Entering junior year of college marks the customary start to getting a post-graduation job. During this time, it’s inevitable to hear complaints regarding application requirements of entry level jobs: they all demand prior experience. It’s a catch-22 situation — you need experience to get a job, but you also need a job to gain experience.
Wisconsin will be acting as the employer Nov. 4, and we, as Wisconsinites, are going to hire a candidate for governor based on his or her previous job experience. By making the decision to vote for a candidate, we are essentially hiring someone to manage a business in which we all are stakeholders. Wisconsinites will be scanning the résumés, conducting interviews and using it all to make an informed decision.
Taking a quick look at both of the résumés, it is surprising that the résumé of Mary Burke even got through the first round of interviews, let alone being one of the top two candidates for governor. Since previous experience seems to be becoming the most important thing when applying for a job, it is astonishing that our state could even consider electing a governor with such an absolutely abysmal résumé. Hiring Burke would be like hiring a recent business school graduate to be the new CEO of Walmart. While the graduate might be a great person, they have no relevant experience as a manager or as a corporate executive.
In the past, Burke has touted her experience working at Trek as a reason why she would make a good governor. In fact, she probably even has it bolded on her résumé. However, looking at her experience at Trek, she should be immediately disqualified. While working for Trek, she made plans to send jobs oversees even though she could have kept the jobs right here in Wisconsin. It may have been a good idea in a business sense, but this idea did not even consider the well-being of Wisconsin. If Burke let Wisconsin suffer as a result of her own agenda before, what is to stop us from thinking that she will not do it again? Secondly, if you look at the position description for governor, the words “job creator” are probably in there somewhere. Since Burke has no prior experience in this, why would anyone hire her?
However, there is another red flag on her résumé that voters should check out. After her brief time at Trek, Burke embarked on what some pundits have described as a year-long snowboarding sabbatical. While Burke should be able to spend her money in any way that she wants too, this should still be a red flag for any employer. If anyone were to take a spontaneous year off work, any serious employer would have questions about the gap in my résumé. Everyone regardless of their political affiliation should want to question Burke about this sabbatical. One of the primary complaints with politicians in this day and age is that many of them are out of touch with the middle class. There are many people who cannot afford to snowboard for a year straight even if they wanted to. This should be the second strike against Burke’s résumé.
A third strike against Burke’s résumé can be found in her time as Secretary of Commerce under former Gov. Jim Doyle. At first this definitely sounds impressive. However, not only was she not successful in the position, but she also caused damage to the “company.” As we have mentioned in many of our previous articles, during the time period that Burke held this position, the unemployment rate of Wisconsin rose higher than the national unemployment rate for the first time in 25 years.
If these three strikes on her résumé were not enough, the employers should refer to her interview. During the second debate that Burke had with Gov. Scott Walker, she never really seemed to offer any real solutions. She did a great job saying that there are some problems with our state, but she rarely, if ever, gave real, tangible, actionable solutions. Everyone should watch the video themselves. Then, you should decide on who you would like to employ as the governor of Wisconsin. Voting without watching the debate would be like hiring someone as a CEO without an interview.
While we don’t know about the other employers, we do not intend on hiring the recent college graduate to be the new CEO of Walmart. While the graduate is a great person, looking at the graduate’s résumé and listening to the interview, it’s certain that we can find someone who is more qualified for the position. Again, for us the choice is clear: we are certainly not voting for Burke.
Charlie Hoffman and Zach Walters ([email protected]) collaborated on this article.
