Currahee

An example: 250 applicants for 1 position: a systems engineering role with a background in tactical communications/SATCOM. Of these, maybe 5 are qualified; of those, 1 will get the job. I sort through them all, and try to forget that they are people with spouses, kids, dreams, hopes, bills, debts. It helps to not look at the names. Most are not qualified in the slightest. The first few times I saw this - the truck driver, the financial analyst, the teacher - I thought it was kinda funny. What are they thinking? Then the stark truth of it: anything, they'll try anything, because everything stands to be lost. Dozens of open positions, hundreds and hundreds of people vying for them. I spend hours staring at the screen and sorting through the resumes and from time to time I try to escape from it, I do a stupid Tweet or write a blog post or just shut my eyes and watch the glowing lines dance on the black screen of my eyelids, and those lines coalesce into the muttered curses and soft pleas of people who just want to be able to buy a new pair of shoes, or maybe a toy for their kid's birthday, maybe pay their rent or mortgage or purchase enough groceries for the week...it becomes unthinkable. 

I've been there before. I'm lucky; what I do, recruiting, is the greatest job a potential job hunter can have. The flip side:  I do one thing, I find people and hire them, and that's great if your company is actually in a position to hire people. Getting laid off to a recruiter is like a combat drop to an experienced paratrooper; you feel that old fear, but years of training and experience help you push it down into your gut, where it gnaws at you but remains trapped, in a place where it can't possess you. You snap into routines; emails and phone calls to old colleagues and people you've never met but know through association, resumes posted and sent, databases mined. Yesterday: a brief, apologetic phone call from my boss, something about "overhead" and "budget projections", and suddenly I'm there again, an open hatch, the wind in my face, the earth rushing by miles below.