It begins…

I am sorry to say that I have just submitted my first job application of the 2019-20 season. It was a damnably depressing thing to do, even if the job itself is a good one. I don’t have any reason to be optimistic, and that’s because I’ve come to learn that hiring decisions are functionally random. I don’t mean to say that the name of the successful candidate is simply pulled out of a hat, but rather that it is impossible to predict or gauge the selection criteria. ‘Merit’ is ill-defined and subjective, and sometimes, but not always, it loses out to cronyism and/or good looks. I’ve seen many seemingly under-qualified candidates get picked over me for jobs, and as a result the older I get the less I understand the market. The only comfort I’ve received is that I now know that if my wife gets a job before I do I’m going to narrow my search to focus on her new employer’s location. It’s more important for us to be together than to try to game the system somehow for an ideal position — after all, you can’t game a system that is functionally random!