Ire is annoyered.

Recruitment processes seem to suck.*

When I was shifting from uni to (hopefully) a classroom teaching job, I sent out 48 applications, got three interviews and one job offer. The job offer came from an interview that was a kick-on from the second interview. Teaching job applications are, to say the least, overwhelming - 5 to 8 questions that required a page-long response each. (Can anyone tell me what other industry does this? Having to read those is a reason I'll probably never aspire to principal-ship. )
I wondered: how on earth can you tell from these convoluted responses**, a few referees and AN interview whether I'm a good teacher, or even a teacher with potential? If I were them, I would put an awful lot of weight on the referees contribution, and hope that the applicant had used people who were not nuts. Even now, when people say "Oh, but you're a great teacher?" I think, how would you know? You've never seen me teach. Clearly, "no blood or tears" = I know what I'm doing. :
I've seen recruitment happen in an office environment, too, where resumes are pretty easy to interpret. Those gloriously overblown positions like Documentation Manager (I file stuff) and Public Liaison Officer (receptionist). Everyone knows what they mean. Really, all that's left is to find out if they're a complete odd-bod via an interview.
Strangely enough, I used to LOVE interviews. LOVE love loved them. Not sure why. I can only assume I thought I was awesome. (Was I the odd-bod?)
But then, I'm probably known as a somewhat extroverted person - not all the time, but I can be - and I did to a drama degree so I suppose I have what would be called a "flexible demeanor".

Now. My gripe.
Some of my friends are in IT - programmers, engineers, nerds. (I consider myself a nerd with pride! But its prolly only coz I like to think I know obscure, lofty, superior crap.)
These are people who are stereotypically known as 'socially challenged', especially if you consider current telly types from shows like The Big Bang Theory.
I suspect, too, that of all the careers that people with any ASD or even seem simply 'quirky' or eccentric, some sciences/IT would seem very attractive to them. (I'm basing this completely and solely on the high ratio of eccentric vs non-eccentric scientists I know.)
I know a few cases of very good scientists who aren't the greatest socialisers, or sometimes not-that-excellent at representing/promoting themselves. I know of an excellent programmer who needs specific behavioural support from his workmates, but he's one of the most effective and skilled engineers in the business. The benefits completely outweigh the challenges.

So, what I want to know is this: when you start incorporating Human Resources into recruitment processes - groups who aren't going to work with these employees, won't see them day-to-day, and don't have to manage these employees - what kind of person to they expect to see? What characteristics do they want to hire? What share do they have in these choices?

For the few people I know who are job hunting in science and IT fields, I trust their searches continue for good reasons. I trust they're missing out because genuinely better applicants were successful. But that those decisions had better be coming from the recruiting scientists, and not the freaking HR department.


* I write this as a completely biased, emotional stakeholder in a particular aspect of this process, as well as someone who's experienced it from the pointy end, and a little from the fat end.
** I have to say, I know people who blatantly copy/pasted other people's responses and for lots of reasons: a lack of time, a lack of respect for the process, being overwhelmed by the questions, and/or being unable to answer them.

Again!

Once again, a gut feeling articulated. Not so much what I wish I'd been able to say, with my own attitudes. The stereotype of some skanky woman who puts herself first at the wrong time is, like all stereotypes, very loosely based in truth, if at all. And yet my own discomfort is based on a worst-case-scenario that is extremely unlikely. I have been assuming I know best, when in truth, as a woman whose never been pregnant, I know nothing.

The bottom line about abortion is this. Do you trust women to make their own moral judgments? If you are anti-abortion, then no. You do not. You have an absolute moral position that you don't trust anyone to question, and therefore you think that abortion should be illegal. But the second you start making exceptions for rape or incest, you are indicating that your moral position is not absolute. That moral judgment is involved. And that right there is where I start to get angry and frustrated, because unless you have an absolute position that all human life (arguably, all life period, but that isn't the argument I'm engaging with right now) are equally valuable (in which case, no exceptions for the death penalty, and I expect you to agonize over women who die trying to abort, and I also expect you to work your ass off making this a more just world in which women don't have to choose abortions, but this is also not the argument I'm engaging right now), then there is no ground whatsoever for saying that there should be laws or limitations on abortion other than that you do not trust women. I am completely serious about this.

http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/04/do-you-trust-women.html

That's how I'd define feminism

Here’s how I define feminism. It’s the belief that nobody should be denied dignity, respect or opportunities – personal or professional, in public or at home, as a citizen or in relationships – solely because of their gender. If you believe this, and you don’t like seeing people disrespected or disempowered because of their gender, you’re a feminist. That’s it. That’s the only rule. The only qualifier.

Thank you Mel Campbell
http://thedawnchorus.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/feeling-assailed-by-feminism/

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Catalyst?

This, delivered via Bluemilk (you are such a star):

7. Motherhood involves sacrifice, how do you reconcile that with being a feminist?

Everything involves sacrifice. I don’t buy into the notion that anyone can have it all in any context. Being in a relationship involves sacrifice, being a child or a sibling or a friend involves sacrifice, just being a person involves sacrifice at some point.

For a long time now I've been waiting for the want of motherhood, suspecting that I will never get clucky until I am a mother, and that if I don't want to be elderly and childless then I'll just have to get on with it, current reluctance be damned (romantic, no?).
But a large part of my hesitation is selfish - what will I be forced to give up for this? Will I resent myself for it? And what if it sucks, or I suck at it? What if its harder than I ever imagined? (And I have a good imagination for melancholy.)
Then I read this and realised I forgot to think about the road so far; it hasn't been perfect*, and I have given up many things and been OK, often happy. I've also forgotten to look at what's between the parents and their children, rather than just at their trials and challenges.

*Forget for a moment the privilege I live in and how perfect that is in the greater scale of things.