, it is the norm, perhaps to management's chagrin, that employees spend some of their time slacking off in various ways. I mean, think about your own experiences, and those of people you know. Is anyone perpetually going full-throttle? Hence, to require that from someone that's being paid not much above minimum wage, well, that's a little inconsiderate at best, and highly draconian and exploitative at worst. Again, no wonder that a staffing agency would be the see-no-evil intermediary in the process.

Employer Fail #28/Agency Fail #6: Putting a 1984-veneer on a low-paying, low-ranking position. On the agency's side, unquestioningly processing the request to find candidates for such a position, while hiding the undesirable aspects and letting candidates discover them for themselves at the on-site interview.

In any case, I repeatedly assured the first interviewer that none of these seemed like a problem for me, and that I understood the need for such measures. (Understand, yes. Agree with? Not in the least.) She then informed me that she wasn't really asking me questions because it wasn't her job--my evaluation would be done by the next two interviewers, both of whom were more closely attuned to the position than an HR rep would be. Soon after, she left, and I was left to stew in the interview room for about fifteen minutes until someone came to take her place.

That someone was the floor manager of the department I would presumably be working in, an aging woman that was humorless, but not out of ruthlessness. At "interview prep," I was hammered with a barrage of questions that the staffing agency claimed past candidates had attested would be asked at the on-site interview. Of these, one, maybe two, were ever asked during my time with the interviewer troika. Good job using my time wisely on that one, eh?

Agency Fail #7: If you're going to waste my time on "interview prep" I don't need, at least try to make sure that I'm actually going to be preparing by answering questions that are going to be asked of me.

The whole questioning-me thing didn't last very long anyway, and soon it was my turn to ask questions that the HR rep told me to save because the other two interviewers would be better able to answer them. One of my early questions concerned training and how it would proceed. The important nugget of information here was that the floor manager had, at some point earlier in her lifetime, actually written the entire training course. Okay, I thought, so maybe she does know her stuff, so she can answer some concrete questions. (Once again, paraphrased from memory:)

"So, I've been told by everyone, the people at the staffing agency, and your own representatives, that the job is very analytical. From what I've heard, however, in terms of order processing, it is more like determining the order, finding out how to label, code, and process it, and then doing so accurately. Is this the right assessment of the analytical components of this position? Does the analysis come in when trying to determine how to label/code/process a given order?"
"Yes... erm... no... well... you see, the job is very analytical. Yes, very analytical. And it's analytical in that, well, there are a lot of analytical components that require thinking, such as, you know, how to process the orders and then at first you have just simple orders, but later on as you get more experience and we trust you more, you have to handle the more complex orders, and sometimes there are side projects that we work on, but those also have tight deadlines, so the entire office has to help out if we're to meet the deadline."

Whoa, slow down there, Miss Teen South Carolina. (At least she didn't mention "the Iraq.") So, let me get this straight. The job is analytical because it's analytical, because you said so. Got it. Brilliant! Ignoring the segue into side projects, I figured I'd ask something that might get at the heart of what I was going for.

"So, okay, could you tell me exactly what separates a simple order from a complex one? I see you making this distinction, but how exactly are they different? Is it just in the amount of coding and processing that has to be done, or what?"
"Well, you see, there are simple order and complex orders. And you don't need to worry about the complex ones now, because you'll only be doing them down the line, and then you'll have a manager or someone overseeing you to help you get started on them. And complex orders, you know, they can be either something bigger or a special demand, no, wait, actually, special demands are side projects, like we had one from a chain of pharmacies a while back last winter... "

Against others' better judgment (but not mine!) I decided to press on one more time:

"Yes, I understand, but say I'm processing a complex order. Where exactly is the complexity? Is it simply that I have to do more, or is there a concrete analytical component that isn't there with the simple orders?"
"Yes, it's very analytical. All of it is very analytical. An analytical position. And there are complex orders, and simple orders, and side projects." (Seriously, enough with the side projects.)

I gave up, for the time being. Maybe I could get answers from the final interviewer that I couldn't get from this manager, despite her claims about designing the training course.

Employer Fail #29: Not only did you hire Miss Teen South Carolina and age her using Satanic magicks about forty years, but now you're letting her loose and allowing her to interview people? Shame on you.

After sitting alone for less time, maybe around five minutes, the last of the troika appeared. She was the vice president for something or other, but she looked like the VP-for-killing-people-with-her-glare. Tall, sharply dressed, hardened facial expression, humorless because her heart had been shot one too many times by Sub-Zero's down+forward->punch special, you get the idea. My interview with her lasted about five minutes, which was pretty much expected because she probably had some poor souls to turn to stone with her glare, or something equally as important to the company's shareholders.

I tried asking about analytical things, and was told simply, "The job is analytical and places a high emphasis on efficiency and accuracy. Do you think you can handle that?" I asked about the distinction between complex and simple orders and received "There are varying difficulties of orders, and you are qualified to tackle more complex orders as you receive more responsibility in your position" as a reply. After my questions, it was her turn, for a brief period. She really only asked one question, and that's all she needed to. It functioned as the death knell, but it was basically unavoidable, and as destructive as it generally is.

"I see you graduated with distinction with degrees in economics and history. Can you explain to me what's drawing you to this position?"

I wanted to stand up, flip the table out of the way, and shout, "Listen, you gorgon in a pantsuit. You know as well as I do what's drawing me to this position. The fact that it's a job when there are no jobs. The fact that it pays something, even though it doesn't pay nearly enough for the kind of stuff you subject your employees to. The fact that it will give me something to do, something to pride myself on, something to put on my resume so it doesn't look like I spent the last few months doing some combination of marinating in a coffin or playing Mortal Kombat. The fact that I know I'm smart, competent, and earnest enough to give you more in this position than another candidate, which you yourself should be able to tell because presumably your petrifying eyes still enable you to read a resume, and that what you want is someone that does the job well in all senses of that word. That's what's drawing me to this position." (This actually mirrors the thoughts running through my mind whenever I'm asked that question, give or take gorgons and pantsuits. This is because I rarely get interviews with things that I'd actually be excited about doing.)

But, I didn't say that. Instead I gave a much less interesting response about how I was drawn to a position where I could use the problem-solving skills I garnered from a liberal arts education in a setting critical to helping an organization achieve success. Or something like that, all that hackneyed garbage starts to blend in my head after a few minutes anyway. Of course, she of the Medusa eyes saw right through that instantly. She didn't say anything, or really make any gesture expressing her skepticism or disapproval, but I still knew. And I think she knew I knew, if only because of her serpentine perception. Where's a reflective shield and sword when you need it?

Employer Fail #30: You hired both mutated Miss Teen South Carolina and the Gorgon Queen to work overlapping shifts at your company.

In retrospect, one thing is rather humorous. At interview prep, I was told to bring a notebook to take notes, (I was advised to scribble fake things down if I didn't need real notes) because doing so was reported to be a dealbreaker by prior applicants. I was skeptical, but did so anyway. Apparently, having a notebook and taking notes was supposed to signal interest in the position to the interviewers. I also tried to signal my interest in other ways, such as trying to discern what exactly was so analytical about the position, to no avail. The notebook was not a dealbreaker, however. What was a dealbreaker, on the other hand, was one of the cruelest ironies that continues to persist in the job market today: losing favor with employers because you're overqualified. Yes, it makes sense, but only in a narrow sense. Yes, you might be afraid that someone that's overqualified might take company time and money during training, put in a few weeks, get bored, and leave. Yes, you may worry that if hired, they're going to be a prima donna and cause office trouble. Yes, you can even worry that they're so overqualified they'll be promoted so promptly they'll end up replacing you, the hiring manager (more on this in the future). But isn't that what an interview is supposed to be for? Can't you attempt to screen for people's prima donna tendencies? Can't you attempt to screen for someone's trustworthiness if they give you an assurance that they won't jump at the next big ship that passes by? Is it really worth it to take someone that, by all indicators, might actually be worse at the job, because you, in your laziness or trepidation, decide that screening is too hard and the risk of replacement is too great? Yes, apparently it is worth it. This is the dealbreaker, not whether or not I brought a notebook.

