Jocks

Jocks run the world. You know the type. If you don't attend a High School football game and observe closely. Jocks are arrogant. That is qualification number one. You must be arrogant. You must think that you are the greatest athlete, manager, (insert position here) that ever lived. You can do no wrong. Others should bow to your wishes. Jocks are also agressive. They love the game, whatever the game may be.

Jocks love competition. They love to beat someone else. To win. They also love sports. Football, baseball, basketball, you name it. They love it. They generally play golf though they may not love to watch it.

They read the boss like reading a football play and it is the same to them. Football or office politics. They can no longer play football so they play office politics with the same fervor they played football and that they now watch football.

They will talk about football or other sports for hours at work and surf ESPN and other sports websites for hours. This is OK. It is a part of the job and is expected by the "winners". However, if someone else in the office is caught on Facebook or a game website even for 30 nanoseconds then he can be severely punished. And oh it is almost embezzlement if one is caught talking about their latest mission on World of Warcraft much less looking at the game website on a company internet connection.

You see sports is OK but WoW is not because jocks run the world.

The Job Inteview Scam

I read somewhere that a study once proved what we all already know. That is that most job interviews are a farce. Most of the time the candidate is already chosen before the interview process even starts. The interview is just to make it appear that the process is fair.

I've been on the other side of the interview table watching candidates who had diligently prepared for the interview "compete" against an the winning candidate. He wore shorts and made no effort to dress up for the interview process. Others had spent hours making presentations and such to prepare for the interview.

When the interview team came together at the completion of all of the interviews it was immediately clear to me that the process had been a sham. The boss knew who she was going to hire and no other candidate would do. The choice had been made long before the job was even opened. She knew it and the winning candidate knew it too.

Because of employment law and company policy the hiring manager could not simply say that she wanted John to take the job. She had to jump through the hoops. She would have denied that she played favorites and would have simply said that he was the most qualified for the position. He was the most qualified because she tailored the qualifications to match him.

This situation plays out thousands of times each day. People go to job interviews well scrubbed having spent hours preparing for a job that they don't have a snowball's chance in #@%! of getting because Fred was just playing golf with the boss last week and Fred had the job a month before it even opened.