Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Hot Docs - The Job


One of my friends volunteered at the recent Hot Docs festival here in Toronto. For that she got a bunch of vouchers to see some films. So a few of us got together to go see a movie. The one we chose was called The Job.

Now, I have to mention one reason we picked this movie was because of the date and time it was playing. We wanted a movie on a Friday that was late enough so that we could meet up and grab dinner beforehand. As well, our first choice was already sold out... so we got what we could grab.

Basically The Job is a documentary from France which follows the group interview process of a number of applicants for a sales position at an unnamed company by a group of head hunters. In current times employers can choose to be bullies during the hiring process and get away with it since so many people are desperate for work. That's what we see here.

We see 10-12 people being grilled and tormented by the head hunter and his associates over the period of a few hours for a job that they know little to nothing about. They don't even have a clue how much they'll be paid (which turns out to be minimum wage plus commission).

This is done to see how they react under pressure because the job requires you to perform under duress I suppose. But, I think they took it a bit too far.

To get an idea of the treatment they received, after the first round of cuts the applicants who weren't considered for the job were individually asked to give the reasons they thought they weren't hired (in front of the whole group). As if learning they wouldn't get the job wasn't bad enough. They had to rub it in before they let them leave.

This went on for the entire length of the movie (which was around 90 minutes). If you have any sort of a heart it was kind of rough to sit through. You just felt so bad for these poor souls.

I guess that's the kind of society we live in today. Where people are treated as a commodity like cattle or sheep. It's all about profits and nothing else. How sad is that?

No comments:

Post a Comment