Employer Fail #31: Yes, sometimes employers do give those they deem overqualified a chance. But not quite often enough. I promise that I won't jump ship quickly. I promise that I won't act out. Nothing in my record, in my history, shows that I'm anything but diligent and efficient. And yet, you have problems. Shame on you.

Of course, this couldn't end with just one more instance of fail. The HR rep met me after the pantsuit gorgon left to take me back downstairs to the exit. We engaged in small talk and she notified me that they would "take care of everything" in terms of notifying me and the staffing agency. During "interview prep" I was told to call the staffing agency myself, and when I brought this up to the HR rep, she told me that it wasn't their place to make me do that, and that they would do everything. All I had to do was sit tight and wait in case they called me. They didn't.

Employer Fail #32/Agency Fail #8: I am not supposed to be some pariah or go-between for whatever corporate relationship issues you haven't yet managed to work out. Figure out who calls whom yourselves.

This interview generally confirmed my suspicions that staffing agency-provided positions weren't quite tailored for me. But, like I said earlier, eventually I'm going to have to cave and throw myself into that unpleasant maelstrom again, especially as other cups begin to runneth dry.

Labor Day Ironies

Yes, Labor Day is technically for big-L labor, unions, trade organizations, and the like. But, if we think about little-L labor, then today becomes a little more ironic.

The unemployment rate for the US is at 9.7% right now, marking its highest point in a quarter of a century. For some perspective, it's roughly at the level that it was during the nation's second-worst economic crisis (the Panic of 1837), although statistics from that period aren't exactly what one would describe as reliable, so this whole sentence may as well be moot.

Jobs are still being lost on a month-to-month basis. Although the rate of losses has slowed relatively to earlier in the year, the situation is a little like telling a trauma patient the good news that he's losing blood a little less quickly now that most of it has drained out of his body.

A more relevant statistic for the sake of discerning the situation on the ground is the "actual unemployment rate," which is, if you think about it, a ridiculous moniker. What's the good of having a statistic if it's not the "actual" statistic? Wouldn't it make sense to have the "actual unemployment rate" be termed the "unemployment rate," and have the current "unemployment rate" be referred to "unemployment, adjusted to make it look better." It seems we need four categories: lies; damn lies; statistics; statistics plus the influence of politicians and the English language. Wharrgarbl. (Read here for the specifics, if you're interested. The general gist is that the official unemployment rate only counts you as unemployed if you're seeking a job and don't have one. The "actual" rate goes beyond that by also counting as "unemployed" those who are working less than they'd like by being able to take fewer or shorter shifts, those who work on an as-needed basis that haven't been called in recently, and those who have decided that finding a job is a pretty ridiculous endeavor and have given up for the time being altogether.)

(Whoa-ho, tangent time--I suppose one could theoretically consider those that are working fewer hours than they would like not particularly unemployed. By doing this, though, one would discount the possibility that a given person is taking on a job that has little to do with their career for the sake of making some money to get by, all the while stonewalling their ability to seek out and obtain the kind of employment they would like, probably on a full-time basis. While this may not constitute a particularly large proportion of such workers, those whose stories mirror this example are essentially "discouraged" workers in a different sense. Furthermore, discounting these groups would have the effect of essentially throwing out anyone that has a job on paper but is only able to earn a pittance as a result of say, working per-diem and not getting called in but once in the past week. I guess maybe we should change the wording to "unemployment/underemployment rate" or something of the sort to be be perfectly accurate. Oh wait, I meant "actual rate of unemployment/underemployment. My bad.)

In any case, this more-accurate assessment about Americans and work puts the percentage of people not working or working less than they would like at 16.8%. That's pretty close to one in six. A lot of media outlets are throwing the words "jobless recovery" around, which amounts to more self-obfuscation. What kind of recovery is it for someone that can't find a job? It's effectively like telling someone with broken wheels on their car about the wonderful recent advances in tire technology.

Labor Day is generally labor-less, being a federal holiday and all. But to an extent greater than the past two decades and then some, the weeks around Labor Day are also quite lacking in labor.

Further reading that will be depressing and educational at the same time (the best kind, if you ask me.)

Mini-Fail #2: The You're-So-Wrong-I-Want-to-Strangle-You

The following occurred while I was sitting in the staffing agency's reception area, waiting for my "interview prep" to begin.

At the reception desk there were three receptionists. Two, a woman and man, were clearly senior secretaries and joked around with each other in between paging their colleagues and conveying assorted bits of information. A third was clearly a junior secretary, being sent to fetch coffee and having to inquire again and again about what she should be doing, and beyond that, how to do anything that was assigned to her.

At one point, the male secretary left, and the front desk got a call from a reporter who wanted some quotes for a story concerning college graduates and the job market. The junior secretary fielded the call, and then instantly panicked: "It's a reporter of some sort, and he wants to speak to someone that knows about recent college graduates... what do I do?!" Her partner was busy doing whatever it is that secretaries do, mumbled something akin to, "Give it to Casey... wait, she's busy, I don't know..." This led to the poor reporter being put on hold for a while as the two talked it over. Then, the senior secretary got a gleam in her eye and went, "Hey, listen. You've been here long enough. I think you're ready. You can give him the interview yourself!" The other reacted nervously, mulled it over for a bit, perhaps stalling in the hopes that someone more qualified would announce themselves present and available to take the call, but then caved and picked up the phone. After engaging in a brief yet awkward discussion about whether now was a good time for an interview, they began. (The following is a combination of what I overheard, paraphrased due to memory, with the reporter's lines fabricated by me from context.)

"What would you like to know?"
"Your agency does see a lot of recent college graduates as candidates, yes?"
"Absolutely. A large proportion of our applicants have recently graduated from college."
"And would you say that they are having a tough time in the job market? How would you say the economy is affecting them?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say it's been very tough on them at all. Lots are coming in every day."
"Would it be possible for you to pull someone's file and maybe tell me their story, or at least provide a contact number so I can talk to them myself."
(Insert a brief interlude where the reporter was put on hold and privacy issues were debated. Eventually it was determined that it would not be a breach of privacy to put the reporter in contact with the client, but the person in charge of that information was unavailable, so it would have to be done later.)
"Actually, we can't get that to you right now. If you'd like, you can call back later. But, wait, I'm a recent college graduate, can I talk about myself?"
"Sure, I guess."
"So, I graduated from Tufts University last year, and now I have this job, and it's pretty great. So no, I wouldn't say the job market has been causing problems for recent grads at all!"

Let's play "Name the Things in this Conversation that Make Me Want to Die!"

