Author Profile - Paul W. Smith, a Founder and Director of Engineering with INVENTtPM LLc, has more than 35 years of experience in research and advanced product development.
Prior to founding INVENTtPM, Dr. Smith spent 10 years with Seagate Technology in Longmont, Colorado. At Seagate, Dr. Smith was primarily responsible for evaluating new data storage technologies under development throughout the company, and utilizing six-sigma processes to stage them for implementation in early engineering models. While at Seagate, he was a proud member of the team that brought the world’s first notebook disk drive with perpendicular recording technology to the market.
Dr. Smith holds a doctorate in Applied Mechanics from the California Institute of Technology, a Master of Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The magazine pages are flipped too quickly for comprehension, punctuating the silence with a metronomic predictability. The familiar vibration of a hidden cell phone, demoted for now to a mere annoyance, briefly draws the focus of everyone’s attention. Fluorescent lighting creates a sickly pallor on the faces of the room’s six occupants, somehow complementing the stale odor of hope and fear that taints the air. Every tap of foot, crossing of leg, shifting of weight, clearing of throat – every simple, benign movement is somehow magnified by the slowly building tension. The slow creep of time in this small room mocks the laws of physics.
A series of footsteps grows agonizingly louder and, like a gunshot, the door at one end of the room suddenly opens. A name I don’t recognize is spoken, a youngish woman rises with a smile, and the remaining five of us let out a collective sigh, gather our belongings, loosen our ties, and shuffle away. Each of us has just completed the cycle once again – a journey that began with that rare, uplifting phone call from the human resources department, passed through research, rehearsal, countless interview questions (seasoned with eye contact, appropriate smiles, and firm handshakes), and ended back where we started – unemployed.
People who are employed to analyze those who are not have concluded that there are six applicants for every available job. Like all statistics, this one tells many different stories. Career coaches will attack with the brute force approach, advising you to generate six times as many job interviews as you would have in a bygone economy. Peace Corps veterans (the “glass is half-full” crowd) celebrate that one success, somehow implying that traversing the cycle will reduce the five rejected, dejected souls to four, than three, and so on. At some point, the government will find a way to massage the number “6”, and will loudly proclaim that the stimulus package du jour has reduced it to “5.3”.
Statisticians can tell you your chances of landing a job, the average time that will be required to find a job, or even such arcane trivia as the day of the week most folks will begin their job search on. There are numbers available for every occasion and to support nearly any viewpoint. For those who choose to remain discouraged, there is an endless supply of supporting data. In the modern age of the internet, it feels as though every available job is only a few keystrokes away. “Hope” sits on one shoulder, telling us to hit “Enter”, while “Fear”, on the opposite side, bolstered by statistics, screams “Don’t waste your time!”
In the movie “Sideways”, English teacher/writer Miles (Paul Giamatti) is an oenophile who is putting off opening his prize bottle for a special occasion. He is simultaneously hoping for an incredible experience and fearing that the wine may have gone bad. His waitress friend Maya (Virginia Madsen) observes that the special occasion is the day he opens the bottle. Life is more than just a glorious, unrealized potential lurking in the future; it is a series of triumphs and disappointments, put into motion by the decisions we make and the opportunities we encounter.
Lottery players, practicing statisticians of a sort, will counter any comment on their poor odds by asserting that the odds if you don’t play are zero. Only someone with a mathematician on a main branch of their family tree could find comfort in the admittedly finite difference between these two probabilities. A career in engineering has taught me to view all statistics through the filter of common sense and practicality. My experiences in life have led me to try and focus on the things I can change, and file the ones I cannot under “intellectual curiosities.” The odds of my getting a job may be small, but they are tangible. The average time to find a job may be long, but it grows shorter with every passing moment. The day on which most people begin a job search (tomorrow) is within my control.
The litany of unreturned phone calls, ignored emails, vanished resumes - the vision of the four other people who accompanied me out of that small room - these are part of me, but they are not all of me. It is far easier to identify with the group of five than with the exceptional one whose name is called. I am not ready to start buying lottery tickets, but I will take a chance and open the bottle. Regardless of whether I end up with a memorable libation, or an ingredient for salad dressing, the mere act will vanquish the anxiety and move me forward. I like those odds.
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