REGINA – A local Nobel Prize winner with a doctoral degree and a thousand logged hours of flight time as a fighter pilot was pleased to browse Indeed.ca this past weekend and discover that she almost met the requirements for an entry-level professional position.
“I think I’m getting close,” said Ariana Woodard, Nobel Laureate, as she browsed a posting for a junior-level analyst position at a mid-sized marketing firm. “It says here that they’re looking for a team player, and I once led a research team that revolutionized mankind’s understanding of the mechanics of prebiotic chemistry on the surface of earth-like exoplanets, so I think I’ve got that covered. But they also want someone who speaks fluent Gaelic and has won at least one Pulitzer Prize for fiction; I speak fluent Latin and have a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, so I’m afraid I just don’t measure up.”
“It’s my own fault, really,” Woodard continued, scrolling through an ad for an administrative assistant position open only to Rhodes scholars. “If I really want a job that pays at least $14 an hour and doesn’t require me to wear a plastic name tag, I just need to stop resting on my Nobel Laurels and see if I can pick up a Man Booker Prize, an Olympic medal and an appointment to the Order of Canada to pad my resume.”
Hiring managers across several professions have defended the practice of setting high requirements for entry level jobs, citing the need to hire quality candidates.
“Do I know what a Junior FrontEnd Developer does? Absolutely not. No clue,” said Aaron Gladue, hiring manager at a large networking company. “But I do know that I’m just not comfortable hiring someone who has less than thirty years of experience in developing for Android. It’s not my problem that Android only came out thirteen years ago – the right candidate will simply have to figure it out.”
At press time, Woodard’s parents, who both stumbled into white-collar professional jobs with full pensions directly out of the ninth grade, were both calling their daughter to insist that she should simply print off some resumes and hand them out door-to-door to anyone who might be hiring.
