“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities.”
At the LL Bean mothership in Maine, acting out my fantasy of catching tasty job offers the way some lucky bears catch salmon swimming upstream.
I suck at self-promotion, at least where it matters. Be it a job interview or first date, I can barely survive an hour before I want to excuse myself because I’m crumbling from imposter syndrome. Unless a magic moment appears when the conversation turns to something of my particular interest or expertise, and I forget I’m in an important audition. Then I am comfortable, impressive.
Alas, they really wish they’d interviewed me when they saw my resume directly. Now, having been matched by an agency, they can’t afford the massive fee to hire me away permanently, but, they might contract me until they find that hire.
Sigh.
Because, yes, where this really crops up is when trying to write my CV. Happy to rant over here, but at a loss for words over there. Perhaps the only time that happens.
This came up again when Sara told me I need to add more words to my site, to keep up that Sisyphean battle against The Ever Changing Algorithm.1 She then threw my current bio and some other web site info into ChatGPT to produce a zhuzhed up thing that both sounded confident, adept, and upbeat, even briefly awed me with the sheer volume of volunteer shenanigans I get up to, but also caused sanity damage from the corporate newspeak. That’s before all the valid rants reasons I eschew AI. Sure, use it now, make enough money I might someday afford to support living artists, hope they haven’t by then all died of attrition, or despair.
It also wrote up an amazing, and amazingly puffed up, cover letter, another of my short-comings. Dammit, I used to edit resumes in college, in a job printing shop next to the portrait booth near the street entrance of a mall Sears. I just had to copy-edit and format it to look presentable, on literal paper. Cake! Now, in the ATS era, formatting rules are different. I have to use The Algorithm‘s preferred vocabulary, rather than my own words. I’m not sure if a human will see my resume ever again.
Among the many reasons I probably should never be on the hiring committee is that I find most cover letters to be utter BS.
To whatever human eyeballs might ever read this:
Your job listing sounded like something I can do, or mostly do, or, it sounded interesting enough that I’d be motivated to improve my skills. Also, it would pay my bills and hopefully also earn me some savings.
I did a quick internet search on your company, to make sure there were no major red flags, and on particular projects mentioned in the job description, hoping for something that is sometimes exciting, but sometimes just makes me feel competent.
Like every other honest player in late stage capitalism, my ideal salary approaches infinity, and my ideal hours are whenever I want, but since I prefer having a somewhat consistent schedule, I’m sure we can meet somewhere in between.
She hasn’t read this yet, but I bet Sara does not think that is an acceptable cover letter. However, I’m so interesting, and unique for being … direct and genuine. Which, c’mon humanity. I’m not that much a role model. It’s not hard to keep up. Ugh.
I may talk a humble game, but I am competent. Well, probably. Wanna find out?
- If the Apotheosis Saga ever releases the final episode, it will be about how The Algorithm manages to be more destructive than Television, itself a Hazard Class Deity. I haven’t listened to that radio play since before the term Podcast came into being. Maybe it hasn’t held up? Should it be rebooted? ↩︎