Old Words

I received an e-mail today informing me that I was not chosen for a position that I was seeking.  Classic boilerplate rejection notice.  I didn’t mind – I’m accustomed to them.

A short time after that came a second e-mail from someone who was part of the group making the decision about who to hire for the position, a man brave enough to actually say why I wasn’t hired.  This is discouraged nowadays, of course.  People get insulted, upset, more discouraged than they already were, show up on your doorstep with an AK-47, etc.  Not my style.  I’m more inclined to learn where my weaknesses are from it and how I can improve myself.  In this case, however, I’m just not quite that inclined.

The first reason for my not being hired was that I wasn’t local to them.  The job, while not across country, was out of state and a three-hour drive from where I am now.  I said in my remote interview with them that I was more than willing to relocate and I was looking for a fresh start and a new challenge.  Problem was, they wanted someone to start immediately upon selection and that just wasn’t going to happen with someone who’s lived in the same place for, well, decades.  This reason for not being chosen I completely understood. 

They were very impressed with my ability to proofread/edit material.  I was told that, while I had no formal training – I guess those two online courses that I aced meant nothing – I had an excellent grasp of how to “smooth the edges and polish written material that wouldn’t offend the writer and make the material that much more readable across our general audience.”  I would dearly love to be able to put that comment somewhere in my LinkedIn resume and have this guy as a reference.  But, he who wrote it wasn’t supposed to be telling me anything from the decision-making  process. 

Which brings me to Reason #2.  While they loved my ability to edit, they didn’t like my ability to write.  It was too “old” and “nerdy.”  Now, I’ve run into both blunt and subtle forms of ageism in my job searching lately, and while such a reason seems like it fits into this inappropriate and illegal category, it’s actually something one can adapt to and learn from.  In this day in age, a good writer should be a wordsmithing chameleon, able to communicate in the language of audiences across many different types of readers. 

But, doesn’t writing that’s steered down the middle of a general audience do just that, or am I assuming too much of my writing style?

By the way, I am a nerd and I’m damn proud of it.

The one suggestion he made for improvement was to learn more about all the social media platforms, an admittedly weak area for me.  No, he didn’t suggest changing the way I write.  He liked it.  But then, he’s old and nerdy, too.

And so, I move on to the next job opportunity.  Although this position would have been a dream come true for me, it is perhaps for the best that I didn’t get it, being an old lady and all.  I guess the fresh start and new challenge outlook gets reserved for another time, place and job.  Until then, I am reminded of the words of Shakespeare:

This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
(Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3)

and Rick Nelson:

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself.
(Refrain from “Garden Party”)

Farewell.