As I set out to share insights gained from job seeking, a question kept nagging at me: Why bother offering suggested improvements to the hiring process?
So much is wrong with the employer-employee model the usa operates with, shouldn’t we just overhaul and radically transform it? Or, in my more weary moments I think, shouldn’t we just overthrow it, dismantle it, disrupt it, chuck it as far as we can throw it….
Well, yes. I think we should. Posts in the philosophical musings section of this blog are my attempts at contributing to this process of transformation and dismantling.
Still, right now, many of us need to participate in the employer-employee system in order to feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, shelter ourselves, receive basic medical care, etc., and so on.
I see these minor changes as forms of harm reduction. Yet, I worry they will allow the system to remain intact — the system will absorb the minor changes and simply realign and even further entrench its inequities and injustices.
Against my cynicism, I hope that some of these seemingly minor changes run deeper and may begin to dislodge the values that are driving this current awful employee-employer model. I hope they may provide the environment necessary for new values to sprout and take hold. More on these values later.
And too, the myriad “tiny” in-your-face injustices of current hiring practices often sting deeply. There is so little acknowledgement of the thousand cuts job seekers receive during their search. Even if all I can offer is the band-aid of, Yeah your experience is real, you are not alone, your feelings are natural responses to what is happening/has happened to you — perhaps that band-aid is worth it.
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