Today, I received a résumé in my email from a very intelligent scientist who is looking for a new position. These types of emails show up in my inbox fairly frequently, and because we don’t normally work for the “candidates” but rather the client, I typically move the résumés into a folder and don’t pay a lot of attention to them.

However, this guy had put a key word, “cancer immunology,” in his subject line, an area for which we are currently searching high and low, so I opened his document.

I had never seen one like it and it made me laugh! I printed it off and took it to our morning meeting to ask the experts in the office what they thought of his approach.  Comments around the table ranged from “What a goofball!” to “Yes, but he got OUR attention.” We spent approximately five precious minutes discussing this guy, in fact. And then we moved on with the agenda.

An hour later, after the meeting was over and we had all gone back to our offices and desks, my boss called me to tell me she had picked up the phone and called the guy. “What?! Why would you do that?”

My boss is something else, I tell you. She can be the silliest woman and have goofy fun, and then she leaves me shaking my head because she is pretty far-out in her philosophical/theological thinking, but then she is the most professional go-getter tough negotiator smooth-talking business woman that makes me sit back in awe at her skills in dealing with high-powered pharmaceutical genius companies.

But most of all, her heart is made of the softest gold. She thinks of others many times daily. She is generous in her compliments and her gift-giving. She sends texts and emails and hand-written notes of encouragement to every last person she comes into contact with, whether they are the plant waterer or the president of the most prestigious biotech company.

So today, she took it upon herself to call this scientist whom she had never met but saw his ridiculous résumé. She coached him. She spent time with him and asked him questions about his motivation behind the ridiculous. She offered her thoughts and then offered to assist him in finding a new position.

When I asked her “Why would you do that?!,” she said that it was the right thing to do. She wanted him to know that he had captured our attention, even if it wasn’t completely positive. She felt like this was an opportunity to “pay it forward” and help a decent, very intelligent scientist find his way in the world of job search.

So today, I am grateful for my wacky, goofy, amazing, heart-of-softest-gold boss.