But I promised I wouldn't be cynical about it, and I'm sticking to that.
I had my doubts when, after wrting down three specific things that I wanted to take away from my first visit to Career Services at my
alma mater, the first thing Skip (the career counselor) asked me was "what do you want out of this visit?" But, hell, I told myself this is all part of the process, just play ball, kid, and everything will come out fine in the end. So I explained how I had been wandering a bit, and that now I was ready for a job that most people would consider a career, and how the areas of Law and Consulting seemed appealing to me. I should have, perhaps, been more clear that I wasn't really "looking for the right job," so much as a job, preferably one that was more intellectually engaging, and certainly better paying than the low-brow crap I so regularly settle for. Obviously, you can't just walk in there and say "fuck making a difference, I just wanna get paaaaaaaaaiiiiid," but I did write down "Gain any advantages Career Services could give me in the competitive job market," as one of my stated goals, which is fairly direct, I feel. But I guess not, so my bad; now I have learned for my next visit, no reason to be cynical about it.
But when the guy pulled out the stick figure diagram, it became really hard to stay upbeat. Here I am, following everyone's advice to not be such a self-reliant (and self-obsessed), freewheeling cynic, and coming to a Career Services office I had so brashly assumed could do nothing for me (really, you need to understand that for me, seeking advice from these people was like cutting my own balls off) and this gentleman, professionally employed, mind you, was handing me a piece of paper with a stick figure on it. The stick figure was a diagram to the job search process. No, I'm not joking. The head was "Job Needs," that is, things like salary, work environment, etc, the arms were "skills" and "interests" and the legs were "creative" and "construction." If that makes no sense to you, join the club; as far as I could tell, the legs were where you started (like, researching different jobs out there, maybe?), then the arms added, I guess, more options, and then the head was the criteria used to filter through your research.
Now, I could go off on a huge, cynical (and extremely funny) tirade about this, but I am not going to. Adding humor to this encounter would only serve to soften its offensivenss. Simply put, the entire encounter was unacceptable. I came to career services with a series of stated goals:
- Learn about what I need to have on my resume and cover letter to best improve my chances at getting a legal or consulting job;
- Acquire any knowledge or advantage that Career Services at Dartmouth could give to graduates of that college in the job search process;
- Restore my faith in he job application process as a means of accurately selecting candidates for employment.
Their attempt to help me attain these goals was to draw me a stick figure, the sort of thing you got in 4th grade, to teach you long division. I can think of no professional interaction in which such a complete and utter side-stepping of services requested would meet with anything but immediate termination or a due-diligence lawsuit. If Dartmouth is one of the best schools in the nation, and they give you stick figures, then just how bad are career services at Fitchburg State? That might sound cynical, but it's not; just my honest and objective analysis based on the facts at hand.
Now, I, unwilling to be sent off with this crude diagram, a good handshake, and a grumpy little storm cloud over my head, continued to press Skip for actual measures by which I might improve my job chances. I matched his circumlocutions with my own, waltzing him elegantly into a corner, where I managed to get him to say that "certain areas are harder to penetrate than others," which (and, thanks to his lack of specificity, I am forced to merely assume) means that the jobs I want are hard to get. I pressed him further for facts, and eventually, I was given one: A 3.46 GPA is "worth putting on a resume." Now, if you'd asked me, I'd have told you that putting a "3.46 GPA" on a resume you expected to get you a career would be like putting "six-inch penis" on a resume you expected to get you a job as a porn star. So perhaps I did gain some of the information had wanted out of this interview, if only a passing scintilla.
On the whole, what I found the most disrespectful aspect of the interview was the lack of directness; like the way in which I was continually being steered toward non-profit and low-paying jobs. If this was his left-handed way of telling me I was fucked if I wanted a high-paying job, I would have appreciated a straight-forward, fact-based explication of that, rather than being forced to try and read the between the lines of his gentle and well-practiced euphemism. Again, perhaps I did not elicit such honesty from him because I was not forthcoming with it myself. Generally, I don't generally suffer from being overly oblique to people (in fact, quite the opposite), but perhaps in this environment, I need to just come out and say "Based on standardized test scores, I am very smart, and I want my workload and income to reflect that;" at the very least, I should have said "I want to make more money than I was making this summer in a bike shop."
So what I have really gained from this interview is experience for next time. Instead of keeping the assumption that I am smarter than most career services officials to myself, and remaining silent while they wax pleonastic on stick figures and antiquated job search software, I am going to cut them boldly off and explain directly that I want a job that pays well, that will make me work hard, and that will reflect how much money changed hands to get me my education. I'll say I have no qualms about working for
anyone (oil, tobacco, insurance, you name it). And if they can't show me how write the best goddamn cover letter and resume that I can possibly have, or they can't introduce me to the most influential alums in that field, or that can't teach me the best inteview skills, then...
...well, actually, I have no
apodosis for that conditional. As an alum, I most likely have less leverage than I would have as a student. I better hope that my next career counsellor will respect my honesty and directness, without being too put off by the insensitivity and pompousness that they imply.
