Last week I got a call from a recruiter. I was busy and didn't recognize the number, so I let it roll to voice mail. When I listened to the message, she said her name was Candy, and she was a recruiter with XYZ recruiting agency; also, she had seen my resume on the Monster website, and was looking to fill a job she thought I might match. Could I please call her back?
Then she paused, and added, "Is this the same Hosea Tanatu that I used to talk to all those years ago?"
Oh my God. So it was that Candy! I thought I recognized the name!
To be clear, "all those years ago" means something on the order of 30 years. I was new in town, she worked for a different staffing agency from the one she works for today, and she did indeed get me a job. In the intervening years I found myself unemployed from time to time, and I think I probably contacted her once or twice again. But as it turned out she never placed me a second time.
But I remembered her name, which is why I went back to her. When I found myself unemployed in the spring of this year I tried to find her again but she was no longer in town. I checked on LinkedIn, but there were too many people with her name and none of the records listed the place where she had worked 30 years ago; so I couldn't be sure I'd found the right person, and gave up. And now here she was, calling me.
Of course I called her back. We spent a while chatting about what we've each been doing since we last saw each other. She sent me a copy of the job description. I told her that I didn't think I met it, but she was welcome to submit my name if she wanted; and so she did. So far, so good. We'll see if anything comes of it.
But after the phone call was over, I found that I was really thrilled that she remembered me, and that she had called. And I started to wonder why? It wasn't because the job was all that great. So it had to be something about talking to Candy again after all these years. But why should that matter? I've worked with plenty of recruiters over the years, and I wouldn't feel so chuffed at talking to most of them. Why Candy?
Was it just that I was flattered at being remembered? That might be part of it, but it can't be the whole story. By now I should be used to the fact that people remember me -- I've even jokingly called it "the Curse of the Tanatus."
Besides, I also remembered her -- by name. That's not true of any other recruiter I've ever worked with. It's not even true of every HR professional who has worked for companies that have hired me.
Candy and I were never friends in any meaningful sense. We never discussed anything other than how to get me a job, except incidentally (the way you might discuss the weather). I know nothing about her hobbies or her personal life.
A fortiori, there was never any hint of romance or sex between us. Nothing of the kind.
So why did I remember her? Why was I thrilled that she remembered me?
The easy answer is that somehow we clicked together back when we met, and clearly that has to be true but it explains nothing. Why did we click? I puzzled over it for a while without answers.
Then she sent me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. And when I read her profile, suddenly I got one small clue.
Her work history wasn't complete. It didn't stretch back as far as 30 years, which is why I hadn't found her before. But her profile included one entry for education. A bachelor's degree, granted just a few years before mine. So far, nothing remarkable.
But Candy is an American. And the one educational credential in her profile is a Bachelor of Fine Arts. From Oxford.
How did she end up going to Oxford? I have no idea. But it couldn't have been by accident. It couldn't have been out of negligence. It couldn't have been because her family was English nobility and has been sending their children to Oxford absent-mindedly for centuries. She's American, so there had to be a deliberate choice involved: on her part, to attend Oxford; and on someone else's part, to pay for it.
And all this means that at some level she is a humanist intellectual. We never discussed anything but getting me a job. We certainly never discussed art or history or philosophy. Whatever her past as a humanist intellectual, she clearly doesn't discuss it today.
But at some level we saw each other. Somehow it was what sociologists call "consciousness of kind." Underneath all the distractions of the workaday world, and without exchanging a single word that did not belong to the workaday world, we recognized that we belong to the same small tribe. And therefore we clicked. And therefore we remembered each other over many long years.
Maybe this is all bullshit, but it's the best explanation I have so far.
