work Perils of online job-hunting

Posted March 30, 2006 • Comments Off on Perils of online job-hunting

So I saw this ad in the Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wl/jobs/JS_JobSearchDetail?jobid=21261966

Sounds amazing, right? The top of the stated pay range is what I earn now. InDesign CS2 is my bread and butter. Books are what I want to make. And it’s in Fairfax. At route 50 and Waples Mill. Basically a block from Lisa’s. Great! Almost too good to be true!

The name of the company is there, so I go to the site. And I find this.
http://www.xulonpress.com/faith-statement.htm

UH, NO.

I find that I’m disgusted by the idea of degrading *my* values by applying for a job at a place like that. But am I doubling back on my standards by saying so? When the job and the location and the pay are perfect, aren’t I being closed-minded to abandon the idea because of the company’s religious affiliation?

What gets me is that the books they publish don’t look so bad. Some of them are about the Bible as literature. Many are personal reflections. I don’t think it would particularly bother me to work on books like that, especially for a vanity publisher like this. I fully understand that the author’s opinion doesn’t have to be mine, and that these authors are paying for a service.

My worries about this irony are put mostly to rest by the fact that they use the phrase “we at Xulon Press” to express their statement of faith. That says to me that they speak for all their employees, and it would be wrong in two ways to consider working there because I don’t share that belief: both deceiving them and compromising myself.

So I’m not applying for it. But I can’t think of ANYTHING else a company could possibly put on their website that would make me make this decision. I would gladly work for a gay publishing house, but I won’t work for a Christian one. Doesn’t that make me a bigot too?