The Young Curmudgeon: And Four Triangles Means You're Fired!

July 16, 2005

And Four Triangles Means You're Fired!

There are two possible ways, I suppose, to react to this story of rapid and ironic success for someone - say, me - who is in exactly the same state of desperation with his media job search as the writer of the piece. One would be to be inspired that someone out there has actually been successful at putting the HR bots behind them and getting a cool job. The other would be to react with the gnashing of the teeth, clawing out of the eyes etc., reasoning that this particular blog-stunt, now that it's been done, can't possibly be duplicated and the fact that someone's already pulled it off in fact lessens the chances out there for the rest of us schlubs who are back to trying to get beyond the cold, inscrutable HR bots (and I truly believe that humans are not involved in the initial stages of Bertelsmann's process) to at least be rejected by the actual humans that at least theoretically exist somewhere within Random House's organization.

And a word about Random House. It should be no surprise to anyone who's had the misfortune of dealing with their alienating, cold, impersonal, detached, future-techno-dystopia job application process that Mr. Mohney mentions them in the article. See, Random House, like Bookspan and many others, is a subdivision of the German media megalith Bertelsmann, a company that owns virtually everything that could reasonably be described to be a part of the media including any ideas you ever came up with in the shower for a cool movie in any and all current and future media.

Bertelsmann companies can't merely post their job openings like other companies, by posting them to a job board with a contact e-mail and fax number for you to send your resume and cover letter to.

My God no! That would be too intimate, too personal, too . . . well, almost human. It might even give the applicant the sense that somewhere, at some point, a real live human being is involved in the job application process.

In order to apply for a job with any Bertelsmann company you first must set up an account with a bit of proprietary software, which, it goes without saying, is called by an acronym: the PCP, for personal career planner. You see, you’re not merely thinking about getting an obscure 9-to-5 job with a German media conglomerate because you have bills to pay, you’re planning a career by God! So, first you have to jump through the hoops of setting up an account, probably the fifth time that day you’ve given your personal information on the internet, and then you can look at the job listings etc. But the real fun begins when you apply for a job. You don’t merely send your cover letter and resume to some e-mail, not even one as impersonal as, say, [email protected]. Instead, you click on the “apply” link and the PCP sends you through the process of filling out a form. (Preparing you for your life of form-filling-out if you should actually get the job no doubt.) So, once you’ve pasted your cover letter into the tiny little box, attached your resume etc., you’re ready to apply.

This is where things truly start to seem like some nightmare out of, I don’t know, Kafka? Philip K. Dick? Once you’ve finalized your application you then become acquainted with the hellish “4 triangle” system. On one page of your PCP are listed all the jobs you’ve applied for. Next to each one are four sideways triangles, which are either grey or orange. There is a legend to interpret them at the top. Note that having two orange triangles is called, I kid you not, “processing”. Not “reviewing”, or anything that might make it seem like someone is looking at your stuff, but “processing”. Once you apply you get a form letter which sounds like it was written by a machine. Other than that your only feedback comes from watching the triangles. And how do you find out you didn’t get an interview. Why, by seeing you have three orange triangles, or “criteria not met”. After that, you can eat a food pellet, take some pills for eight hours of sleep and wake up refreshed for a challenging day of form-filling-out and triangle-watching the next day.

Karl Marx talked about alienation from labor. I’m not sure anyone predicted people being alienated from simply applying for jobs. God Bless you Chris Mohney. I too understand the desperation that leads a man to start a stunt blog.

Posted by Eric Deamer on July 16, 2005 at 07:26 PM | Permalink

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