Pounding the pavement

 

The last time I filled out an application for employment, I was seventeen years old. O'Malley's flower shop in the Sherman Oaks Galleria. I could care less about flowers but it was in the mall where all my friends worked. during my evening break, I could take the escalator up to the third floor food court and snag free Mrs Field's cookie dough and Orange Julius shakes.

When I left high school I entered the world of resumes. At the time, the resume seemed a powerful symbol of adulthood, with its inventory of life experience captured in precise margins. How could i create such a noteworthy document with my patchwork collection of babysitting, yearbook club, and stuffing envelopes for my father over Christmas break?

Flash forward twenty years and countless resume revisions later.

I find myself in Thailand where, when you inquire about employment, you're asked to fill out an application regardless of the stature of the position or the extensiveness of your pre-printed resume.

The Thai employment application requests the following information from the applicant:

religion
prominent scars
name of spouse
name of children's father (a separate entry)
blood type
number of brothers and sisters
age of mother and father
address of pastor

Granted, naming the father of your illegitimate child isn't included in the experts' top ten ingredients for a powerful resume. Would you list this under experience or expertise? But obviously the Thai people aren't taking any chances; they want to know who they're employing.

We've left Thailand and have completed an exhaustive job search in Hanoi, Vietnam. Twenty-five schools in a week. Every single one graciously accepted our resume copies. Not one asked us to fill out an application. We're off to a good start.