Business Etiquette Is To Etiquette As Military Music Is To Music
[Published Or Not? If so, it was in the Knoxville News-Sentinel after February 2009]
When I was laid off for the first time in 2000, I was downcast. But I soon got down to business: I began checking the newspaper and Web sites for job openings in my field (radiation protection) and sending out my resume. Within a couple of months, I had four job interviews. I got dressed up, put extra copies of my resume in my tote, and showed up on time for each interview.
Afterward, I waited for notification that I had or hadn’t gotten the job. One company (Wackenhut) sent me a nice “thanks, but no thanks” letter; it was a form letter, but it was actually signed by a human. But for three of the jobs, I waited in vain: nobody called me and nobody wrote me so much as an E-mail message to tell me that I was, as they say, not successful. I was puzzled, because in my early career years, most companies sent replies even to mere application submissions and of course they always got back to interviewees about whether they were hired or not. This was considered to be standard business etiquette. But apparently there was a new drill.
I E-mailed one nonresponding company’s HR person, who E-mailed me back to say I didn’t get the job. I called another, who called me back to say ditto. When I called the third, I had to leave a message on the HR person’s answering machine. She never got back to me.
You can imagine which of the four companies I would have picked as the classiest and most professional.
Later during this layoff period, I interviewed at a large local university for a staff position. My interviewer kept me waiting for over 20 minutes as he walked around the multi-room office trying to find my application. Finally, he asked me if I would please come back another day. I was dumfounded. Since it had taken almost an hour to get there (I had taken a slow but sure route to be certain of arriving on time), I declined. I offered to fill out a new application, but he said no. Just before I left, somebody found my application in a room it never should have been in (because of potential contamination). I was hired after this interview, but the disorganization and discourtesy exhibited during the interview should have been a clue to me about how the office was run.
The second time I was laid off, in May 2007, the economic situation had changed. Since then I have had trouble finding open positions to interview for and then getting interviews for the few that have come open. I have therefore tried to get a job teaching math or physics at high schools or colleges. I interviewed at two schools, neither of which hired me; I got a pleasant businesslike E-mail message from one principal (Clinton High School), but nothing from the other. When I called the second school, the principal’s office receptionist told me nonchalantly that “a gentleman got that job”.
At one local college, I interviewed for a job teaching physics. After the interview, I waited in vain to hear the results. Months later, the job was advertised again, and again an interview was arranged for me. I heard that the successful candidate the first time had not worked out for them, so I was hopeful. Still, at the end of the interview, I pointed out that I had not heard from them after the first interview and I requested that they please let me know whatever they decided. They professed to be surprised that I had not been informed of the result after the earlier interview and promised that this time I would be. Still, it was no surprise to me when I did not hear from them.
The incident that really frosted my buns was an interview at yet another local college for an adjunct position teaching the history and methods of science. For this interview, I was to prepare a 20-minute demonstration lesson. They did not provide me with a syllabus or any other sort of content description, so I had to guess at what they wanted. I put together a lesson about counting systems, with special reference to how, e.g., a system with a relatively low base and a place scheme was advantageous in computer-related applications. The interview seemed to go well,
A few months ago, I got the first interview in my field that I have had in a year and a half, for a job that was part of the project I had been laid off from. I actually was acquainted with two of the interviewers and they told me I would hear something in perhaps 4 weeks. But now, over three months later, I have still heard nothing.
I realize that the business climate has changed, etc., etc. But still, when did it become okay to treat potential workers like dirt?
I Want a Makeover
[Published in the Knoxville News Sentinel, May 24, 2009]
I want a makeover.
I don’t mean the sort of fashion makeover they show on “What Not To Wear” — although I am sure that Stacy and Clinton would find much to criticize in my style, or lack thereof. I mean a world-facing makeover. I need it because after decades of gainful employment, I haven’t been able to find a full-time job in almost two years.
In my technical field, when a job opens up now it is hard to get an interview, however well qualified you may be. One competent colleague has had to leave Tennessee to work (while his wife remains in Oak Ridge). I wonder why we are having trouble finding jobs now; when I finished graduate school years ago, the economy was in recession too, but still I found a job quickly.
Other people our age have suggested that the problem may in fact be our age. A 65-year-old man I know confessed that he dyes his hair, saying that it was “just dreadful how you are treated” when you go gray. I was surprised, since he has spent his professional life teaching in colleges; why would academia, of all places, practice age discrimination?
