About that Web Designer Job

To all who applied, but did not hear back

Tim­my and I under­stand that it’s part and par­cel of a pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion to send all appli­cants who were not select­ed for an inter­view a tem­plat­ed email explain­ing how emo­tion­al­ly tax­ing the process of sift­ing through the resumes of so many deeply qual­i­fied and tal­ent­ed design pro­fes­sion­als. Some­thing to the effect of:

“Tim­my and I would like to extend our most heart­felt grat­i­tude for your appli­ca­tion. Both of us are over­whelmed and hum­bled by the bright and inspir­ing let­ters of inter­est we received, yours includ­ed, and the breath­tak­ing abil­i­ty of so many design­ers around the world. Fore­go­ing sleep for a full 36 hours, we care­ful­ly reviewed every port­fo­lio, a painstak­ing process involv­ing a 40-point grad­ing scale. At the end of this process, we select­ed sev­er­al peo­ple to inter­view. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you were not one of them. 

Let us be clear: this should not deter you. We have placed your resume in a sealed pur­ple vel­vet enve­lope and stored it in a safe­ty deposit box, along with some valu­able gem­stones and fam­i­ly heir­looms, in a secure loca­tion in New Jer­sey. If anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty aris­es, we will have our concierge, Pierre, unseal the enve­lope and rush deliv­er your resume back to our desks for a sub­se­quent review. We thank you for your inter­est and look for­ward to a future collaboration.”

If you are the type of per­son who always looks on the bright side,I would take this mes­sage as a token of our appre­ci­a­tion and move on with your life. If you would like to tor­ture your­self, I have includ­ed five more accu­rate rea­sons that you did not hear back from us.

1. There was no pay­ment or gifts includ­ed in your appli­ca­tion
   I can­not empha­size enough how strong­ly a crisp $20 bill can influ­ence our behav­ior here at Fer­al. It is lit­er­al­ly like a moth to a flame with us. And while we always pre­fer cash, we love oth­er gifts as well: orna­men­tal plants, teak fur­ni­ture, peanut but­ter cook­ies, you name it! We were shocked nobody sent us any­thing, or even asked for our address, espe­cial­ly as we neared the hol­i­days
   
2. We rec­og­nized you from America’s Most Want­ed
   We get it. You want to start a new life and leave your check­ered past behind you. You’ve changed your name, updat­ed your appear­ance, and taught your­self web design. Sor­ry, the world is not that sim­ple. As the famous line from Mag­no­lia goes, ​“We may be through with the past, but the past isn’t through with us.” It’s time to stop run­ning. We rec­og­nize you from that episode back in Sep­tem­ber. I’m sure you saw it, and while we don’t know where exact­ly you’re hid­ing out, we could tell from the drapes in the back­ground of your pro­file pic­ture it was a Super 8 (Tim­my and I are both pre­ferred guests there). We’ve for­ward­ed this infor­ma­tion on to the show’s pro­duc­ers and are cur­rent­ly coop­er­at­ing with law enforcement. 
3. You failed the Tur­ing Test
   We received a num­ber of appli­ca­tions from what we quick­ly deduced were advanced forms of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence or non-human sen­tient beings. With the excep­tion of one, all failed the Tur­ing test, a stan­dard by which a machine’s abil­i­ty to mim­ic human behav­ior is judged. In all hon­esty, Tim­my and I have always been excep­tion­al­ly warm to the idea of work­ing with an arti­fi­cial enti­ty, robot, or even an alien, how­ev­er we know some of our clients would be unset­tled by a team mem­ber who lacks a phys­i­cal body or maybe one who has a body, but dis­plays awk­ward behav­ior, like over-blink­ing with a clin­i­cal half smile on their face. We look for­ward to the advance­ment of this impor­tant tech­nol­o­gy and more appli­cants in the future able to pass the Tur­ing test.
4. Our psy­chic Wan­da got a bad feel­ing
   We are one of the few design stu­dios with the mox­ie to not only keep a psy­chic on retain­er, but fol­low her advice as if it were the gospel. Behind every major deci­sion we’ve made as a stu­dio, you’ll find Wan­da. As part of the hir­ing process, we print­ed out every appli­ca­tion and deliv­ered them to her, then watched in awe as she per­formed a pow­er­ful purifi­ca­tion cer­e­mo­ny. As she cleansed each appli­ca­tion in a mix­ture of sage and palo san­to smoke, we were shocked to see that a num­ber of the doc­u­ments turned com­plete­ly black and began to smell light­ly of fish. Those resumes were placed in a pile and lat­er dis­posed of.
5. We thought you might be an ene­my spy of some sort
   Lis­ten, Tim­my and I are no strangers to the high stakes world of cor­po­rate espi­onage. We have spent the bet­ter part of 10 years fend­ing off intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty theft from our com­peti­tors, coer­cive mea­sures employed by for­eign gov­ern­ments, and in one par­tic­u­lar­ly trau­ma­tiz­ing episode, the out­right hijack­ing of my entire brain by a glob­al shad­ow orga­ni­za­tion known only as Cell4. This event, which hap­pened under the guise of a rou­tine hair­cut and beard trim at a local Super­cuts, has left me extreme­ly vig­i­lant of the threats that exist all around us. While to the aver­age observ­er many of the port­fo­lios appeared to be quite impres­sive, a num­ber of tell­tale sig­nals, includ­ing the use of the col­or red, lay just beneath the sur­face. We were forced to act out of an abun­dance of cau­tion and dis­qual­i­fy sev­er­al dozen appli­ca­tions, even if this meant some false positives.

This offi­cial­ly con­cludes our job search. We hope this con­struc­tive feed­back gives you the infor­ma­tion you need to bet­ter posi­tion your­self for the dream job you seek in the future, with us, or anoth­er fine orga­ni­za­tion. To those who fol­lowed us on Insta­gram, we thank you for your sup­port. Expect to be reward­ed with pre­cise­ly one post every 57 days. To every­one else, we bid you farewell…for now.