Exceleration

Rejection sucks.

Just ask any guy who ever had his tender teenage heart broken by his dream high school prom date. But after being turned down by Little Miss Popular, at least he could console himself with the knowledge that she and her blonde highlights were way, way out of his league.

Being rejected for jobs that I am totally qualified for, however, is a completely different story. It’s like being turned down by the girl who heads up the high school bird watching club and doesn’t brush her hair.

I graduated college with lofty expectations of immediately discovering and launching myself into my dream career. Several unreturned messages and a few middle fingers (both given and received) later, my outlook has turned from “Reese Witherspoon, Legally Blonde” to “Martin Short, Pure Luck.”

Forget actual skilled positions—apparently, I’m not even qualified to be a secretary at the companies in my field due to my lack of professional experience with multi-line phones and Microsoft Office.

I’ve been told that I just need to tweak my résumé a bit—you know, buff up my qualifications and experience. In blunter terms, I need to lie.

The problem is, when people lie about work experience, they often get caught. Remember what happened to Al Gore when he claimed to have invented the Internet? I’m just not willing to risk that kind of humiliation. Plus, I’m a horrible liar. Even if I were able to fill my résumé with fake work history, I would almost certainly blow my cover in a face-to-face interview, which, I imagine, would go something like this:

Snooty Interviewer: So, tell me about your background and qualifications.

Me: Well, I graduated college with high honors, completed an undergraduate research project, became fluent in Spanish, and earned 12 varsity athletic letters.

Snooty Interviewer: Hmmm…I see. And tell me, did you acquire any experience using Microsoft Excel during your time as a secretary at…what was the name of the company?

Me: Oh, yeah, that was um…Technology Suppliers Unlimit—yeah, actually, I…um…well, I made that up.

To me, it seems entirely absurd that I would have to resort to fabricating experience with Microsoft Excel just to get an entry-level administrative job. No, I haven’t spent the last three years typing numbers into little rectangles, but give me ten minutes—I bet I could figure it out.

In fact, just to prove to myself, my potential employers, and anyone who has nothing better to do than read this blog that I am indeed capable of using Excel in a professional capacity, I have created a series of graphs derived from actual data I entered into an actual Excel spreadsheet. So put that in your chart and wizard it.