My Latest at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen

I've decided to stop cross-posting altogether. Cross-posting cheapens posts and reeks of empty self-promotion. Go read and comment at LoOG. Here is a link and an excerpt:

In order to pretend to have a meritocracy, there must be some semblance of fairness. Since there are only limited resources available to devote to finding the person most deserving of a particular station, some element of abstraction is necessary. Hence, the cover letter-resume one-two punch. (Japan maintains its meritocracy – more successfully I’d argue - via an elaborate public examination system.) The errors wrought of abstraction are enough of a problem to begin with that when (1) gatekeepers and applicants alike forget the reason why cover letters and resumes exist in the first place and start seeing them as ends in themselves; and (2) the number of people tasked to evaluate resumes and cover letters decreases significantly while at the same time the number of resumes and cover letters thrown at a particular job increases significantly, the entire meritocratic job procurement system begins to hemorrhage à la BNET. LinkedIn, a guerrilla wielding a double-machete, jumps out of the jungle to cut through the staggering and blood-gushing meritocracy. Investors applaud. LinkedIn is pro-NMJP, in contrast to BNET’s cargo-cult pro-meritocratic posture. LinkedIn is also favored by companies and well-organized. Before joining LinkedIn, it took me several days to find one job I was interested in, write a cover letter, tweak my resume, and not get any kind of human response; in the same amount of time using LinkedIn, I can fire off ten or fifteen applications and get immediate and cordial rejections to them all. This represents a major increase in productivity; plus, constructive negative feedback is priceless.