At 9pm today I applied for a Help Desk Analyst position at Jackson National Life, a rather large insurance company headquartered here in Michigan. At 11pm they had already sent me a generic “you didn't make the cut email”.

Why am I writing about this?

I actually had my hopes up that I would get contacted about this job. I have a lot of experience in customer service, especially technical support. My resume outlines 6 years worth of almost pure technical support from my last 4 jobs. When I wasn't in class, chances are you could find me answering calls about a number of different technical issues.

Beyond my experience, I know two people with ties to JNL, one even works there now. So you can see how I would have expected just a bit more then the generic “thanks but no thanks” email in less then 2 hours after applying.

I mean think about it, I spent about an hour and a half filling out their form, setting up a nice cover letter and getting everything set to be sent in, and in probably 5 minutes the computer said no, for some reason that I will never get to know.

One of my connections is attempting to look into why I was turned down so quickly but I doubt I'll figure anything out. I'm sure I'll hear excuses, some better then others, but in the end I typed something wrong and will never get to know what it was.

It's really disheartening to think about how much time I've wasted applying for jobs in which a computer decided I wasn't “qualified”.