Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

U.S. job recruiters need to take matchmaking lessons from Indians, not the Native American kind. There are so few left. My finger points to the people in India. There are so many. They also know how to reproduce—and stay married. India’s population tops more than a billion—the second largest population in the world.

If matchmakers in India could teach job recruiters in the United States their secret of matching two previously unknown individuals—and get them to like each other—our unemployment rate would head south, and we’d return to the days of celebrating employee loyalty with a gold watch.

Matrimonial matchmaking in India traces back to the late 19th century when a family paired their son or daughter with a person of matching income levels, caste and so on. Just like job hunting, the process of finding a suitable partner evolved with technology, beginning with caste journals and magazines and then gradually moving to newspapers and online sites.

Under a scenario like this, your parents—the recruiters—would be stuck finding you a job. You get to sit back and relax while they do all the work. They’d post your picture and profile that listed your job qualifications, salary history and other qualities on something like Jobtoosh.com.

When they’ve found a match, your parents would arrange a meeting between you and that special potential boss. It would be hard to say no.

You’d go out on, say, three more interviews, maybe with your parents in the background on one of them, before going to work. It would be hard to say no.

Hiring traditions would vary across income levels, region and job titles, just as wedding traditions do in India. The more important you’re supposed to be the more lavish and costly the affair.

On your first day of work, you’d mount an elephant that would transport you in style and splendor to your office chair. Here’s how that would sound:

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Now, you can take off your sari, or kurta (shirt) if you’re a guy, and  smear a big red dot, or bindi (only if you’re a woman), between your eyebrows to mark yourself as working at this job for life.

Like I said, it would be hard to say no.