In December, the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board hired a new superintendent, a fellow who had neither applied nor interviewed for the position. The candidate was not even at the meeting when the board voted 5 to 4 to hire him. The board president, a guy named Bob, simply said that they were lucky to get someone of the candidate’s caliber.
And so I ask the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board: What am I, chopped liver? I didn’t apply for the job either. At the time of the board’s meeting, I believe I was home watching CSI and paging through fashion magazines—and if that’s not not applying for the job, I don’t know what is.
This surely gives perpetual job hunters like me hope for the myriad ways one can land a job. Over my working life I have sent out millions, maybe even hundreds, of résumés. I have gotten rejection letter after rejection letter. I decided to be more proactive and I wrote to all the companies to which I had applied, and simply rejected their rejection letter.
To whom it may concern:
Thank you for your interest in my interest in your company. Unfortunately the position your company has does not meet my specific needs at this time. Therefore, I am requesting the return of my résumé, to be sent to a better company with a better position. I will, however, keep my résumé on file in case another opportunity for which your company may be qualified becomes available.
Sincerely,
Mary Jo Pehl
It is clear now that I have simply shot myself in the foot by actually applying for jobs in the first place. Statistics show that if you don’t send a résumé to a potential employer, it is less likely to get lost in the mail or to be ignored. Experts say that if you do not have an interview with a potential employer who never got your résumé in the first place, you are less likely to say the F-word during the interview process. And now, after the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s bold innovation in the employment process, I’m awfully excited about all the jobs I may be up for that I have no idea even exist.
In fact, I daresay the whole employment scenario would be perfected if, after I were hired for the job I didn’t apply for, I could do the job at home in my pajamas while watching television, making personal calls, paging through magazines, and eating chocolates. Somewhere out there, a team of human resources professionals is about to make me a very lucrative offer for a high-paying position as a chocolate-eating magazine reader. I await.
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