Jumping through hoops
Published on 10 Aug 2007 at 3:15 pm |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Manifest Masquerade.
It’s excessively warm for this part of the country even for August so I spent a big chunk of yesterday sitting by the pool catching up with an old friend instead of working. Conversation turned to a career related training process she’s working through, and I mentioned that I’d looked into it but been turned off by the unrealistic application requirements.
I’ve forgotten the particulars of that process, but it was one of several I ran into a few years ago which were very similar. In one case I started to apply for a job with a major corporate employer but the application was *very* long and included absolutely required contact information for every manager I’d reported to since high school graduation. Another required the exact address and dates of residence for every place I’ve ever lived. These paper forms strongly stated that N/A or "unavailable" were unacceptable answers and required me to sign a statement that the information was correct and complete. Web based forms are even worse, since they typically won’t let you complete the form at all without complete answers in the exact form they expect. I keep expecting to find "Have you stopped beating your wife?" as a required question on one of those forms.
I remarked on this and semi-rhetorically asked my friend why these organizations feel they need this information. She said, "Ahh, don’t take it personnally, they just make you jump through a bunch of hoops to show you belong in that group." I, of course, have heard such answers before, but this time, it hit me that my negative reaction can be summed up this way: All apart from the difficulty/impossibilty of the supplying the information they request, making me jump through hoops by requiring that I expend great effort (or lie) to supply something they don’t need, is a clear cut case of bargaining in bad faith. I feel better now about all the applications and "opportunities" of that kind I’ve passed up over the years.
-- Ringo
| Computer Recyclers |
|---|
| Pre-Owned Macintosh Computers, Parts, & Service |
|
Clearance iMac G4s & G5s 10% off on all PPC imacs in stock during February. |
