I don't use my phone much,

Ah yes“, John thought to himself as he entered into the brightly lit glass ceilinged lobby. It was filled with crewed cut handsome young executives in expensive suits and tightly fitted bodycon dresses. All desperately expelling nervous energy like cornered ferrets; intent on not making eye contact and glued to their smart phones.

“Here we go again” John sighed.

They were all here for the same reason. Hoping to be taken on as insurance Sales Representatives at Perniciem Inc.. Perniciem being not only the fifth largest insurance corporation in the country but also offering a signing bonus of 20,000$ for their sales force. All as qualified as each other, keen and ready to strike to knock out the competition. The main difference – John was a good 20 years older than the lot of them.

They were ushered into a large oval board room for an elaborate corporate power point presentation with painstaking detail of company culture, leadership highlights and organizational values, all in colour coded uniformity and aerodynamic logos. The keen faced ferrets all applauded and nodded enthusiastically. It was sickening. His lifetime spent working in the insurance world, would hardly stand a chance against such difficult a competition as the Ivy League educated and top exec interned MBA graduates that were his rivals. Having suffered greatly with redundancy and the after-effects of the pandemic in 2020, John now 59, was having to find himself a new position. A recruitment day for a low-level sales position was the last place he had pictured himself. All he wanted was to ride out the last few years at his old job and on his Harley. Yet here he was, back at the starting line, bygones be damned and that twenty grand would definitely come in handy.

The task was simple.

They had a week to think up a strategy to incorporate the company culture and global values into their sales pitch. There would be additional tasks given throughout the week with presentations on Friday. The room was alive with vibrant energy and the tapping away at Tablets and Laptops.

The instructors encouraged to work together and smiled winkingly “bounce ideas off each other – but remember it is a competition”. The ferrets had already exchanged phone numbers, started a slack channel, were appraising each other’s jokes on their WhatsApp group whilst firing off email updates. They didn’t take much notice of John after he had politely refused their invitation to join, mentioning “I don’t use my phone that much, really at all”. Hesitating, he had pulled out a new black notebook his daughter had laid out for him the night before. He began to jot down ideas and reluctantly reflect on the regurgitated company’s marketing slogans.

They were to work in the glass board rooms being observed by the HR and Sales Team leaders who were monitoring them throughout the week. Interrupting the working silences, he could continuously hear message notifications popping up on gadgets around the room. Everyone had three devices piled around them consisting of laptops, tablets and phones, with space like watch faces blinking and vibrating intermittently. He was surprised that not one of them, had a pen and paper.

John sketched out his ideas in his trusty notebook and planned to digitize his presentation on the Thursday. It wasn’t that he was IT illiterate, it had just always seemed more of a distraction than an aid to be bombarded with the void of the internet. He was confident in his idea, yet he thought his presence and participation rather frowned upon by the rest of contestants. He had little faith he would be chosen over the ferrets. Perhaps he was just fulfilling the recruiter’s quota for ageism.

Friday arrived and presentations were completed. John was happy with his Power Point and thought it underpinned his spoken pitch well. Admittedly, it did not incorporate the bells and whistles the other’s integrated presentations with virtual media swirls and external video links did – but was this really necessary to sell insurance policies? Surely his sound argument and presentation should suffice. He tried to console himself with memories of his long-standing career but even he remained unconvinced.

They sat waiting for results. The ferrets silently re-reviewed their presentations feverishly searching for what could have been improved upon. It was exhausting just watching them. John rose and was ignored when he offered to get anyone a cup of coffee. He smiled at the woman standing near the water cooler. She was near his age, and returned his smile warmly. “How did you go in there? The youngsters wearing you out?”. John couldn’t help but laugh and upon exchanging pleasantries returned to the room. Surprisingly the woman followed him and approached the front of the room.

“As some of you are aware my name is Jane Wilson and I am the acting Chair-Woman of this company. I will keep this short and sweet. I am a few years older than all of you here combined, and at my advanced age I would appreciate getting out of here as soon as possible to actually go and enjoy myself.” Muffled forced laughter erupted. She smiled graciously and continued. "We have been observing all of you this week and I must say any one of you would be a phenomenal asset to the company. Your hard work and dedication have not gone unnoticed and we would welcome all of those who are not successful to re-apply in the future. “ “At Perniciem, we do not solely value the outputs of work but how you approach this. As you are aware we have been observing all of you closely this week and not only your presentation score has been taken into consideration for our final decision. We have observed that you are all very technically capable and are happy you have all gotten along so well. It is for this reason we would welcome not only Ms Laura Smith but also Mr Christian Brown to join us at Pernicem, if they wish to, of course of course” she added smiling.

John was not surprised and applauded modestly. “As expected” he thought. He forced a smile and kept himself to one end of the room while congratulations were offered. The remaining ferrets disgruntled packed up to leave and so he felt it appropriate to also make his goodbyes. While he busied himself with putting on his jacket, he was surprised to find the woman he had met at the water cooler.

“May I have a minute of your time John”.

The others had all vacated the room by this point and the HR Team was toasting the two new sales reps. “I have been meaning to speak to you all week. I am most surprised we have not approached you sooner. I am sorry to say that we could not offer you the Sales position but I would be delighted for you to join our board of directors.”

“Board of directors?” John voiced haphazardly.

“Your longstanding experience makes you far too qualified for such an entry level position. I would welcome you as a board level representative, it will only be a part time position but same financial benefits as the Sales post – just less hours and of course the signing bonus is still included.” “Well I am most grateful thank you. I would very much like to consider your offer with a view of accepting it, even if its is a little out of the blue!”

“Oh wonderful” Jane continued. “The two we selected, are of course perfectly qualified for the sales role but I doubt they will ever make it past C-level management. I was discouraged at some of the lack of actual productivity throughout the week. This constant obsession and fixation on their devices, did you know that switching between apps online amounts to about 25 minutes a day?

That is not even including, the average 23 minutes and 15 seconds it takes for individuals to resume focus upon their actual tasks once one of those damned message notifications or emails ping up – and I have seen plenty of non-work-related notifications popping up on all screens whether it be social media or the informal work chats this week. So your notebook strategy is most admirable John.

“Please don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the world is moving to a total digital sphere and well of course encourage having fun at work – but I cannot bring myself to tolerate my employees not committing themselves fully to a task at such an early stage of the hiring process.

Imagine, if this were a digital free world, receiving an Instagram notification while at a job interview would be the same as pulling out a magazine to read in plain sight of your boss. Outrageous behaviour. Anyway, John I do hope your signing bonus will be spent on something nice - and I will buy you a new notebook myself.”

John smiled and stowed his daughter’s notebook away hastily to shake hands with Jane.