If you ever get hired for a new job, pay it forward.
What I mean is remember what is was like to be unemployed.
Remember the thousands of cover letters you sent to employers.
Remember all the tests you took, no matter how insulting to your intelligence and your experience level they might have been.
Remember how vulnerable you felt waiting for that magic phone call asking you to come in for an interview.
Remember how exhausting it was to be interviewed by one, two, three and/or more people at the same time – where stress made every facial tic or stomach growl balloon into something that felt catastrophic.
Remember all those short phone interviews with robotic HR people reading canned questions off a script – and how disinterested they sounded in your answers.
Remember all the times you were told you were unqualified.
Remember all the times you were told you were overqualified.
Remember all the times you were promised an in-person interview in writing, and then had those promises turn into a Mary Poppins special (“A pie crust promise: Easily made, easily broken.”)
Remember all those times you wrote two tests, sat through two interviews, gave a DNA sample, took a lie detector test … OK, I’m exaggerating, but for some jobs there are a lot of hoops to jump through. And even after jumping through those hoops, the HR person forgets to contact you to say you didn’t get the job. (For some managers, after hiring somebody, the other applicants disappear into a sort of HR Bermuda Triangle. Not contacting someone after interviewing them should be a federal crime.)
Sure, it’s a lot to remember, but being unemployed leaves a lot of scars that are hard to forget. So when you get that job offer, don’t forget what you went through.
After you’ve read all the congratulatory texts, and signed the offer letter, and plotted out the best route to the office, and poured through the employee handbook, and nagged IT to please dear god get your email set up, and figured out who the right person is to talk to about getting a comfortable chair, and listened to Bob in accounting tell you about his new lawnmower – after all that, please remember how many people are still out there looking for a good job.
Remember that they don’t have a contagious disease and aren’t to be pitied or condescended to. Give them tips about jobs. Offer to give them a reference. Listen to them with empathy when they are feeling desperate.
And above all, if you are involved in the hiring process in any way, treat them with respect and dignity.
That shouldn’t be too tough to remember.
Chris Campbell was just hired as the new editor of the Burnaby NOW and New Westminster Record. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @shinebox44.
