Bad Trend Alert: E-Recruiting Leather Folios

My first e-recruiting interview was an abject disaster. My interviewer walked out to get me. We shook hands. We exchanged names. He beckoned me to follow him down the hallway to an office. It was a long hallway, and in my nervousness I was swinging my arms perhaps a bit too aggressively. And so then, all of a sudden, it happened: my naked notepad grazed his wrist, delivering a massive and fatal paper cut. As he fell to the floor gushing blood, his last words in this world were to me: “WHY...couldn’t you have...had a leather folio?”

So that is why I now have a leather folio for my notepad. Yes, I am only going to use it for another week, at most. Yes, every time I flip open its gracefully manicured cover to write down “300 million * 0.25 = 75 million babies,” I look like not only a douche but also a fool. Yes, as it sits on the desk between my interviewer and me, its large gold Harvard logo is an awkward reminder of the only reason I got this interview. Yes, walking around with it is the equivalent of wearing a Harvard backpack to school the day after early decision letters came out. Yes, it has a built-in calculator and pen loop. But people could die.