A Page From Each Other's Playbook

And what if dating sites made you endure all the stressing, candidate-hostile features of employment seeking in your quest to find a reasonably inoffensive-looking, decent human being with a halfway acceptable personality, a relatively stable career, a sense of humor that does not inspire you to reach for the nearest skillet to brain him with, and personal hygiene that does not routinely send you into convulsive fits? 

Like for instance, an application that makes you swear under penalty of Federal purgery charges that your responses to the remarkably intrusive questions are truthful and complete to the best of your knowledge and that discovery of anything to the contrary will result in your public beheading?

Drug tests? Criminal history checks?  Let the buyer decide whether that THC in your system is a deal breaker or a selling point. And let's talk about that International Drug Trafficking smudge on your record before we make any big travel plans.  Was there imprisonment in a Mexican jail involved?  Disorderly Conduct? How disorderly are we talking? Are we talking about a loud party with lots of drunk people doing the Electric Slide in the street or are we talking about Molotov cocktails? 

And what if the job application process were more like the tools used on dating sites?

It has long been taboo to attach your picture to your resume (though some people still do...which always made me want to scream. I am a human resources professional. You don't need to send me your picture. I don't need to know your race, gender, physical attributes or how well you dress to give you an interview. I do however care if you are stupid, which you clearly are...)

But what if it were more the norm?

Wouldn't it save a lot of time to figure out that the guy who looks pretty decent on paper is actually that asshole who carries on loud, foul-mouthed conversations on the train on his cell phone, phoning his buddies with all manner of misogynistic drivel on the express into town BEFORE he sits down across the desk for an interview?

Wouldn't it help to know that Maryann Wentworth is really Maryann Whipple, the girl from high school with the gruesome habit of wiping her incessantly snotty nose on the sleeve of her uniform, and the weapons-grade BO, and the penchant for satanic chanting, BEFORE inviting her in to interview for the customer-facing, complaint resolution position?

Yes, I really do think the two industries should talk...