borgesandi
04-05-2014, 07:48 AM
Just one… That was all it took… One response, one successful interview, one job…
If only life were so simple.
As he stared at his CV – those two sides of paper summarising his life to date - John began to question the value of it all.
Years metamorphosed into lines and letters on a page. Experiences transformed themselves into stock phrases - struggling to express some glimmer of meaning beyond the blandness of their all too dry context.
Was this really him? Did those blotches of ink do justice to the presence they came to signify? He certainly didn’t think so.
Sure, it showed his education, his motivations and aspirations, his interests and experiences, his job history to date, everything an employer might need to know. And yet it didn’t ring true… Though the boxes were all ticked, his mind ticked on.
A thousand thoughts and insights lay inside each carefully selected word. Yet despite their uniqueness, these experiences were cast aside, brutalised in the most heinous of manners in their categorization into language so mundane it’s a wonder it conveys anything beyond the context attached to it by the reader.
Everyone is diligent or organised, proactive or enthusiastic… But what do these epithets really mean? Like leeches they sap from experience - feeding on a thousand different moments in order to take form, yet conveying none of these in themselves… They are seen all too often, though the same is seldom true of the acts they reference.
John mused how some people will work for weeks on a project and regard themselves as diligent because of it. Others might do the same task over the course of a (lengthy) day and would be equally justified in claiming to hold the same trait. Did laziness lie in the mind of the person who only dedicated a day to a project, or the person who dedicated small amounts of time over several days? Perhaps in neither. Perhaps in both.
Of course, none of this would have mattered had there been enough jobs in the first place… With over 100 applicants for most roles the odds definitely weren’t in his favour… And with a surplus of labor and a deficit of jobs, the CV at which he gazed discontentedly became all the more important.
That straw man, his commodification of himself - which stripped away at his very essence in pursuit of economy - was to be sent out to be collated, scrutinized and most likely discarded by those more fortuitous than himself.
The unresponsivity of silence, permeated by fresh applications can be a bitter if not unsurprising cycle. Sadly, it was one John had now grown accustomed to and expectant of. After all, who leaves feedback about an unpurchased product?
With a sigh, he gathered his fortitude, attached the CV and hit send.
Just one… That was all it took… One response, one successful interview, one job…
If only life were so simple.
As he stared at his CV – those two sides of paper summarising his life to date - John began to question the value of it all.
Years metamorphosed into lines and letters on a page. Experiences transformed themselves into stock phrases - struggling to express some glimmer of meaning beyond the blandness of their all too dry context.
Was this really him? Did those blotches of ink do justice to the presence they came to signify? He certainly didn’t think so.
Sure, it showed his education, his motivations and aspirations, his interests and experiences, his job history to date, everything an employer might need to know. And yet it didn’t ring true… Though the boxes were all ticked, his mind ticked on.
A thousand thoughts and insights lay inside each carefully selected word. Yet despite their uniqueness, these experiences were cast aside, brutalised in the most heinous of manners in their categorization into language so mundane it’s a wonder it conveys anything beyond the context attached to it by the reader.
Everyone is diligent or organised, proactive or enthusiastic… But what do these epithets really mean? Like leeches they sap from experience - feeding on a thousand different moments in order to take form, yet conveying none of these in themselves… They are seen all too often, though the same is seldom true of the acts they reference.
John mused how some people will work for weeks on a project and regard themselves as diligent because of it. Others might do the same task over the course of a (lengthy) day and would be equally justified in claiming to hold the same trait. Did laziness lie in the mind of the person who only dedicated a day to a project, or the person who dedicated small amounts of time over several days? Perhaps in neither. Perhaps in both.
Of course, none of this would have mattered had there been enough jobs in the first place… With over 100 applicants for most roles the odds definitely weren’t in his favour… And with a surplus of labor and a deficit of jobs, the CV at which he gazed discontentedly became all the more important.
That straw man, his commodification of himself - which stripped away at his very essence in pursuit of economy - was to be sent out to be collated, scrutinized and most likely discarded by those more fortuitous than himself.
The unresponsivity of silence, permeated by fresh applications can be a bitter if not unsurprising cycle. Sadly, it was one John had now grown accustomed to and expectant of. After all, who leaves feedback about an unpurchased product?
With a sigh, he gathered his fortitude, attached the CV and hit send.
Just one… That was all it took… One response, one successful interview, one job…