I Will Not Be Hired This Year

“It’s like I was playing some kind of game, but the rules don’t make any sense to me. They’re being made up by all the wrong people.  No! . . . I mean no one makes them up. They seem to make themselves up.”
- Benjamin Braddock, The Graduate

I will not be hired this year.  I am not taking a defeatist attitude, I have simply accepted the truth.  I know this because things are absurd out there right now.  How else can you explain that a recruiter at an accounting and finance staffing agency ends my interview by telling me that the bartenders at a local bar are former strippers.  “That’s right, Jodi will show you her tit, just ask her,” explains Matt, cupping his hands below his left breast as if he were a women holding out her tit.  “You know what I am talking about!?!”  The elevator couldn’t come fast enough to provide an escape from the conversation.

Why I spoke to that guy for an 1 1/2 hours still blows my mind, but getting that final statement made me realize how absurd this process is.  I mean, this guy is actually gainfully employed while 1 in 10 people you bump into on the street are searching for employment.  In a business setting, 99% of my fellow unemployed would not say something as fucking stupid as Matt.

Interviews are really just false justification for the interviewer.  The interviewer tries to make the job seem difficult and unique.  This reflects on the interviewer who of course also has a job equally or even more difficult and unique.  Really?  My question to my readers is have you ever had a job that was really so hard that no one else could do it?  In honesty, I haven’t.  In reality, unless you are a NASA scientist or a brain surgeon, you haven’t either.  That is because most jobs, especially in the corporate world, allow for a significant amount of failure.

Since graduating with an MBA from UCLA Anderson, I have been a mid-manager.  A mid-manager’s decisions and work are greatly muted by the layers of hierarchy within the corporation.  The output has limited affect on the health of the overall organization.  It is the people at the top of the pyramid whose decision affect the livelihood and success of the people below them. So what makes someone successful in the corporate world?  I guess luck.  And I have had the unfortunate luck of being the victim of some pretty dumb decisions made by those people at the top of the pyramid.

As I reflect on my career I realize the the vast majority of my career has been absolutely subjective.  There is nothing measurable that indicates I create greater output than the next guy.  At least not in how I have been reviewed by my supervisors.  All my reviews have been strictly opinion.  And in talking with my friends, I know this is not unique to my career.

The hiring process is absurd.  Supposedly the goal is to ferret out the best candidate.  In reality, it’s used to identify the candidates that the hiring manager is most comfortable with . . . i.e. the person who has the background that is most similar to them.

“Wow! You were a McKinsey consultant!!  I was a McKinsey consultant!!! I found McKinsey to be boorish, lame,  and void of any true value that I have found useful for this job.  You’re hired!!”

On the other hand, a review of my candidacy is more like “Wow!  You have an interesting background!!  You have done quite a lot that does not have any similarity to my background!?!?  I’m sorry, this job is not for you because you are A. too qualified B. not qualified or C. not willing to suck my dick on command.”

The absurdity of our system was best articulated by a successful internet executive who was the commencement speaker at my younger brother’s graduation.  As the basis of his speech he decided to mock the infamous line from The Graduate “I got one word for you . . . plastics”.  The executive, apparently oblivious to the meaning of that scene, proclaimed in his speech the word should  “obviously not be plastics but rather internet!!”  With his statement, the executive, self proclaimed as “one of the country’s premiere businessmen“,  successfully placed himself in the role of the business person the scene was mocking.

Contrary to the premise of my MBA education, the market is NOT rational.  It makes for an easy model when teaching business cases, but, come on, are most business decisions being made in a structured, analytical way?  Not from what I have seen.  Are consumers, as a whole, truly analyzing the cost benefit of each purchasing decision?  HELL to the NO!

Shortly after being hired by InfoSpace to help launch their first direct-to-consumer mobile business, I decided to look at the fledgling business’s financial model, which projected revenue for the next 3 years (unfortunately I did this after making the major life decision of leaving a secure job).  I realized I had made a major career mistake when I asked “how did you come to project $15million in revenue by year 3?”  “Oh, that was the amount the Board said we had to make in order to get approval to launch this business.”  The model was a sham.  Made up of simple backwards calculations and opportunistic assumptions.  Nothing based on research or reality.

Short-term thinking and the easy way is what drives the market.

If the market were rational, how could the American diet be explained?

Rational is defined as a thought process based on reason, sane, logical.  There is nothing sane in Supersizing?  The irrational thought is that for only 10% more money I get 50% more food.  Make that 50% more salt, sugar, and fat; nothing of which the body needs.

The human body, like most things in nature, has an equilibrium.  There is an optimal amount of intake for the amount of energy the body produces.  Obesity (34% of the adult population in the US) is the result of far too much intake for the amount of output.  In other words, eating too many calories for the amount of physical activity.

If the market were rational, the consumer would not Supersize.  The consumer would not pay 10% more money for something not needed – i.e. 50% more salt, sugar, and fat.  In fact, the rational consumer would not eat anywhere a Supersize was offered, because any food offered at such an establishment is not needed.

Thanks to a largely irrational food industry, Americans now spend less than 10% of their income on food, where as 40 years ago we spent 18%.  Great!!  Wrong.  This is a prime example of short-term gain (I am saving money today) and the easy way (its easy to keep a poor, cheap diet).

In reality, the reason for the savings is food is made cheaply and the market demands that the suppliers continue to find ways to make it cheaper.  Over the long-term, this short-sighted mentality costs both the individual and the market as a whole.

Forty years ago we spent 5% of our income on health care.  Today we spend 18%.  That’s a net loss.  The combined expense of food and health exceeds the amount we paid 40 years ago.

Our irrational market has created a country populated with obese people that suffer from heart disease and diabetes.  And has produced a health care system that no one can afford.

If the market cannot act rational when it comes to food, an activity done for reasons of basic survival, then how can we expect the market to be rational with any endeavor?

So why am I writing about this?  What is my point?  I guess it’s just a rant.  A chance to vent.  An acceptance that I am playing a game in which the rules don’t really make any sense because they really just kinda make themselves up.