1) So, if more recent grads are coming to a staffing agency, that's somehow a sign of a bearable job market? Bearable for a staffing agency, maybe, but not for the grads themselves.
2) You went to a good school, and it took you about 11 months after graduation to find a job, and that's a sign of a good job market for recent grads? I mean, sure, maybe a bad job market has unemployed people being poisoned and their organs harvested for the greater good in your world, but what about in the real one?
3) Your job consists of fetching coffee, not knowing how to do anything, and waffling on whether or not you should talk to reporters. How is that a good job, and how did you come to the conclusion that getting this job after 11 months is better than mediocre in terms of career possibilities?
4) Not that the secretaries or the reporter could have known this, but I was sitting right there. I would have gladly volunteered to tell the reporter what I thought of the whole situation, and he could've turned it into some neo-Dickensian piece that would've been buried on the sixteenth page, amidst some "coverage" yanked directly from Brett Favre's Twitter. But at least I would have felt better about myself.

As it is, instead I just silently stewed. It's one thing if you're satisfied with the way things are going for you. But don't presume to speak on behalf of everyone else, including those worse off than yourself. It doesn't make sense to sugarcoat an issue that should be highlighted, that should be illuminated so people can get angry about it. Because if people don't get angry, then there's no one to oppose those that don't care. And if no one cares, that apathy is how human beings start to slide down the salience slope to "irrelevant husks." Worst of all, don't draw incorrect conclusions from the facts to justify your irreverence, as that makes simple obliviousness just all the more wrong in the end.

Employer Fail #26, and something I find myself wondering more and more with every passing day: How do people like that have a job while I don't?

Employer Fail #4.0: The Agency

When I launched into this in-hindsight-rather-futile job-hunting endeavor, I knew that if so required, there were steps I could take to aid me in my quest to secure gainful employment, albeit at the cost of diminishing the quality of said employment. Or so I thought. One of these potential steps was a staffing agency: I had read a lot about them in news articles and forum postings for frustrated job seekers, and many seemed to describe them as decent ports in a storm, especially for recent graduates. I had, unwittingly, already sent resumes to staffing agencies before, but had only gotten one reply: a woman named Leslie who wrote back one sentence, "Are you aware this job is located here do you want to apply?" Yeah, just like that. I replied politely that yes, I was aware of how geography worked, and that I would still like to be considered, and predictably heard nothing back from Leslie or anyone else.

I realize now that the reason for this cold shoulder on the part of organizations whose job it is to place me somewhere was because, for a time, I was still applying for jobs in one place while being in another, and as a result they didn't see fit to waste time with me because their organizational M.O. is to process everyone as quickly as possible. So, when I saw two listings side-by-side from one staffing agency one fine day, I sent in my resume and an email inquiring about both positions. The response was, by some standards, lightning fast: I received a phone call from the person I emailed about 3-4 hours later. Said representative sounded very excited to be talking to me (although, granted, it is her job to basically be a salesman of jobs...) and started imploring me to come in to talk to her about this position they had opening up that she averred was perfect for me, as long as I was interested in something "analytical." At no point in that conversation, or in any later meeting with her, did she ever bring up the fact that I had actually expressed interest in two separate listings, or that I existed as anything but a warm body to send on to the staffing agency's client in an attempt to fill a void. Thanks for caring, or not.

Agency Fail #1: Ignoring my expressed wishes to forge ahead with what is your most lucrative or pressing opportunity.

We arranged a time for me to come into the staffing agency's office to hear more about the position, but the confirmation email that ensued actually had links to some "evaluations" that they wanted me to complete before the pseudo-interview. Figuring that I might as well get on with it, I embarked on a journey into the absurd.

These evaluations were, at their core, web-based Java simulations of a computer desktop. Why whoever programmed these things felt it was necessary to simulate an entire Windows machine as opposed to, say, the program in question, I'll never know. Furthermore, despite being ostensibly written in the same way, three of the four were not compatible with OS X. I started out doing the only one that was, something called "General Office Skills" or something of that sort. The test was about forty questions, and would have been rather simple, if it had been programmed by anyone other than a blind rhino. (No offense to rhino programming skills, but they just have big feet and it makes it hard to type out nuanced code, you know?) At first, the test was rather simple--spelling, grammar, math with percentages, identification of common Saturday morning cartoon characters, the regular sort of stuff you need in any sort of job other than "Cave Guardian." There was, however, one annoying catch: if you accidentally or deliberately pulled the cursor out of the test window, which was itself lodged within a browser window, the applet flipped out and declared, "Are you sure you want to go ahead?" while giving you the choices of "Yes" and "Try Again." Hitting "yes" wasn't an option if I hadn't really selected a choice already, but hitting "try again," if I had already selected a choice, voided it and made me reselect it again. Not only did this amount to a gigantic waste of time, but I also vaguely suspect that the test decided to mark me wrong a few times just because I had the audacity to attempt to check my email while doing their inane test.

(If your line of thinking is that the applet got angry at me when I tried to mouse away because its designer wanted to curtail cheating in the form of looking up how to spell "conscience" online, they did a very poor job, as opening up new tabs prevented the angry message box from appearing. Alternately, they really should have considered things like dictionaries, style guides, and calculators if they really wanted to prevent someone from gaining an unfair advantage in determining what punctuation mark goes after "Dear Sir.")

Towards the test's conclusion, the questions suddenly went from banal to arcane. After a few filing order questions, I started being bombarded with, "According to filing protocol #7E, which comes first, AB0447.1F or DRAGONZZTOP447.1F." Does anyone actually use filing protocol #7E? Does it exist? I doubt it. I think those questions existed to screw with me. After completing it, I was chagrined to find out that while my score was still in the top decile or so, I was marked wrong for more questions than there were arcane filing quandaries. I guess I really was docked for having my mouse wander a little too far. At this point, I realized that if my score had suffered as a result of that, how badly would someone with a slow computer/slow internet connection/poor computer skills end up doing according to the official tally? In the end, this test really ends up judging something other than your "general office skills," and that something has little to do with being an effective employee.

Agency Fail #2: Your tests are awfully-programmed and thus fail at testing what they're supposed to.

After finishing that test and taking a break for dinner, I got an email from the woman I had spoken to informing me that as I was using OS X, I couldn't do the other tests. I already knew this, and assured her that I would simply reboot into XP to complete them. She told me, "Oh, you're so efficient! You're fast becoming my favorite applicant!" I bet you say that to all of the people that apply, and you know what, I'm right. Of course, the Windows-only tests were even bigger trainwrecks than the other ones.

There were three tests, one each for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Fun fact: None of these programs were particularly required for the job I was applying for, which was an order/install-processing-and-coordination position for a telecommunications company. Yes, the skills from Excel probably carry over, but what does PowerPoint have to do with a data-monkey position?

In any case, I began with the MS Word test. Over its course, it ran me through pretty much every capability, from "Save As..." to Mail Merge to making me type an entire paragraph because it wouldn't let me copy-paste. However, with this test, it was again the programming, and not the content that was the problem. You see, all of these tests functioned like this: the applet gave you a command. You were then supposed to do what it said. If you did it right, it would, without any confirmation, just take you to the next command to be performed. If you did anything wrong, such as selecting the wrong menu, or, heaven forbid, moving your mouse outside of the applet window, the angry "Yes/Try Again" dialogue came up. Of course, wrong in this case was highly subjective. One of the first questions was "Open a blank document." Okay, I go to hit control+N. What's that? You hit control? WRONG. "Yes" or "Try Again," son? Okay, let's see. What about File -> New. What's that? You clicked File? WRONG AGAIN. "Yes" or "Try Again," loser? Well, there's only one thing left. I'm just going to hit the little blank document icon on the toolbar and hope that works. Don't hit me, okay? *click* Good. On to question #2: save the file. Okay, let's see, control+S... WRONG. YOU NEVER LEARN. "Yes" or "Try Again," chump? Generally, you get the idea.

