Oh human interaction, how I miss thee!

A strange but obvious thing happened the other day.  I decided to take a chance on the old world ways, and "drop off" a resume.  Literally.  In person.  As in, a printed out, manually signed, paper resume and cover letter.  In an envelope, personally addressed.

The company of interest had a number of jobs listed on their website, but nothing of interest to my abilities.  I still wanted to introduce myself though, in case they hadn't yet thought of the position they needed me for.  I scoured their website, then google in general, looking for a contact, an in, so I could send my unsolicited resume direct.  When I had about 17 tabs open in my browser, and found that they were starting to duplicate, I new I'd reached a dead end.

I went back to the tab highlighting the company's management team.  A photo and bio of each senior manager - a-ha.  I looked up a couple of them on LinkedIn, and while finding them was easy, there was still no way of personally contacting them directly.  Fine.  They were going to have to deal with ME, personally.  Persona, take the day off - go play video games or something.

Relativity - M.C. Escher
www.mcescher.com/gallery/back-in-holland/relativity/

No matter how often this happens, the frustration boils up inside, then out my mouth in steaming profanity, each time I cannot find a path to human contact.  Oh I know this is done on purpose, otherwise companies would have to hire an army of HR bodies to handle the new world's onslaught of applicants.  But as the ga-ga-ness over the growing Internet of Things continues to escalate towards euphoric expectations of paradise-at-last, I remain firmly grounded in our millions of years of fantastic and complex human evolution, and our advanced sociability among food chain members.  I still revere human interaction - not just eye contact and verboseness, but those finely tuned instinctual signals we consciously and subconsciously send and receive from each other.

I remember debates with managers in my previous life over the complete automation of a safety-critical system or process, with zero need for a human watch.  I argued that it was a lofty goal, but that until we could code facts + rules + experience + common sense in a neat, complete and always up-to-date IT system, it was far too serious a risk.  The most powerful AI systems, which are not likely assets of a regular company, still have beans compared to the human synapses.

I understand I am giving a lot of credit to the human race at the moment, when on the other hand we are still capable of and regularly practice inane stupidity.  However, by taking us out of the interaction completely, we risk erasing our need for human existence.  Because, contrary to euphoric expectations of a paradise involving the digitization and automation of everything, resulting in indefinite free time, haven't we already proven to ourselves that we are not capable of a life of only idle pleasure?

The strange but obvious thing that happened the other day was that, after having seen portraits of my potential contacts, read bios, seen some of their history and values through their LinkedIn profiles, it took only minutes to dash off a cover letter.  It usually takes me well over an hour, and much editing, to try and write something personable to nobody in particular.

While I was not able to hand my resume to the VP of HR directly, the nice lady in reception promised to pass it on.  Within a week, I got a personal note from the VP - he was interested, was going to pass on my resume where I might be of use, and if I hadn't heard back in a week or two, please bug him again.

To date, all my interviews, meetings, coffees have resulted from the involvement of some form of human interaction.  I have not received one call/acknowledgement/interview from an online job application.  And yes, I have sent a few.