Meat Market Day 1

Hello faithful reader!

I'm coming to you live from Chicago Illinois in the super huge McCormick center. I am at the NASPA placement exchange.

What is a placement exchange you ask? It's like a wrestling tournament for adults. Except instead of wrestling we are interviewing, instead of physical harm we are risking emotional and professional harm, and people are all wearing suits instead of skin-tight revealing singlets.*

Here's how it works. Me and about 4,000 other yuppies go into this massive holding tank and write little notes to potential employers begging for an interview. We place these notes in one huge mail box and try to forget about them. Then a lackey (who probably makes more money than me) takes all these millions of notes and takes them to a much nicer holding tank where the employers excitedly throw away reams of them at a time while chuckling to themselves. Some of the notes accidentally solicit a response. The employer schedules an interview and writes back. Another lackey takes these notes and places them in a THIRD holding tank where we keep OUR mail-boxes. Yuppies like me circle the mailboxes on an hourly occasion like a freshman girl checking her ex-boyfriends face book page.

It's all very cloak and dagger. That's what appeals to me about it. I've also started leaving my resume in various places around the building--under trash cans, on top of vending machines, on the inside of stall doors, in the hollow of an oak tree in Millennial park. There is a chance that at least ONE of these locations will be a secret drop off for an interview.

But lets say that you accidentally get an interview? What happens next you ask? Your curiosity knows no bounds!

Well next you go to a fourth holding tank where you wait like a doctor's office until some one comes to call your name. Unlike the doctors office people aren't bored, they are just really nervous. It's actually more like those skits you would see in church in the mid 90's where two guys have recently died and they are waiting for St. Peter to call them and assign them to Heaven or Hell.*

Then it's time for the interview itself! This is actually the least intimidating part of the whole process, unless you are a single female interviewing Dave Downey.
After the interview it is customary for the employer to schedule a second interview if your name is Josh Canada. Non Josh Canada individuals generally begin circling their mailboxes again.

Stay tuned for further installments of this exciting event! More updates to come tomorrow!

* Except for Eric Gingerich. He's still wearing a singlet.
**Change now while you're still alive