Essentially, I was punished for trying to do things quickly, or generally in any way other than what was envisioned by the test's designers. At one point, it yelled at me for trying to do the margins via Page Setup; it wanted me to manually drag the little pentagons. For the aforementioned paragraph, it wanted me to "reproduce" it in another document, but wouldn't let me highlight it or generally press any key other than the ones required to retype said paragraph. Good use of my time, guys.

The Excel test was much of the same, albeit less annoying because there's fewer "basic user" things that can be done in Excel. The PowerPoint test, however, was by far the most maddening, because as you probably know, Microsoft has loaded PowerPoint with about 15 different menus/palettes/toolbars/Satanic glyphs to accomplish everything. For some reason, the test expected me to use the default toolbars when following some of the steps, but not all of them. During the PowerPoint test was also the only time when I was completely stumped by something, and hit "yes" in response to the by-now-ubiquitous prompt even though I knew it was wrong. The thing in question? Changing the color of the bullet points on a slide without changing anything else on the slide. Yeah, that's definitely relevant to any future employment that I plan to seek.

The idiotic thing about these tests was that, theoretically, you did not receive the angry prompt unless you did something wrong, in which case you knew you did something right when you moved on to the next command. Yet, somehow, when I received my scores, they were far from perfect. I mean, sure, I was still in the top decile or two, and way above the median score, but how exactly do you end up marking something wrong if it was eventually done correctly, even according to your own program? Is there a time limit? Is there an amount of wrong clicks allowed before the question no longer counts? If it's the latter, then I'm glad the test designers saw fit to penalize people for trying to use keyboard shortcuts, or do things like attempt to copy-paste blocks of text. Veritably, they were doing their jobs as defenders of the paragon of workplace inefficiency.

Agency Fail #2: Yeah, I'm just reemphasizing it. Your tests are awful. Stop using them to evaluate candidates, because they don't do it very well.

Luckily for me, I don't think anyone really paid attention to my test scores. If they did, they did it without my knowing, and without mentioning my performance at any point.

The next day, I headed out to the staffing agency's offices for some sort of interview. Unfortunately, I got out of the subway station at the wrong exit, making me walk an additional three or so blocks in the rain. When I got to the building, I was overwhelmed by its gaudiness: a gigantic corporate building with gold floors, gold chandeliers, gold ceilings, velvet ropes and railings, security guards, doormen, the like. I knew I had to get to the ninth floor and ducked into the first elevator well. The security guard standing there was caught up in a conversation with someone else and didn't notice me until I had just about entered the elevator. He made me come out and instructed me to go sign in at a reception desk so far away it wasn't even quite visible from the elevator lobby I was currently in. After doing that (and having my name get spelled wrong on my name tag...) I went into the proper elevator lobby and rode it to the top.

Agency Fail #3: See Employer Fail #4.

Once in the staffing agency's office, I was given a gigantic form that asked pretty much everything about me, except maybe my favorite anime character. The office was devoid of other candidates except for one young man who sat by me and filled out the same gargantuan form, sweating up a storm and looking like the Ringwraiths were on him from all sides.

After answering everything about my past employment history, among other things, such as whether I would rather be stranded on a desert island or on a boat out at sea (the answer is frisbee, you secret communist!), I handed in the form and waited a little. The woman that I had spoken to on the phone appeared. She was, unexpectedly, probably older than forty, which was incredibly surprising given that she spoke with a level of perkiness and excitement more befitting a teenager. I followed her into her office, where she told me about the position and the company. This generally took just a few minutes, but I was amazed that she managed to fit the word "analytical" in there about 15 times in the process. After talking about the position, she had me fill out some forms, which I tried to do quickly, but was beset at once by her colleagues, who gave me their own spin on the company and the position. I'm not really sure why they bothered. It's not like I was going to suddenly get up and leave--if I bothered to come in, why would I decide not apply on a whim? After all this, they told me they would schedule an interview with the company in the next few days and would call me to notify me of its date and time.

Call me they did, scheduling the interview for the week after. However, they also wanted me to come in the day before for an "interview prep," whatever that meant. So come in I did. This time, maybe because I came in in the afternoon, the place was a bit more busy. Haunted-by-Ringwraiths guy wasn't there anymore, but was replaced by a more eclectic sort. There were two women who didn't really speak English, and a ghetto guy that at least put on a polo shirt, but couldn't be bothered to wear anything but jeans. When they asked him if he had taken their tests, I pitied him, at least until he started giving a clearly fabricated excuse about how he meant to but couldn't get around to it. At this point I started getting a sneaking suspicion that the staffing agency really had no reason to be dealing with me. They existed to get people jobs, sure, but why would anyone that needed something other than a warm body ask them for help with hirng? The "interview prep" confirmed this.

I sat in a room opposite another staffing agency employee. She told me that over the course of working with the organization I would be applying at, other applicants had reported back what she hoped was a comprehensive list of interview questions that I might be asked. She wanted to go through them with me, and so she did. I answered all of them in that rote, interview-question-and-answer-time way, and she kept saying, "Excellent, just like that." Uh, okay, creepy much? At one point, though, I got kind of tired of the whole ordeal, and when she asked me, "So, ideally, where do you want to work?" I told her the truth. Her expression turned sour, and she began correcting me. "No, you see, you can't say that because..." It's not like I didn't know, I was partly making a joke and partly informing her that this wasn't exactly my dream job. When, at her request that I "try again" I gave a much more acceptable, blasé answer, she seemed pleased once more.

I walked out of there knowing that I had just spent an hour of my life receiving "interview coaching" that I didn't want or need. Maybe other staffing agency clients really benefit from this sort of thing, the attention and effort spent in making them into better candidates. But I was already applying for a job beneath my qualifications, and now they felt that they needed to make sure that I could be a good little boy and give rehearsed answers? I understand I represent a sort of investment to them, but I'd like to reserve the right to choose responses to interview questions for myself.

Agency Fail #4: Read my resume/cover letter enough to determine whether I actually need interview prep for the position I'm interviewing for. Chances are, I have cognitive function enough to recognize what constitutes an acceptable answer to an interview question, but pride enough to not perjure myself so I can lick someone's boots. Acknowledge that and act accordingly.

At that point, I figured I didn't have much to gain from a staffing agency. Sure, I'm probably going to go back to one soon enough in spite of this fact, just because my cup doesn't exactly runneth over with employment opportunities, but honestly, their way of doing things just doesn't seem to be right for me.

I don't need someone coaching me on how to get a job I'm overqualified for. What I need is someone that realizes my qualifications and skills and gets me an in at a place that can utilize what I bring to the proverbial table. I don't need someone that casts a wide net on their client's behalf, reels in what comes, and throws me in along with the other catches of the day. I don't need the equivalent of an in-person Monster.com. I need something more time-efficient and less self-concerned.

At the initial interview and the "interview prep" meeting, everyone expressed concern that I would not like the job and correspondingly bail out after a few weeks. The thought was foreign to me; I honestly wouldn't consider doing such a thing, contracted to work or not. Apparently, though, it's a big problem for them. If opportunities that people want to flee are the ones they provide, and candidates that make a habit of fleeing are the ones that they process, then it's not the right place for me, and I can't help but feeling like I shouldn't be treated like someone who would.

