Not cynical, just very amused!

The interview process is a strange thing to consider. The power dynamics alone are bewildering. In my experience, it creates a situation wherein college educated, highly trained, perpetually lied to individuals compete for coveted positions of power whereby they can puppeteer the next round of employment-pleading peons. It works this way: You take a standard 9’’x14’’ sheet of (digital) paper, on which you showcase your most useful assets, things like $100,000 social clubs (pick any 4-year college) and an ability to generate, consolidate, appraise, or any other conglomeration of buzz-word-soup. You know...things that really highlight your value as a human being. You send this off to some unknown face, glowing blue in the light of their own computer-lit cubical. You hope that, by some act of the gods, you chose some word or reference that catches their attention, because it is in these empty details that choices seem to be made. I have been invited to interviews for such impressive reasons as my husband babysat a board members sons or I professed a certain denomination in a past life or, my favorite, the administrative assistant is also named Renee Smith. So you throw on an over priced business suit that makes you feel like Don Quixote in its impracticality to the needs you aim to meet as a social worker, and spout the most obsequious bullshit that comes to mind, sounding like a copious asshole. After you leave, you spend the next week or month (depending on the employer's sense of urgency or decency) re-living every detail of the experience, since your head is a proverbial clown car of self-doubts. Again and again you ask yourself, "Did I really try to fist bump the executive director?", but in reality, you are more concerned that you wont be considered for the position because you had the audacity to voice your concern that in every act of charity agencies like this 'commit', there lies the potential to undercut real social change. But not only are you 'ok' with this entire process, you thrive under it, because it judges you according to society's standards, which you have been raised to recognize and embrace. It beats the alternative of watching all you've worked for die away, even if that death is your only hope at real life.