• by Jeff Einstein , July 6, 2004

Welcome back from the July 4th weekend. Hope you and yours had a great one!

In my column of June 16th -- "Death of a Salesman" -- I wrote about how voicemail and email had morphed in recent years from communications technologies into lines of first defense against what has evolved into a relentless onslaught of unsolicited sales pitches.

The very technologies that make spam and runaway advertising possible are now being deployed -- with minor modifications -- to prevent it. Unfortunately, a lot of legitimate babies get thrown out with the bath in the process, and it becomes a whole lot easier to turn people off than turn them on again.

Our understandable aversion to spam, telemarketing, and other intrusive marketing technologies like popup windows has rendered us all but oblivious to everyone it seems except the very few individuals who contribute at any given point in time to our financial and professional well being. We are losing our civility in the process, and narrowing our vision to a dangerously provincial what-have-you-done-for-me-lately universe in which technology-driven process is the default condition at the expense of human judgement and compassion.

Nowhere is this more glaringly evident than in the recruitment business. Each new job spec posted online elicits hundreds of emailed resumes in response. Recruiters have precious little time to review each resume nowadays, and even less time to follow up with qualified individuals. Accordingly, only those job seekers whose resumes constitute perfect matches for the position are contacted. Of those, only a chosen few will be contacted for interviews. Those who don't make the initial cut are rarely informed of the fact, and are left dangling in the ether, with tickler files in their Outlook or PDAs to remind them to follow up for job opportunities that -- for all intents and purposes -- no longer exist for them. It all adds up to hundreds of thousands of hours of wasted time and accrued frustration on a daily basis. And it's all unnecessary: Common courtesy, even in the form of a simple auto-reply email would prevent a whole lot of frustration and ill will. What is the sound of a door slamming in cyberspace?

The lack of civility or common courtesy is by no means confined to online recruitment; it exists at the senior-most levels of organizations as well. One senior-level marketer told me of his efforts to follow up with the CEO of a large advertising agency after a successful lunch meeting. "I don't understand," he said to me. "We really hit it off. He promised to get back to me within the week to schedule the next round of interviews, and I never heard from him again. I phoned and emailed him numerous times over the next several weeks, but never heard anything back in reply. I can understand if they decided behind closed doors that I'm not the right guy for the job, but how much effort does it take to pick up the phone or send me a quick email?"

My own experience confirms my friend's story many times over: I have on numerous occasions traveled well along the interview pipeline -- all the way to the chairman's office in several instances -- only to be left hanging in the end without a clue, with no feedback and no idea of what went wrong where. Fewer and fewer individuals -- regardless of their professional station -- are taking the time for common courtesy. It's simply no longer top-of-mind. We are expected to grit our teeth and move on, which of course is exactly what we do. But the aftertaste is increasingly unpleasant and bitter. Everyone talks relationship management, but fewer and fewer executives seem to practice it in their own work.

Our digital communications technologies inure us to common decency. Our standards have fallen precipitously as a result. What does it say about our diminished expectations when a crushing rejection after a full month of interviews can be assuaged by a simple conciliatory email? And what more does it say when that email never arrives?

We treat each other the same way we treat spam. Sometimes it seems to me that the real danger of spam resides not in its ubiquity, but in the measures we adopt to prevent it, how those measures change the nature of our relationships with the outside world, and how they ultimately confine us to our own hermetically sealed inside worlds. We have reached the point where we now spend billions of dollars to eliminate advertising and unwanted solicitation. We are becoming more and more proficient at turning each other off, while our global communications technologies are making every man an island unto himself. Spam is perfect: We are becoming spam.

Many thanks for your gracious time, dear reader. Best to you and yours.

Please note: A new Einstein's Corner discussion group has been opened on Yahoo at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/einsteinscorner/. The Einstein's Corner discussion group is dedicated to exploring the adverse effects of our addictions to technology and media on the quality of our lives, both at work and at home. Please feel free to drop by and join the discussion.