On the Handrail into the Decision-Making Circle – The Application

So, a posi­tion in the cor­po­ra­tion after all? For him, this was his first real appli­ca­tion ever. He pre­vi­ous­ly nev­er had to apply for­mal­ly, it always hap­pened some­how. One just knew each oth­er. He absolute­ly need­ed a cov­er let­ter, that’s impor­tant for the HR depart­ment, accord­ing to the Inter­net. So that one stands out from the crowd and is not imme­di­ate­ly sort­ed out. 

But there was­n’t any dan­ger, not for him, not in this case. One already knew each oth­er. He had met the respon­si­ble head of depart­ment only last week. They had talked for a long time about the job and how well he would fit in. They want­ed him, that was pret­ty clear. It was agreed. And he already knew many employ­ees of the depart­ment, had already worked togeth­er with some in dif­fer­ent projects, with some he was actu­al­ly friends. And yet he now need­ed a cov­er let­ter. What a use­less exercise.

The process demand­ed it this way, his future boss had told him, it must be like that. The process seemed to be impor­tant in the cor­po­ra­tion, every­thing was well reg­u­lat­ed and orga­nized. It’s not a bad thing, this order. We did­n’t have any rules and process­es in our small com­pa­ny, he thought. And some­times they would have required some, not so many, but a few would have been good. A process like that was slow, but at least you knew exact­ly where you were.

So how does a good cov­er let­ter work? He was­n’t in the mood. He was not in the mood for this wast­ed life­time. Maybe that was just a kind of apti­tude test for cor­po­rate life. Any­way, he was­n’t in the mood. Not for the cov­er let­ter and even less for the resume. At least the cov­er let­ter was not com­plete­ly in vain as he had to explain his moti­va­tion in it. Why did he want to join the cor­po­ra­tion? Was it not enough for him to work in projects there again and again? And was­n’t that even bet­ter to be able to leave the cor­po­ra­tion again?

But he was­n’t in the mood for a resume. First of all, one had known each oth­er for sev­er­al years, but not the lady of HR, which did­n’t both­er him, he had noth­ing to do with her. But also for her the resume was in his blog and at LinkedIn, updat­ed again and again. None of this makes any sense, he thought, just let them look online. Was­n’t that their job, there at HR, to find out about the candidate?

The cov­er let­ter they should get, he decid­ed, with a link to his resume online. And a few more links. On his blog of course and some of his ini­tia­tives. This could be done with rea­son­able effort. The cov­er let­ter was a kind of overview. And the appli­ca­tion sys­tem did­n’t explic­it­ly require a resume, that was a can, not a must, as he read it. That’s how he want­ed to do it, to min­i­mize the effort for this point­less for­mal­i­ty. After all, one already knew each oth­er. And there was agree­ment. It was just a brief offi­cial vis­it to HR.

Tomor­row this for­mal inter­view. And now the call of his future boss. He had nev­er seen him so excit­ed and ner­vous before. Why he had­n’t uploaded a resume? The per­son­nel offi­cer would be very irri­tat­ed. Why does­n’t she sim­ply read the cov­er let­ter? Was that use­less, too? She should sim­ply click the damn links in the cov­er let­ter, then she would have her resume. But that would be rather dis­ad­van­ta­geous now, his future boss sug­gest­ed, to attract atten­tion so unpleas­ant­ly right before the inter­view. There were process­es and rules. (Many of them!) And they would have to be fol­lowed. Would he not be able to write and upload a resume quick­ly? For the sake of the process.

He now was even less in the mood for a resume, so not at all in the mood. And he was­n’t real­ly in the mood for an inter­view with a recruiter who was­n’t able or will­ing to click on a damn link. Why did he both­er with the cov­er let­ter? Ok, ok. upload­ing is ok, but with­out addi­tion­al effort, just quick­ly upload the online resume as PDF. For the process and for the lady from HR, who he already did­n’t like although he did­n’t know her yet.

She had real­ly done it. She had real­ly print­ed out the Inter­net! Resume and cov­er let­ter were neat­ly print­ed out in front of the per­son­nel offi­cer on the small meet­ing table where he sat down with his future boss and her. Of course this explained a lot, so she could­n’t real­ly han­dle the links. The dig­i­tal appli­ca­tion process there­fore result­ed in a pile of dead wood for this inter­view. It was a sense­less waste of resources, of trees and of his time. After all, there was already agree­ment. Only this for­mal act.

And then this ques­tion. He had antic­i­pat­ed many things, but he had not expect­ed to be asked why he had­n’t put more effort into his resume. It had­n’t mat­tered to him, too much sense­less effort for an unnec­es­sary process, this it had been in his eyes, because there was agree­ment after all. But he could­n’t say that so clear­ly. Espe­cial­ly when this lady was so easy to irri­tate and when his future boss slipped back and forth a lit­tle ner­vous­ly. She prob­a­bly had an impor­tant role in the process after all. He opt­ed for diplo­ma­cy. The resume would always be up to date in his blog any­way, so for the sake of sim­plic­i­ty he would have tak­en it and then it would look like it — on the Inter­net bet­ter than on paper, for which it was nev­er made. It just had to go fast. She did­n’t seem par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased about this explanation.

This was the first chap­ter of a nov­el about life in the cor­po­ra­tion with the project title “On the Handrail into the Deci­sion-Mak­ing Cir­cle”. This nov­el is an exper­i­ment for me that lives from your feed­back. Is it worth writ­ing this nov­el? What could I do bet­ter and what should I do differently?