This sort of thing

Job seeking is a strange activity, particularly when you've been out of the market for a while and are of a certain age and you have a pronounced shuffle. Everybody of course is younger and quicker than you, candidates and employers alike and there is no hiding place. So you do your research, succumb to a telephone interview, an on-line assessment or two, maybe if you're lucky there's a face to face interview and a written test and then generally a black hole of some kind follows opening up and swallows nothing in particular leaving you wondering quite what you did wrong. Part of me thinks "there's no place for the likes of me in this sort of thing", another part says "it was always this way" and another part says "calm down, this is just some kind of vast universal con trick that you're putting yourself through and therefore simply treat the experience as if it were a theme park ride or a museum visit with a commentary. Go with the flow, enjoy the moment, so what? You don't really need this but it's fun and you get to see the soft and sometimes fascinating underbelly of businesses and meet new people you'll never see again." Amen.