Have Resume, Will Travel

The job search goes on...

It's getting protracted to the point of being not just irritating, but stupefying. I've had about 350 interviews. I've flown to visit schools in Maryland and Pennsylvania (twice). I've turned down visits to Maine, New York and New Jersey. I have another visit this week, fortunately in-state. Yesterday I had a local interview for a job that may be in Pennsylvania, California or New York.

The worst thing isn't, ultimately, the interview. I hate more than anything else the vacuum after the interview when they don't even call or email to say they're going with someone else. We've had a few of these, some where we've had multiple phone interviews with a school and some we've visited and they never bothered to get back to us. How rude is that?

I think they're doing two things by not calling to reject us. First, they're awkward, mean people. The rejection call is not easy to make, so they just don't do it. This doesn't excuse the lack of a rejection email. That's far, far easier to do, but still, one school I had to email two different people to get a rejection email.

The second reason is worse. I think there are schools who don't reject us because they're waiting to hear back from their first choice candidate, which takes a bit, then they're waiting to get everything finalized, contracts signed, DNA tests cleared, paternity tests resolved, before rejecting the second or third choice people.

Either way, it's getting old. We had one school, a school we didn't even like, a school we'd possibly reject even if it was our only offer, tell us they'd decide by Friday, Monday at the latest. That Monday came and went, and a week's gone by since.

Well, if all else fails, maybe I can write a book about how to be a professional interviewee. I'm about to put "Teaching candidate" on my resume as work experience.