Life is a rough thing...for all of us in many ways. Whether it's being misunderstood, misaligned, misbegotten or just plain miserable, it happens. It's a classic American portrait to drown one's sorrows at the nearest pub and then, after falling from total grace or being visited by an angel, all becomes well in the world.
Hollywood endings, no matter how wholesome, are unreal. Drunks become drunker and eventually run the risk of wrecking their families, homes and even their lives. The so-called lucky ones litter the streets as our nation's homeless. Even they once were known less demeaning as hobos. Hobos lived a life of adventure, riding America's boxcars to unknown destinations, cooking with their hobo buddies, situated around a roaring trash can fire. Today, it would be described simply homeless men and a trash can fire (arson). Romanticism in America is dead.
But this isn't about that. This is about dreams. Dreams live and dreams die. Dreams are what keep us going day through day. Dreams are what build this country and lead to new ideas, new products, new innovations. And even though the public view of the world is much less romantic, do we still hold value in dreams? I think that the answer in some ways is obviously yes but unfortunately, in others, a solid no. For example, those in corporate America have become far too reliant on judging candidates simply by their resumes. More often than not, they make personal value judgments about candidates and reject them simply for being, in their minds, “overqualified.” Now what this really means is that they think the person in question is going to get bored in the job and leave early. I know they say that they know this from experience but really, how can you judge any one individual without ever speaking to them?
Corporate recruiters and hiring managers, I'm sure, feel like they know what they are doing and who's to blame them? They probably get hundreds of resumes, even for one position, and in that deluge they are desperate to pare things down as tightly as possible. Maybe more attention needs to paid to cover letters and less on resumes. And if you are working with a recruiter, as is often the case, their should be a chance to write a cover letter to sell yourself, rather than just relying on the resume which doesn't tell the whole story. Deserves some further thought.
Posted by robdesign at March 15, 2006 06:40 PM | TrackBack
i guess this means you're hitting some walls out there - although i wish you weren't. talking of dreams, you were in one of mine recently.
Posted by: caroline a. at March 20, 2006 07:57 PM