Others have suggested that I should dye my hair to cover the gray and should liven up my professional wardrobe. I seriously considered this: appearances do matter and one should always be prepared to revisit one’s assumptions. But then the mental image this engendered stopped me cold. In my field, why would I need to look younger — i.e., hot and hip — instead of like the savvy, seen-it-all, can’t-pull-the-wool-over-my-eyes old dog that I am? I need makeover coaching so I can project “youth” and “experience” simultaneously.
It’s said that employers avoid hiring older workers because they do not want to be saddled with increased health care costs. I need to learn how to signal that I am healthy — maybe somehow work it into the conversation that I haven’t had the flu in years and don’t even have a cold some years. Maybe this could be in the context of emphasizing how reliable I am, as are most older workers (who tend not to have, e.g., childcare problems, romantic issues, etc.). Also, oldies of my fifty-something vintage mostly have a strong work ethic and I have always gotten high marks for productivity and diligence. I need some help to convey all this without sounding conceited.
Maybe my makeover should include some training in how to sell myself. At a recent job fair, dressed in business-serious attire, I strode in confidently with my head held high and gave a firm handshake to the screening interviewer. To me, the important thing was my answers to his checklist. E.g., could I run various radiation shielding codes? You bet! I admitted that I could not lift 50 pounds, but he said that was not really a requirement. So I thought I had just what they needed, but I did not get a full interview, much less the job. Gee, did I not project the right can-do attitude? Should I have tried to convince the interviewer that I was the answer to his prayers, or stated unequivocally that I can walk on water?
An essential makeover element should be prepping in how to project flexibility and pliability. It sounds too much like begging to say, “I’ll do anything you want me to” (besides which I am famous for refusing to do anything unethical), but surely I could hint at versatility and willingness to do the scut work. Maybe I could mention my graduate school job cleaning lab rat cages….
I’m the eagerest beaver you can find, and there are many like me. Somebody needs to start a makeover show for us.
Greetings from the Twilight Zone
[Published in the Knoxville News Sentinel after February 17, 2013]
Greetings from the Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone of Employment, that is, whose denizens used to have full-time jobs but now work only part-time or intermittently.
In the Zone, people work odd and arbitrary shifts. If you refuse, you may be assigned fewer and fewer hours. You may be assigned 12 hours a week — and then, with no reason given, be cut to 6 hours a week. Somehow there are always some fellow workers, even new hires, who get the plum shifts and many hours.
In the Zone, you read about people who demand annual raises in pay and benefits, plus performance bonuses. These are mainly government employees, including of course UT coaches. They may deserve raises, but their militance galls those in the Zone, who are taxed on their meager earnings and have no benefits. If we are sick, we lose pay. We get no raises at all. E.g., I and the other part-time tutors at a local college have earned the same hourly rate for at least five years: $10 an hour for no degree (student tutors), $12 for a bachelor’s, $14 for a master’s, and $16 for a PhD.
In the Zone, very many people have gray hair. Seeing younger folks here is no surprise because of their scant experience. But the rest skew older, most often just below Social Security age. It is stressful for people who worked hard and were deemed successful all their lives to be in such a fix, but by the same token they dig in and really earn their meager pay because they are worker bees.
In the Zone, people work at jobs frequently not in the field from which they were laid off. People not in the Zone often assume that you are retired. When asked what gave them that idea, they say that “Somebody” told them. If people don’t see you around the usual (work)places, they make assumptions — and sometimes tactless remarks. They mean well, but because they have always been “haves,” they are clueless about the “have-nots.”
In the Zone, you struggle to maintain professional memberships and certifications. I wrote a letter to my professional newsletter editor, analyzing membership fee increases, urging inclusion of the unemployed in the annual salary/job survey, and offering suggestions as to how the society might help its un- and under-employed. The editor refused to publish it. The society president offered advice on how to earn points toward recertification — but he had to retract it when contradicted by another officer. I.e., no help and no representation for us pariahs. The society seems at pains to present itself as containing only happy shiny fully employed members,
In the Zone, you feel lucky if you have a nest egg and participate in a medical plan from a job you had years ago. They will do until Social Security and Medicare kick in. You feel guilty seeing so many others without these backstops, even some in their forties who have to live with their parents.
In the Zone, you wonder how old friends working elsewhere are doing. They left because they couldn’t make a living here in East Tennessee. E.g,. the guy who commutes home every other weekend from South Carolina; his home stays in ET because his wife’s job is here. That’s no life for a 60+ man with a heart condition. In the Zone, you may feel like one of life’s losers as you struggle along. But there is some comfort: you may come to feel like one of life’s perserverers, life’s survivors, life’s tough guys. Ah, yes: what does not destroy me will make me strong.
