Plastic People

I’ve been working for a plastics/foam company searching for a Sales Manager, so my work these days revolves around what I call my “plastic people” search. Plastic people make me think of hunting down my kids little Lego people around my house. Consequently, I am now hunting around the Western United States for a “Lego” for my client. I can’t get the image out of my head – I’m around Legos often! The good part of this is that it keeps me smiling even when on a harder-than-it-sounds mission to find the perfect candidate for my client. To also better serve my client, and quite frankly to satisfy my own curiosity, I went on an internet research binge to learn more about foam. I started with Wikipedia and typed in foam. This is what I got:

A foam is a substance that is formed by trapping many gaseous bubbles in a liquid or solid. A foam is normally an extremely complex system consisting of polydisperse (A collection of objects is called polydisperse or polysized if they have a broad range of size, shape and mass characteristics.) gas bubbles separated by draining films.

It goes on from there, but it’s so technical that this is definitely not the blog for that particular subject. Although, if you know of a blogger specializing in said topic, please let me know as it might lead me to the right candidate for this job!. Most of the guys I’ve talked to (very few women seem to be attracted to foam; I’ve only talked to one,) pretty much fell into foam. They are not academic tech types who specialize in foam. They do not have degrees in chemistry or biology. Most of them happened upon the industry and learned on the job about their product.

I’ve learned about foam too. I've learned it’s in pretty much everything - cars, airplanes, couches, computers, phones, medical devices, TV’s, buildings, etc. Some of it is so specialized that before I call a sales rep, I have a bit of research to do on what type of foam they sell. The point of my foaming at the mouth message? (O.K. I couldn't resist saying it.) Sometimes something that seems so simple really isn't, it’s quite complicated and the search process can become quite complicated too. However, this can be the most fun and interesting part of the job as well. One thing is for sure, I will never look at all of those little Lego people scattered about the floor of my house the same way again either.

So off I go through the recruiting maze armed with new information and some silly images to keep me smiling while searching for the perfect plastic person.