A Good One Is Hard To Find

Today, I came to the realization that finding a good man and finding a good job have more in common that you might think.

Both require a lot of looking, most of which is fruitless. Both require lots of meetings, where you get only limited information but have to make a serious decision about moving forward. Sometimes the ones you want don't want you, and you may or may not know why. Sometimes the one you don't want do want you, and you wonder whether an okay one is better than none at all.

A few years back, the process for finding a job became more electronic. There are very few want-ads in the newspaper anymore (or for that matter, newspapers). Instead, job seekers use job search sites such as Monster.com. They post resumes. They send their resumes to ads posted on such sites and on the Careers pages of companies' websites. Sometimes job seekers are allowed to submit a cover letter, but more and more recently, I've noticed that only a resume is allowed. From what I understand, HR departments use keyword searches on those resumes to find the skills they want. I guess it's the only way to deal with a high volume of resumes. But it's pretty cold.

In the late '90s, I first used an online dating service. That first time, it was Love@aol.com. I posted a simple ad and got 100 emails in response. I must admit that I ended up doing something like a keyword search. In this case, I was looking for words I didn't want to see. Conservative. Republican. Too old. Too young. Etc. Since then, I have used pretty much every online dating service that exists. And much like online job hunting, online dating has gotten harder. Today, there are online dating services that purport to help (wo)man seekers with finding a "better" match using personality tests and other matching methodologies. Much like a job search process, you put your "resume" out there. You hope that you will use the right words to make the right matches. And when you get no response, you really have no idea why.

There is an old story by Flannery O'Connor entitled "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." I couldn't agree more. A good job is almost as hard. And the process for finding both stinks.