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Except for a few very good friends, I am currently ignoring online career advice columnists.  It’s not that their advice is bad.  The real problem with such advice, or any advice for that matter, is that it so often fails in the particulars. 

If I had parented my children strictly according to other people’s advice,  they would be sociopaths and I would be institutionalized by now.  Human relationships just don’t work that way. 

It’s not that I don’t seek advice. I have read lots of parenting books, and with one child entering her teens and another becoming a young adult, I’ve just gone out and bought several more; nevertheless, I don’t ever assume there is anyone out there with more expertise about my particular child than I have myself.  And the same goes with my current job search.

Bloggers, and advice-giving bloggers, walk an especially dangerous road.  We can pontificate for as long as we like without interuption, without editors, and more often than not without even getting much feedback. 

We can get a little weird. 

And every so often, I also get a tiny bit cranky, and find myself reminding HR bloggers, much to their great misfortune, that the employer is only one half of the job search equation, even though the employer’s perspective is virtually always presented as if it were the only one with any legitimacy.  Though employers are, of course, the people with the power to hire,  I submit that the actual power ratio of the employer/employee equation is considerably more complicated than that.  Employment is, by definition, a two-party system.  While it’s fine to keep harping on the one hundred and forty seven rules employees must follow in order to be fabulous, the quality of a company depends just as much on the fabulousness of the employERS.  

Management guru Peter Drucker insists that personnel decisions are the most important ones a company can make.  A clumsy recruiter’s own failure to be fabulous will be reflected in the quality of candidate he hires, either because he may not make the best choices, or because he may not attract the best candidates in the first place.  And that sort of failure is far from minor.  It is, instead, a systemic failure that shall effect (or infect) the quality of the entire company.

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Related posts:
Un-Fabulous Employers: Asking for Too Much Upfront (Next post in this series)
Blind Box Ads: Bad-Ass, or just Bad? (final post in this series)

Video Copyright Ted.com: republished here under Creative Commons Licensing

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

(If video is loading too slowly, you may link to it directly by clicking here. )

Standford Business School’s Bob Sutton and I had an interesting conversation about assholes today.

He (literally) wrote the book that is changing the world’s bad idea that it’s okay to be a jerk in the workplace, so long as you get things done. But Sutton seems equally interested, at times, in his ongoing crusade on behalf of the word “asshole” itself.

He’s very fond of it, and doesn’t seem to have any use for a thesaurus.

I love the guy. But he didn’t get my point that the concept is more important than the word — and that sometimes words themselves are assaultive (he, of all people, should know this.) This particular word not only further offends those who may deserve it, but might also offend people who want to talk about healthy workplaces without always using words like “asshole” when they do.

Which might make the person who keeps insisting on the word, himself, an asshole — right?

You may already have read “Invisible Mother,” (text below). As best as I can tell it’s been circulating online since at least 2005, via email, message boards, and dozens and dozens of blogs — but it is always credited to a nameless author.

Because she’s invisible. Get it?

I do not like to post things without an artist’s permission, much less without attribution. That’s called “plagiarism,” and is a form of theft.

Nevertheless, the hundreds of postings by hundreds of women all happily conspiring with the invisible author to keep her that way is wonderfully ironic, quite aside from the funny loveliness of the piece itself.
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Photo by Kris de Curtis

I’ve had a house full of children, visiting relatives, and one vacationing husband. Consequently, we keep running out of food, clean towels, and unoccupied computers.

Among other things: in the midst of everyone taking showers one morning, our ancient plumbing stopped working (first in one bathroom, and then in the other – a total shut-out!)

Sigh. I really did mean to be more organized this week. But honestly? At this point I don’t even know where my day planner is. I did find my cell phone (in the bathroom) and my car keys (hanging from the car’s passenger-side door.)

Happy Easter, folks!

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Lord Love a Log Splitter: on Trying to Live a More Balanced Life
Hear, Hear!