WPM

Do you know what “WPM” means?  If you graduated from college in the early 1990’s and had to get a temp-to-perm job through Manpower, then you are thoroughly versed in WPM.

Words per minute.  As in: how many of them can you type.

Remember those old typing tests?!  Manpower was famous for them.

They’d have you use some inane “sample paragraph” with little numbers under all the words.  [I was a personal fan of “When my teacher scolded me,” but I always felt “A visit to an exhibition” coulda used a little work.]

Your Career Counselor would yell “Go!” and start the stopwatch.  You’d furiously thunk away on actual paper with no spell check or opportunity to correct your work.

And the kick in the pants (or should I say the kick in the suntan-colored hose and Kasper suit?) would be that your nerves caused your fingers to go one key “off.”  Turns out you could type 60 words of gobbledygook per minute back when that meant something.

Flash forward to a new century, and check out this “Skills and Qualifications” gem I recently came across on a job application  [above].

Where did these questions come from?!  We’re not asking any of these questions anymore – including the WPM one.

In which case, I think my answer speaks for itself.

Also?  I don’t think I’ll get the job.

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