It’s the oldest catch-22 in history: Experience necessary. How do people with experience obtain that experience? Presumably, every human starts life as infants, with little or no experience within the field in which they will eventually earn their keep. So why is it that every interview always ends with a polite summation of my lack of experience?
It’s hard for me to articulate the fact that I can do absolutely anything thrown at me, other than by awkwardly blurting out “I can do absolutely anything thrown at me!” while a horrified interviewer looks on, aghast. But my lack of experience equates roughly to lack of proof.
Joseph Heller explained the Catch-22:
If you’re insane, then you can’t request to be reassigned from flight combat, because it would prove that you’re sane. If you request to be reassigned from flight combat, then you’re not insane, because only a sane, rational person would make such a request. Therefore, you can never leave.
Ergo, if you do not have experience, then you cannot gain experience. If you have experience, then you must have started with experience.
The thing is, I am experienced. But, because on previous projects I was the designer, the information architect, the developer, and the entire MIS department, all by myself, I therefore cannot prove that I can work as a specialist in one area, working from specs from another specialist in one of those other areas.
What I cannot deal with is the fact that I am stuck forever as a lackey at low-rent jobs that I hate with all of my passion because I am a lackey at low-rent jobs, even though I am 1000% smarter than 90% of the other people around me and am capable of doing so much more – but am relegated to mopping up other people’s messes for the rest of my fucking life.
When I pulled into the apartment parking lot after my miserable interview, Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” came on.
You’re going to reap just what you sow.
I am overqualified, but underexperienced. I am, therefore, a failure.