Not that it matters though--I didn't get that job anyway. The story of that ignoble interview will be forthcoming soon.

Chapter 3: The Fraud

At one point, I received a reply to my perpetual frenzy of sending out resumes/cover letters/applications/sacrificial goats. It was, at the time, at the other corner of the country (I would later relocate to that region, coincidentally), and as a result, the reply had this gist:

1) Said organization, purportedly a consulting firm, would like to interview me.
2) However, they have a company policy of not conducting phone interviews.
3) Thus, they would like me to fly out for an interview.
4) But, as they are not going to reimburse me for the travel costs to said interview, they advise me to schedule a number of interviews in the region at the same time so as to get better mileage out of my expenses.

I found that last point particularly ridiculous. Sure, guys, let me just call up all of the organizations in the area and make them give me interviews so I can get my money's worth. That's how interviews work after all, right?

One thing worth mentioning from the beginning is the poor quality of this organization's website. For one, it is incredibly fancy, with a glossy splash page, fancy Flash effects,and a horrendous techno track that makes me jump for the mute button to my computer each time I visit it. Seriously, how does techno go together with consulting? What's more confusing is that nowhere on the website does it talk about specifics. It talks about marketing, and clients in varied sectors, and expanding worldwide by 2010, but it never says exactly what the organization does or how it addresses its challenges. The careers section boasts about "performance-based" processes, "in-office" and "practical" training (what kind of training is impractical? A liberal arts education? Self-zing. Sigh), and a "development program," but doesn't define these things except in vague terms (never feel like your career is stagnating!). In fact, the only specific piece of information on the website has to do with the organization's community service, where it talks about the firm's president participating in some sort of marathon to benefit children, and encourages employees to get involved. This probably should have been a warning sign, but hope's eternal springs kind of get on my glasses and make them wet and blurry. You know how it is.

In any case, as I knew I'd be relocating to the area in about a month, I replied notifying them of this and asking whether they would still be conducting interviews at that point. I expected them to tell me to go drown myself for having the audacity to suggest pretty much anything at all, but they surprisingly replied that they would be holding interviews up through around the time that I was scheduled to arrive at their location. Pretty convenient, I thought.

Upon moving, one of the first things I did was send them another email, essentially going, "Hey guys, I'm here now, how about that interview?" A few days later, I received a reply informing me that before I could come in to the office for an interview, they needed to do a standard phone interview with me. At this point, I was rather confused. Just a month ago, I was told that they had a company policy of not conducting phone interviews. Was there a massive takeover that rewrote the company's operational code? Did the CEO undergo some kind of Freaky Friday-esque mystical transformation, rendering him comically unable to keep directives consistent with his predecessor? Or was this just a case of massive fail?

Employer Fail #19: If company policy is one thing, then it's that thing. You don't get to change it just like that. Or, well, you do, but it registers you as a big blip on the fail radar.

The message told me that for this phone interview, all I had to do was call their office at any point during business hours. So I did. I called once, at about 1:00 on a Tuesday, and was answered only by their overly-lengthy voicemail recording. The same thing happened at 2:00, and 3:00, and well, you get the idea. I called about every hour of business hours for four days, leaving at least one identical message per day. No call back. No email response. Maybe they really did have a company policy of not doing phone interviews, and some crazed maniac had broken into their office computer system just to send me a misleading email. Or, again, maybe they just failed. A lot.

Employer Fail #20: If you tell me to call during business hours, that generally necessitates that someone be there to pick up the phone during business hours. Or call me back during business hours. Or listen to the voicemail and email me back during business hours. Or actually show some signs of life over the course of a week.

Finally, on the fifth day of calling, on about the third phone call that day, someone picked up. After explaining who I was, the voice on the other line seemed to recognize me just fine, but nary was an apology issued for being inexplicably absent for the past week, nor was there a mention of my multiple voicemails or my few emails expressing my concern for their well-being. How was I to know that they weren't being held hostage by the crazed email-doppelganger, who wanted to mislead their applicants, taping the employees' eyes wide open to make them watch all the maniacal happenings? I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, though I realized that any reply I received might have been composed by the criminal mastermind himself. He's a cunning adversary, I'll give him that.

On a less fantastical note, however, the secretary to whom I was talking to, who incidentally happened to be the same one that had emailed me the few times I had had contact with the organization, asked me whether now would be a good time for the phone interview, or whether we should schedule it for another day. My thoughts were, more or less, "For the love of God, now! If we reschedule, the heat death of the universe will probably happen at about the same time that you decide, in your infinite grace, to pick up the phone again!" So, I agreed to do the phone interview right then and there.

Of course, what made this laughable was that the phone interview wasn't really an interview. I was asked my current address, whether it was true that I just recently graduated from college (no, I lied on my resume because I actually got stuck in a time-warp and that's generally awkward to explain to employers), and quizzically, my current living situation. I didn't really see the point of the last question, but maybe they have a company policy of not hiring polygamists. In which case, reasonably, I probably could've expected them to give away my position to the cast of "Big Love" in a month. My answers to those three questions apparently had me pass the phone interview, and I was told that information about my in-person interview would be emailed to me shortly. Naturally, it ended up taking another day.

Employer Fail #21: Making me attempt to reach you over and over for the least consequential phone interview in history. Seriously, why didn't you just ask me whether Coke was better than Pepsi, or my opinion on the new Who Wants to be a Millionaire format?

Their office, as it turned out, was located pretty far on the outskirts of the current metro area. Having nothing to do other than participate in the Sisyphean task of continuing to send out resumes and whatnot, I decided to do a dry run over to their office. It took about an hour each way, but I'm glad I did it, if only because the directions they provided were really quite poor. At one point, they told me to go onto the train platform, when what they really meant was go past the train platform. As a result of trusting their directions over my gut, I spent about 15 minutes of my dry run walking the length of a wholly-deserted train platform and back. I only turned around because it didn't seem to be coming to an end anytime soon; I'm half-certain that had I kept going, I would've ended up in Narnia. Ah, employer fail #4, how ubiquitous you are for some strange reason.

There was one another incredibly annoying thing about their office location, which I'm noting just because it's a pet peeve of mine. Their office was located in a corporate park of sorts, and the sidewalk leading to its entrance sloped upward. However, as the parking lot (and presumably the buildings therein) were located on flat ground, the division between the sidewalk and the parking lot was a grassy embankment that naturally got smaller and smaller as you walked further uphill down the sidewalk towards the parking lot entrance. If I had ended up working at this place, every single day I would've had to walk for about two blocks longer than necessary (once block to get to the parking lot entrance, and the other looping back to the building entrance) than if they had just not included the grassy embankment at all, or at least put in some stone steps so I could circumvent the parking lot entrance altogether.

In any case, armed with the knowledge that Narnia was not on the list of landmarks indicating I was heading the right way to their office, I returned the next day for my interview. The first strange thing I noted was that the organization was not listed in the building's directory. I didn't think it was that weird that it wouldn't be engraved on the big stone slab outside, as that kind of recognition could reasonably be reserved for large firms, but isn't a little placard in the building's directory a given? I knew the suite number in spite of this oddity, so I went up to the second floor. The building was eerily deserted, which was rendered even more unfortunate by the labyrinthine hallways that didn't follow any logical design pattern. There were inexplicable walls in places where they didn't have to exist, making me take another path and take, say, three right turns to continue walking down the same way. Despite being a little concerned that the architectural craziness would make me late, I arrived with 10 minutes to spare.

