Football men exercising, Harvard. (LOC). Bain News Service, ca. 1910

In The NFL, Don’t Be Smarter Than Your Boss (like all jobs)

Forrest ChristianCareers 3 Comments

Greg McElroy’s alleged Wonderlic score has been leaked and it’s created a buzz. The Wonderlic is a part of the bevy of tests the NFL puts draftees through and generally measures what is known as “general mental ability”. SEC standout quarterback McElroy’s problem is that his Wonderlic score is almost 2 times as high as the average NFL quarterback. And …

Young worker at the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad 40th street shops, 1942.

Getting that low-level job as a Hidden High Potential

Forrest ChristianCareers, Underachievers 6 Comments

Sometimes when you’ve been the Hidden part of “Hidden High Potential” for way too long, you just want to find something that pays the bills. You look for a job, any job.

This is hard to do, even when times are good. When times are hard, it seems impossible.

Just ask Julie Neidlinger. She knows all about how hard it is to get a job when you’re grossly overqualified. The story she tells is an excellent example, because it’s such a common one to so many of you Hidden High Potentials. She went looking for an office job in the state with the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, lower than my region had during the good times.

I was looking for something Monday through Friday, normal business hours, regular paycheck, nothing retail or selling — I just want to be able to put aside money and rebuild my savings.

For some reason, in this type of work, I am not hireable. I do not know why.

So I’m going to tell her, and give some hints as to how she might be able to pull this off, and close with the core truths that are more useful.

Bored souvenir seller in Moscow. Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com

That Boring Job Really Could Be the Death of You

Forrest ChristianCareers, Reviews - Articles 1 Comment

Research published last month in the International Journal of Epidemiology shows a link between being bored at work and dying early. Back in the late 1980s, 7,500 civil servants in London — aged 35 to 55 — were polled about their jobs. Thirty years later, Annie Britton and Martin Shipley of University College London went looking to see what happened …

Facebook Developer Garage, Paris, 2008 October 9. (c) Ludovic Toinel (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Creative Class Job Interview? Go with Stuff White People Like!

Forrest ChristianCoaching 2 Comments

A client asks the question: What should I do to win an executive level interview? So let’s look at how to manipulate the forms that are expected by today’s uninformed managers. (I’d say “idiot” but there are too many lawsuits these days.) I’ll assume that you’re a heterosexual American guy who wants a job as part of Richard Florida’s Creative …