A Mexican Scarf

Sometimes the hoops one jumps through in order to obtain employment quite thoroughly crack me up. To be honest, if it weren't for the fact that I had this here blog, I would have not made it through the first two minutes of my adventures @ the recruiting agency today. Okay, so I'm barely in the door and a test and self-assessment are thrust into my hand. I sit there, listening to the incessant babbling of this "water feature" [yes, a water fountain thing that can be purchased @ your local drug store for no more than $20]...and trying to focus on this silly test. It was seriously good times this test. There were several sections - all of which tested and teased my fertile mind...such as: putting names in alphabetical order, choosing the smallest/largest numbers out of a group, selecting word definitions from a number of options [cabana = a Mexican scarf literally made me laugh out loud], addition, subtraction, multiplication, circling misspelled words and providing synonyms [this one was fill in the blanks - with half the letters already filled in]. I can't say that I really had to use my full brain power here...of course, if an eight year old were to complete the same test, I strongly suspect he/she would say the same thing. This test was immediately followed by another strenuous exercise - the typing test. If I'm being upfront I will admit that while my typing skills are both blazing and accurate, I do not test well. I don't know how badly I did today since the wench @ the front test snatched it out from the printer before I could see it...but I suspect it wasn't great. You see, this wench and her partner in crime @ the reception desk spent my typing test time - yes, all five minutes of it, yammering on about a personal medical procedure. Involving pus and IVs being ripped out and other really pleasant, calming images. For serious.

Before I even got to the interview part, I was thoroughly confused by this agency. What is a test like that [the non-typing one] meant to show? That I know my ABCs? Or I can count? I think if I had experienced difficulty in this test it would have been near impossible for me to read the job advert and respond to it in any meaningful fashion. So yeah, mentally I was completely checked out. A rather large part of me wanted to answer the test questions in highly sarcastic ways, but then I thought that maybe the type of organization that would value a test like this would not appreciate or understand something as complicated as sarcasm. But what type of jobs would want people with these basic skills? I'm sure the quiz to work @ McDo is more difficult [the one to work @ Zellers was - there were percents!]. I made it through the interview without acting like a total douche - I think I was made supremely confident by my success on the test [ha!]. I was very upfront with what I was looking @ in a future career/job opportunity. They wanted all of my references...I did not provide them. I am not providing references for some potentially imaginary job with a potentially imaginary organization. Rather - I could provide some potentially imaginary references - see, I'm pretty clever.

The thing is - I've been down this whole agency road before - with extremely limited success. That is to say, despite working with four different recruiters, I've never once gotten a job as a result of their efforts. Job hunting experts will tell you to never turn down an interview from an agency - and I don't. But the jobs were excessively useless. And in many circumstances, the employers weren't interested in me either. And then...once you start turning down jobs - they don't send you any at all. Even if the jobs they originally sent you were the furthest thing from your previously stated "job want checklist." So yeah...not exactly a wasted day...I had some really good laughs...