Employer Fail #22: How hard is it to get yourself listed in the building directory?

Once there, I introduced myself at the front desk and was given another generic form to fill out. After finishing it, I attempted to sit there and read, but the secretary insisted on having possibly the most pointless conversation of the year with me. And I paraphrase from memory:

"Oh, you're reading that book. I saw it in the bookstore and I heard it's pretty good!"
"Yeah, I'm learning a lot."
"One of my friends read it and she said she was going to loan it to me. I love things about Nazis and the occult."
"Uh... this doesn't have Nazis... or the occult. It's about the Congo."
"Oh! Well, it looked just like that one! The cover was the same! It had a skeleton on the cover."
"This is a portrait..."
"Oh, well, it was the same colors... But anyway, I hear that's a good book."

I was left wondering whether she meant my book or whatever novelized version of Wolfenstein her friend had referred to her. I guess this lends credence to the "never judge a book by its cover" adage, especially in the case that you can't recognize its cover.

Then, about ten minutes after my interview was supposed to commence, the interviewer appeared out of some kind of bare-bones office that looked like it was hollowed out of the wall. She took my application from the secretary and told me to follow her, pronouncing my name incorrectly in the process. I began to correct her when she cut me off mid-word, snapping, "Come with me, V." So much for feeling valued.

Employer Fail #23: Your organization's interviewers act like they kick puppies for fun.

In a different way, this interview was as much of a farce as the phone-interview-that-wasn't. I was asked a bunch of generic interview questions such as "Rate your communication skills on a scale from 1 to 10," and "How do you define success?" The interviewer was clearly not paying attention to my answers or how they reflected on my communication skills, as she was staring at a piece of notebook paper in her hands and occasionally scribbling in it, though not in tune with my answers. I was actually a little offended when I replied that the person I admired most was my grandfather, because he always did whatever was best for others regardless of the effort it required on his part, and she could only muster an oblivious "Uh-huh" as an acknowledgment of my existence.

Employer Fail #24: Why bother having an interview if you're not going to pay attention to my responses to your banal questions? Why not just cast bones and determine whom you're going to hire that way, if anything that's said is irrelevant to the task at hand?

Then, after she got bored, ran out of generic interview questions, or finished her makeshift Sudoku puzzle, (or all of the above) she gave me a small, well-rehearsed shpiel about the organization and what they did. This was shocking. Although advertising itself as a consulting firm (it even had "consulting" in the name!), the organization was nothing of the sort. Instead, it was a business-to-business sales contractor, i.e. an organization that companies pay to harass other companies about using their products. Yet, nowhere was this previously mentioned, and the aforementioned techno-horror website insisted that it was a consulting firm.

Employer Fail #25: Lying about what your organization actually does, if not explicitly, then by virtue of omission or misnomers.

I was told that I was the last candidate to be interviewed, that they would decide which candidates were to be called back in a few hours, and would let me know by 3:00 that afternoon. My interview was for 11:00 and started at 11:10; I walked out of the office at 11:25. On the way out, a uniformed man with a handcart rode the elevator down with me. He seemed perplexed by the presence of another person in the building, probably because Big Lou told him that for his sake, if anyone found out about their organ-harvesting operation, he'd never see his kids again. For his sake, then, I didn't ask about the contents of the crates on the handcart. He failed to hold a door for me, even though I had previously held another door for him. As expected, I didn't get a call back.

Expressing my disappointment to my mother the next day, she brought up something that has since started to make a lot of sense: everything about this organization sounds like some kind of shell company that only pretends to hire people to keep up appearances. As I ran back over the facts, everything started to fit into place. Sure, the following things are only circumstantial, but it really does make you wonder:

1) The impressively noncommittal and non-descriptive website.
2) I was always told to speak to one of two secretaries, alliteratively initialed JJ and AA. I only ever had email contact with JJ in my repeated forays into communicating with them--I'm not sure AA really exists. Not quite a smoking gun, but still strange.
3) No listing in the building's directory.
4) A tiny office that presumably couldn't fit all the employees they purportedly had, especially if they were "rapidly-expanding." I saw a front desk/reception area, the office/interview room, a small floor area, and a conference room that didn't even have walls around it, but was rather more like a large corner cubicle. Furthermore, the interview room I went into was empty, except for two chairs and a boomerang-shaped white table of surfboard dimensions.
5) Even though I was told that they were interviewing candidates the entire week and that I was the last candidate to be interviewed, I got to the office 10 minutes early and did not see anyone exit the office during my time there. At my other interviews, when multiple candidates are processed in a short period of time, they are crammed in like schedule sardines. This remains the only interview I have been to at which I did not see another candidate at any point.
6) Aside from the secretary and interviewer, the office had no other signs of human life, except that at one point a man in a suit came in, walked one way, then another way, and then exited the office. The secretary said nothing to him, so it's not really clear whether or not he was an employee or just the building tech guy of some sort.
7) At the interview, I was told that decisions would be made quickly, and a group would be hired due to a pressing need. Multiple days a week, I see the exact same listing I initially applied to on Monster. This has been the case every single week since I initially applied--and is probably the biggest indicator that something is dishonest, if not flat-out wrong.

Employer Fail #25: Being a shell company or a front to write off fabricated losses for tax purposes. And if you are going to be this, then at least don't bother to get people to apply to your organization for legitimacy's sake. You're just wasting their time, and yours along with it.

Chapter 2: The Ordeal

If it wasn't for this chapter, this blog probably would have no reason for existing. Everything else, while full of hilarity, has been mild, including the aforementioned six-hour basket of lies, in comparison to this. But this, this was a low blow. Yet, despite that fact, I think I bear less ill will in general to this organization, and the employees therein, than I do towards any other place I've had to endure the application process with. Those in charge of making the hiring decision actually seemed genuinely interested in me and what I had to bring to the table--at least until they weren't.

I was aware of this organization's existence even before they arrived at a local job fair, one that was more than a short walk away. Yet, they were coming, and I made it a point to talk with their representatives nonetheless. The rest of the job fair was full of organizations I had no interest in, so I made the trek solely for one conversation. Before even introducing myself, I asked, "So, the view from your offices is pretty killer?" The representative I voiced that opinion to was taken aback--apparently he didn't expect anyone to have known where their organization was located. But I did. Maybe that gave me a step up. That struck up a conversation, and given that I had already done my research, he couldn't really tell me anything new, short of the fact that they would look over my resume right away. And when he said right away, he meant it. He glanced at it, his eyes lit up, he showed his co-representative, and they stonewalled everyone else in line waiting to hear their shpiel to schedule an interview with me.

There was a minor issue in that I had to be at work in about half an hour at that point, and then would have to make my way all the way back to the site of the job fair for the interview, but that I did. A bigger problem was that they told me that they would hold the interview in the same large, multi-purpose building holding the job fair, but didn't tell me where.

Employer Fail #-4 (or #15): Not giving detailed interview directions.

After returning to the building after work and stumbling around, I finally found a makeshift sign informing me that interviews were, in fact, being held behind the large steel double-doors. Although my interview was scheduled for 4:30, they were predictably running incredibly late, and I was asked politely to sit tight repeatedly. Eventually, though, I had the interview, first with one of the representatives, and then the other. They generally ate everything about me up, and given that they were interviewing two candidates at a time and then just switching, but they continued talking to me rather than concluding my interview (I think they handed me off to one another about 4 times, meaning that my interview actually lasted twice as long as anyone else's), I figured I was some sort of frontrunner, at least among the candidates they encountered at said job fair. I continued chatting (it could hardly be described as interviewing at that point, instead we were talking about the location, traffic, and generally conversing like friends) with the representatives for a long time, and when all the other interviews were finished, I was asked if I would like to take an aptitude test so they could fast-track my application. I agreed, but asked how long it would take first. That turned out to be both a good and a bad move.

