Surveys arrive with steady regularity after I visit certain medical and business establishments. These service providers invest time and effort in gauging clients” opinion of their care.
This always struck me as a practical and useful approach and, observing their widespread use to gauge customers” opinion of businesses, I decided to create a survey to send to prospective employers who failed to call me in for an interview or, having interviewed me, did not give me the job.
“Help me fine tune my job search,” it read, or something to that effect. It asked survey respondents to select from various options, ranging from qualifications that did not match the job, as in over- or under-qualified, to personal dislike of the applicant.
I was surprised that not one prospective employer took the time to respond to my survey.
When I graduated in 1995 from Sonoma State University, I was disappointed that my possession of a college degree did not make me instantly employable. I”d been indoctrinated for years that possession of a degree raised a person”s income but my Bachelor of Arts degree in English appeared to be worth no more than the paper it was printed on.
Mine was a long and frustrating search for meaningful employment. It appeared to me as if I had no actual marketable skills.
Survey responses could have given me a course of action by helping me to identify the mismatch between my abilities and the employer”s needs. At a minimum, it seemed far more productive to send out a survey than to berate the employer for not giving me the job. Employers are more likely to keep a special blue bin where those types of letters are filed.
What did would-be employers think when they received my survey in the mail? Did they admire my initiative or dismiss my approach as bizarre? I will never know absent their feedback.
It is exactly this sort of feedback that is missing in everyday society.
Consider the amount of communication that takes place over the telephone. What happens when one person leaves a message and the listener doesn”t return the call?
Perhaps the speaker leaves a rambling message until cut off by the machine or by the listener. Perhaps the caller is too intrusively personal when speaking to a listener whom he or she doesn”t know. I don”t know how other listeners feel, but this makes me intensely uncomfortable.
Perhaps the caller doesn”t leave a number or perhaps he or she states the number so fast and incoherently ? and only a single time ? that the listener can”t copy it down.
None of these people will ever know why their calls were unreturned ? and that, after all, is the only measurable outcome for leaving a voice-mail message.
Face-to-face adds another challenge to understanding what is being said. In addition to the actual words, which may not even mean what was said, the listener must also decipher tone of voice and facial expressions. The speaker must count on all of these things applying toward the impression that is made upon a job interviewer.
The plus side, of course, is that for people who qualify, there are job assistance services available. A variety of agencies offer employment services through Lake County One-Stop, 55 First St. in Lakeport; or 4477 Moss Ave., Suite A, in Clearlake. For more information, see www.lakeonestop.org/.
Sample questions, such as could be asked at a candidate”s job interview, could also be a good exercise for the meeting of a Toastmasters club.
If there”s a main point to be made in this, it”s that none of us should take ourselves too seriously ? or be too convinced of our own importance. There is always an opportunity to be more tactful, more respectful of boundaries and to become more aware of the impression that we make.
I think Robert Burns said it best, in 1786, in the conclusion to his immortal poem, “To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady”s Bonnet at Church:”
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An” foolish notion:
What airs in dress an” gait wad lea”e us,
An” ev”n devotion!
Cynthia Parkhill is the focus pages editor for the record-Bee and editor of the Clear Lake Observer-American. She can be contacted at ObserverAmerican@gmail.com or 263-5636 ext. 39.
