=========open session=========
We Hope You Enjoyed Your Holiday
We have not made any concrete decisions as
of yet, but what has been determined unequivocally is that your background,
while entertaining and interesting and surely not without its own merit (a
hunch which, sadly, we are not currently at liberty to confirm), is not quite a
match for this position. Since we met with you several weeks ago, and even
during the two hours we met with you, the definition of this position has
evolved quite significantly; while we have not quite nailed down exactly what
the position is, unfortunately there was never a point in its evolution when we
considered you a viable prospect.
It so happens that we have some candidates
we feel will be a better match for us right at this present time. These
candidates have newspaper experience, they have magazine experience, they have
book experience, they have the kind of nonvirtual experience we are looking for.
We also need someone with daily experience, although we certainly respect that
you have in the past attended a job every day. We have discovered candidates
who have written about law and policy and numerous other things about which you
have not written previously, and cannot fully be trusted to write about in the
future. Our preferred applicants have written very long pieces, and they have
written extremely short, pithy, purchase-spurring copy, none of which we see
pasted attractively into your portfolio, in fact we do not see that you have anything
pasted attractively on paper at all. One candidate we like has precisely the
same qualifications you have, except she has been abroad recently, which we
liked. But again, we must say that we find your history quite fascinating, and
we also quite liked that restaurant you recommended to us during our chat. We
enjoyed meeting you.
What we would like to do is keep you in
mind, not strictly speaking of course but perhaps in a file of losing
candidates, because we do feel your background might somehow match undefined
positions that may evolve in the future, the way you hope a pair of clearance
Pucci pants might prove appropriate for some occasion yet to be imagined. What
we would really like, of course, is not to contact you at all; having already
expended so much energy hiring a more qualified person, the task of conveying
this news to you seems unfairly onerous, and we are so much busier now than we
were when we engaged you in that lengthy interview. So we hope you understand
if you never hear from us, but we do reserve the right to call you in again if
you might be up for another visit and could perhaps take some time to complete
a test. We may want you to meet another person who may or may not consider you
employable, and while we encouraged you to ask us many questions about our
organization, we may not have gotten a chance to tell you everything about our
exceptional benefits program, or our tennis courts. Thank you for your
interest.
January 7, 2003