The test was slated to take about an hour. I figured that it would be about 6:30 by the time I finished, but when I said this aloud, the response was, "Holy shit? 6:30? We need to make our flight!" I guess that meant no test. Apparently the representatives had lost track of time, and needed to fly home. They gave me rushed instructions to contact the organization's HR department, told me what to send along, and left in a hurry.

Later that night, I sent an email, enclosing the standard resume/cover letter/transcript/writing sample/attached relevant work. The organization is a research institute that uses econometrics to solve quandaries given to them by local and state governments, and I had a fair bit of prior work to choose from.

It took a while before I got a reply. I think at this point, in retrospect, I can say the ordeal had truly begun. In my cover letter, I noted that I had spoken to the two representatives and asked to arrange an on-site interview, including taking whatever test they wanted me to take. Given that I would only be near their offices for about a week during a break from classes, it was imperative that they actually scheduled my interview for the right date. Weeks passed. I began to get nervous.

Employer Fail #16: Loafing on scheduling an interview. How hard is it to add me to a datebook?

On the day before I left to spend my week-long break in the vicinity of their offices, I finally received an email. Unfortunately, given the type of email it was, I almost wish I hadn't received anything. Yes, the interview was scheduled for an acceptable date and time, but they got both the position I was applying for wrong, and were asking me to send them writing samples, work samples, and coding samples before the interview. I had already sent writing samples and work samples, and during the initial interview I was told that work samples would be fine as a replacement for coding samples, provided that the work had the results of coding in it.

Employer Fail #17: Not paying close enough attention to my emails to know which position I was applying for, or which of the application materials I was required to submit and had already submitted.

Frantic, I shot an email back, about how I was actually applying for this other position, that I had already sent the samples, and that as I explained in the first interview, I didn't have coding samples available (I had done the coding work for the couple of projects that required it either on computers that didn't belong to me, or that did but had since died ignoble deaths) in raw form. I attached the samples again, for good measure. I had no idea what this meant for my interview status, and I never got a reply acknowledging either my new email, or that they had made a mistake in their message.

A few days later, I arrived at their offices for my interview. The front desk secretary was the same woman that had emailed me my interview time, and she informed me that she received my email concerning the correct position I was applying for. An apology would have killed her, apparently.

The interview process generally involved me going around and talking to various employees about what they do and what I've done. Some were nice and interested, some pretended to be nice and interested, and some were too busy to really care about my presence, despite being assigned to interview me. Over the course of the 4 hours that I spent there, I ended up talking to about 10 different employees, or about 1/7th of their total staff. By the end, I had no questions of my own, and was giving the same few answers to everyone. Refreshingly, most didn't ask hackneyed interview questions, but were just excited to discuss their own work and get my take on it. I would have been annoyed that my interview was scheduled for 1:00-3:00 but ran twice as long, but having endured "The Ruse" about a month before, I just couldn't get worked up about an extra two hours. Furthermore, it ran long because I had to sit around a lot as people finished their meetings and got ready to see me, as opposed to because they decided to up and lie to me.

The first man I interviewed with, however, managed to terrify me by talking about his own research, and then giving me a crazy statistics question out of the blue. I had no pen and paper, and I probably couldn't have done it even if I did, so I offered up a wrong answer, which displeased him. He was pretty high up in the organization, so I thought I had doomed my chances then and there, but everyone else was sufficiently understanding and laid back to ease my mind.

What also eased my mind was the aforementioned test. It was really rather simple, except for the last question, which required me to remember a formula I hadn't used in 2 years and had correspondingly forgotten. That, above all else, gave me confidence that counterbalanced the blindsiding of the first interviewer.

The only other things of note were that one of the interviewers mocked me for wearing a suit, as their employees generally wore t-shirts and shorts or a polo at the very top end, and that at the interview's conclusion, I was told I would be notified one way or another the following week.

I did get notified the following week. But not with a job offer, or a rejection, but rather an email from the aforementioned front desk secretary that had two further "evaluations" attached to it. Once again, they were of the 24-hour timed variety. One was a writing assignment, the other involved data manipulation in Excel that was easy, but was also easy to get wrong if you rushed through it too quickly. Luckily, I had little in the way of other things to do that day, so I was able to take my time and make sure that I didn't commit any harmful oversights. Still, employer fail #3 was now in full effect. Upon submitting these, I was once again subjected to radio silence of the email variety. No responses, neither to my completed assignments, nor to the follow-up emails I sent to the representative/interviewer that was handling my candidacy and the front desk secretary.

Employer Fail #18: General communication failure.

A few weeks after that, I got another email from the front desk secretary, not acknowledging receipt of my previous evaluation assignments, but rather containing a whole new one. This one was a more involved endeavor, requiring me to read a technical document and then summarize and evaluate it. While it wasn't difficult, it did involve writing about 10 pages' worth of material, again in a 24-hour period. I finished that, sent it in within a few hours of receiving it, and sent it in, only to be shut out again.

Over a month passed. I eventually stopped considering the possibility that anyone would get back to me, in part because I had heard that someone I had once taken a class with had heard back from them in the affirmative about a week after my on-site interview (and presumably hers as well). If she hadn't been subjected to additional tests, what was going on? Probably nothing good. It seemed to me that they were just searching for a reason to reject me.

(The thing that really stung here is that she was a Psych major. And yes, say what you will about a liberal arts education, and so on, but this is primarily an economics-based firm that deals with econometric analysis. I don't know how rigorous quantitative courses in the psychology curriculum are, but to this day I remain baffled as to how she got a position for which econometric aptitude was the primary qualifier.)

Then, one day, I got a phone call. Or rather, a voicemail, as I apparently missed the call. It was from the employee I had initially talked to at the job fair. The voicemail didn't say much, just that I should contact him. I was going to do just that, when I received an email from him as well. It said, in its body: "Hey. Somehow we got busy here and completely forgot about you." No apology. No explanation for what that meant, no indication of whether I had gotten the job, just in a delayed manner, or whether they had forgotten to inform me of my rejection. No explanation for the series of evaluation assignments they made me do, or the silence I was subjected to in the meanwhile. And when I replied concerning a continuation of the application process, I got nothing once more.

In 6th grade, in one of those large textbooks that functions as a collection of random short stories and grammar lessons, I once had to read a tale from Africa that had the moral of, "A man is not truly dead until he is forgotten." I think it involved ghosts of some sort, and probably skeletons. Now, I don't think this ordeal killed me, as it would be pretty weird if I were typing this as some sort of Africa folktale ghost/skeleton. But, it did take the wind out of my sails. As you may have noticed, I can't even try to find the humor in this whole situation, even many months in retrospect. It was a waste of time, through and through, and a wholly unfair waste of time with no clarity and no closure. But don't worry, at least it gets a lot more hilarious and less depressing from here on out.

Employer fail #19: Forgetting I exist, especially after being very much aware of my existence and all the things that entails for months.

Mini-Fail #1: The Hey-Guys-I-Have-Trouble-Understanding-Things-Like-Numbers-and/or-Words

In terms of chronology, this little series of incidents actually took place before the six-hour interview of death, but it's a little too trifling to really feel like a genuine fail in my mind.

