Why You Should Stop Reading Career Advice Columns
Having just finished reading an article by a popular syndicated columnist entitled "7 Things You Should Never Wear to an Office Party" ("No pants? No problem!"), a couple of things occur to me. First, do I have enough medication in the house to kill myself? And second, why isn't everyone tired of career advice yet?
It's as if every high-school guidance counselor and employment agency manager who ever lived was awakened -- perhaps by some kind of ultrasonic alarm from a passing spacecraft -- and huddled together from lonely graves the world over, platoon-like, to attack us. In short, a zombie picture.
You can imagine it, too, I'm sure. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan or the Coen brothers, the plot would hinge on who can discover the zombies' hidden weakness and shrewdly exploit it to save what's left of our ravaged civilization. Probably a resourceful twelve-year-old girl. Through a suspenseful process of trial and error -- alluded to in ancient, pre-Internet manuscripts as Real Life Experience -- our unlikely heroine will discover that her own observations are at least as valuable as the blurbs she picks up at Yahoo! Finance on how to market her youthfulness to its maximum advantage. (Her mother, of course, will be played by Jodie Foster.)
Seriously, what do you suppose makes an otherwise sane individual take counsel from a media edutainment specialist on the subject of what to say at the next product launch meeting? Is it all just anyone's guess? During one of those years of the Great Internet Boom I heard an urban legend -- pretty sure it was a news story on NPR -- about an enterprising group of scientists who threw darts at listings of stock symbols in a controlled experiment and yielded, overall, slightly better returns than the leading market analysts. Is the lesson here that no one knows anything ever? Is that why professionalism is currently up for grabs? Could be. The reason tall tales like this endure, clearly, is because of their total believability.
Are you reasonably good at what you do? Has anyone besides you and your mother, spouse or career coach noticed? In my forthcoming book, Less Is More: Please Tell the Emperor His Suit Is Ready, I bravely examine the widespread phenomenon of corporate insecurity ... reaching the inevitable conclusion that it's everywhere. (Groundbreaking stuff. Watch this column for excerpts.) What it means in practical terms is that only one in ten people will operate with confidence, while the other 90 percent will continue to worry about whether someone else might be doing it better.
Contrary to popular belief, there are no success secrets; the important stuff is all painfully obvious. I hope my readers, if any, will eventually come to realize that it's about experience, performance, maturity and attitude rather than techniques, protocol, gimmicks and magic talismans. Although four out of five users report that reading my blog is more satisfying than actually being with me, there is no scientific evidence that anything I write has demonstrable value. As my father, of blessed memory, used to say, "If it was easy, then everyone would do it."
In high school I knew someone who had a solid reputation for cutting class and spending occasional short stints in the local reformatory. He used to do a marvelous trick. He would blow one monster smoke ring and before it dissipated, he'd shoot ten little ones right through its center. I still consider myself fortunate to have seen it with my own eyes. As impressive as it was, nothing aside from the memory ever remained of this unique accomplishment. Where is he now? Probably federal penitentiary. Or writing a career advice column for CNBC.