September 28, 2004

Re-evaluating Recruiting

As the sporadic and inconsistent updates to Rohit's Realm might suggest, I've been pretty preoccupied in recent weeks. Most of the effort has been going to exploring the different options I have in terms of a career following college and freaking out about the recruitment process and the prospect of not being a dependent next year. Having become intimately acquainted with much of the proceedings, I have come to one rather crucial conclusion: the recruitment process is by far one of the most ridiculous I have ever encountered.

Prior to this year, I neither knew or cared about how one goes about acquiring a job. It was something I would always see successive classes of seniors flip out about, but I was never a senior, so it was something I could effectively ignore with little effort, only having to put on a facade of sympathy when anyone I knew wanted to whine about it. Now, having begun the process myself, I wish I hadn't been such an unsympathetic asshole to the others who experienced it. It's brutal. Going from one inane and surprisingly undistinguishable information session to another, always dressed in business clothing, listening to the same arrogant, egotistical pricks asking the same asanine questions and prostituting themselves for the chance at a business card has made me realize one thing: I really don't want to do this!

If you think about it, the recruitment process really makes no sense at all. I mean, basically, what you're doing when you submit a résumé is asking for a chance to get grilled at a one or more interviews, in the vain hope that you won't make a complete ass out of yourself and possibly get a job offer, so you can work more. And that's if you're lucky! In fact, not just asking. Begging. I mean, to sum up any cover letter in a few words, I could just say: Please please please give me an interview! Come on! Please!?

Wait a minute! An interview? Forgive me, but what exactly is fun about an interview? Is it the chance to be in a room with intimidating people who decide your fate asking you questions about shit that no one could conceivably care about? Why are manholes round? A better question is, who the hell cares? Manholes lead to the sewer. That's not somewhere I want to be so it's completely irrelevant to my life. Or perhaps, it's the chance to be grilled about stuff that you supposedly learned in school but which everyone knows you forgot the day after the final. Yeah! That's appealing! Does anyone know what a red black tree is? I certainly don't. In fact, I don't think I ever did. I don't even know calculus at this point.

To me, the entire process breaks down like this: Big Prestigious Company (BPC) comes to campus and says, Hey, we're offering one position (and only one!) with lots of money but infinitely more work, where you will probably set yourself up for a heart attack by 40 and will definitely shave off atleast 10 years off your life. Instantly, hundreds of business majors flock like flies to shit. BPC then says, Wait! Before we consider you for this 'Great Learning Opportunity,' we will first be forced to strip you down and whip you with barbed wire. If you survive the first 30 minute beating session (on campus, in the Career Center), then you will have the opportunity to join us for a full day session at BPC headquarters in New York, where we will place you in a cement bunker with all other survivors from all across the country and even the world (see, we're such a diverse company). First person to kill everyone else with their bare hands and desecrate their bodies gets the job!

This is definitely one of those things that I'd rather want to be in the distant future or the distant past. I do want a job next year, but I seriously don't want to go through the process. Well, we'll see how it goes. Can't really avoid it I suppose. One thing's for sure though: whether or not I get a job offer this semester, in one of my interviews, I plan to use the following: Seriously, no one gives a shit. I don't, you don't, and certainly no one else in this room does, so why don't we just move on to the next question.