At the aforementioned job fair, before encountering representative-that-is-apparently-terrified-of-job-fairs, I walked past a table with some really enthusiastic guys attempting to capture an audience, or whatever you call it when you're making a pitch to desperate college students about attempting to gain a position at your organization. I didn't really have much of an interest in their firm (medical software/IT), but as I stopped to briefly chat with one of the presenters, I could see him trying to peer at the resumes I was holding in my hand so I saved him the trouble of straining his eyes by handing him one. He looked over it. "Wow, Phi Beta Kappa as a junior!" he said before adding in a weirdly suggestive tone, "You know, I was Phi Beta Kappa as a senior." I didn't quite know how to respond. Did he expect me to invite him down the block for coffee because of this? I probably just stood there with a vaguely perturbed look on my face. I guess my resume made some kind of impression on him, because he started making a pitch to me in a frenzy. I gave him my email address so that he could set up a phone interview, and mercifully took my leave before his enthusiasm triggered some kind of chain reaction that would have killed him--or me.

As I walked away and amongst the other tables and booths at the job fair, I heard some kind of hubbub behind me. Like, someone running, or yelling a name, or something. Turns out it was Mr. Enthusiastic, running full speed after me, his suit jacket flapping behind him and making him look like some kind of creepily gung-ho superhero.

"Wait, wait! I forgot to ask you, are you legally allowed to work within the US?"
"Yes?"
"Oh. Okay. Good."

He walked back to his booth, his jacket no longer resembling a cape.

Maybe a week later, I got an email from said firm's HR department, telling me that they would be doing phone interviews over the next 4 days, and if I could send them a schedule of my availability between such and such hours. Given a time zone difference between their company headquarters and my location at the time, I sent them a very detailed message noting said time difference and telling them what times they were allowed to call both according to their local time zone, and mine. I figured this was foolproof. I also figured it was foolproof that I wrote explicitly in the email: "On these days, I have work starting at 2:30 (my local time). I do not know how long you expect the phone interview to take, but I would appreciate it if you scheduled my interview for far enough in advance so that I did not have to come in late for work." In fact, 2:30-4:00 was the only time I gave them for the day they ended up scheduling the interview for that I was not available.

A few days later, I get a confirmation email: "Your interview has been scheduled for 2:30 on Thursday." 2:30. Not 2:20, which would have proven to me that they could at least understand how numbers worked, even if they didn't possess the ability to read my helpful note about not wanting to miss work. 2:30. Classy.

Employer Fail #12: Not being able to understand numbers, or perhaps the words "these are the times when I am unavailable" to the extent that you end up scheduling interviews explicitly when I told you I couldn't do them.

If they didn't care about my availability, why even make me submit a schedule for their consideration in the first place? And furthermore, if they did care about my availability but making me miss the first half-hour of work was the only way they could square the scheduling circle, why not send a thoughtful note informing me that that was the case and apologizing for the inconvenience? At this point my indifference towards their organization became contempt--why would anyone want to work for a place where HR can't read or identify numbers properly (or both)?

Ah, but this wasn't it. Prior to my phone interview, they expected me to take a personality test of sorts. If I knew what I was getting into, I would have had the screen capture key ready, because the images would have been priceless to demonstrate my point. The personality test contained a lot of generic questions that you might find on a Myers-Briggs or something similar, but it also contained completely off the wall questions that made no sense. Here are a couple, reconstructed from memory rather accurately because of their ridiculousness:

Sun is to basketball as moon is to ____

A) Football
B) Tennis ball
C) Shuttlecock
D) Frisbee

What in the world could that even refer to? I mean, if golf ball or volleyball were possible choices, that would've been one thing. But as it is, this just seems like an attempt at pseudo-Freudian divination. "Oh, look, applicant #481516 selected 'tennis ball.' You know what that means. He's a secret communist, and communists never do well in this position!" Maybe the test concludes that if you select "frisbee," you're an alcoholic. Who knows. Moving on:

Tiger is to hunt as fish is to ___

A) Gar
B) Marlin
C) Tuna
D) Mackerel

Okay, so, let's see. First off, the analogy is presumably reversed. A tiger is a type of cat, and in this question it takes the primary position in the first formulation. Yet, all of the choices are types of fish, but they are in the latter place in the second formulation. Even if we consider it to mean "fish" the verb, so it can parallel "hunt," we end up with a series of bizarre questions. Are they referring to tigers hunting and want to know which of the fishes listed fishes for other fish? Are they saying that tigers get hunted and want to know which of the listed fishes are fished for? Are they making all of this up, branding some of us closeted crossdressers for selecting "gar" and then recommending that we get hired for the sake of promoting office diversity while laughing all the way to the bank? Curiouser and curiouser. However, none of it is as ridiculous as this existential trainwreck:

All is to some as some is to ___

A) None
B) Half
C) Some
D) A few

If you choose "none," you're hopelessly depressed and will only jeopardize office morale. If you choose "half," you're a psychotic perfectionist whose commitment to exactitude will irreparably drag down your productivity. If you choose "some," you don't make sense, since "some is to some" doesn't really work in an analogy, but they'll probably hire you anyway. If you choose "a few," you're a haphazard lout who can't be bothered to effectively quantify anything. Hey, I think I'm getting the hang of this. Too little too late, though.

Employer Fail #13: Subjecting applicants to personality tests that are more obnoxious than the most poorly-composed quizzes on Quizilla.

Maybe they should've just linked me to a "Which Twilight character are you?" quiz on Facebook and gone from there.

Of course, what can you expect from a personality test website that features this guy as their front-and-center image? What kind of message does that send? "If you use our software, only men that sit leaning uncomfortably forward with creepy vaguely-pedophile smiles will be recommended for hiring!" Sounds like a winner to me. Or, as we can see by their banner image, "We're all different, except for our inability to wear anything but solid colors and look anything but immensely uncomfortable as we form a weird makeshift human centipede!" Lastly, if you go here you'll see one of the classiest sleight-of-hands for self-promotion I've ever encountered. Apparently, an in-house study of their own software revealed the employees selected by their arcane methods were more effective than other employees? Nah, there's no conflict of interest there. Furthermore, the chart they conveniently provide clearly lists "sales" on the Y-axis, yet the explanatory blurb writes that all average "productivity" is enhanced by virtue of hiring according to the software recommendations. But what if your firm doesn't do sales? Answer: Who cares, you probably selected "marlin" on question #23 of our personality assessment, you secret communist! We wouldn't sell to you anyway!

Aside from the aforementioned poor timing, there isn't really much to report about the phone interview. The man I talked to was incredibly humorless, which made for a pretty dreary experience. My lack of enthusiasm for their whole operation was almost certainly transparent, and I knew that I had lost the position just about as soon as he asked me if I was willing to permanently relocate to their company headquarters outside of Madison, WI and all I could muster was a "Well, if that's what the job requires..." I mean, there's not really any way that I'm getting excited about Madison, of all things, and the job is 80% travel, so it seems very harsh to require me to put down money for a lease in an area I don't really care for if I'm going to be away from the place I'm paying rent for 4 days a week.

Employer Fail #14: Requiring employees whose job consists mostly of traveling to live right by company headquarters, as opposed to living maybe a couple of hours out and commuting if, for whatever reason, they really need to come to the office.

Interestingly, 3 acquaintances of mine now work for this organization. I guess they answered "shuttlecock" when given the chance.