The transition from college to adulthood might be the hardest one we make in our whole lives. After we spend twenty years learning how to get good grades, we go into a workforce where those skills are largely irrelevant.
In fact, the skill that is most important in adulthood is self-knowledge—knowing what you like, what you need, and how you make decisions based on that information. Self-knowledge is hard, though. Even for someone who’s been in the work world for decades.
To make matters worse, Dan Ariely, behavioral economist at MIT and the author of the book Predictably Irrational, finds that we are pretty bad at making decisions based on what we want, and we are easily influenced by extraneous issues. So here are some mental potholes to look out for when you’re steering your own path.
1. Taking action is more important than taking correct action.
I’ve written before about how the soul search is not a good thing for a job hunt. This is because when we are job hunting and we perceive that everything is available, it’s nearly impossible to make a decision. So we don’t. We tell ourselves we’re figuring things out, but really, when presented with tons of choices, our preference is to do nothing:
Ariely describes a study someone did about buying jam in a chic-chic grocery store. Researchers gave free samples of twenty-four jams one day, but only six samples the next day. More people took samples with twenty-four jams to choose from than when given samples of only six. But when researchers gave people a coupons for buying jam in the store, 3% of the people bought jam on a day there were twenty-four jam samples, but 30% of people bought jams on a day there were six samples. “It’s just sugar and fruit,” says Ariely, “but twenty-four jams is just too much to choose from.”
In a job search, if you tell yourself you have a gazillion choices, you do yourself a disservice. Instead, force yourself to just take a job, any job. Because after a week or so on the job, you learn to naturally limit what you would consider next—you see things you don’t like about your current job and you say I’ll never do this again. So the best way to zero-in on what you want to do is to force yourself to do something—to do anything.
And if you are reticent to take this advice, pretend you’re at the jam counter, and you should arbitrarily knock 18 jars on the floor.
2. The worst time to go to graduate school is when you don’t know what you want to do.
One of the biggest problems with grad school is that people graduate into the work world, which is an open, undefined road. It’s scary to see that you will probably go through your twenties having no idea what you’re doing and trying a lot of stuff.
The worst time to go to graduate school is when you are facing this problem of feeling lost, because the confused feeling of going through emerging adulthood makes you very likely to instead take what used to be a default course for life after college: Law school, business school, getting a PhD.
Ariely found that if you are confused but you have a default choice, you’ll take it. He makes this point by showing the rate of organ donation among people in various countries. At first blush, the chart makes no sense. Less than 10% in Germany and nearly 100% in Austria, for example. Or about 20% in Denmark and nearly 100% in Sweden. These are culturally similar countries with drastically different donation rates.
It turns out that it depends on the form that people got about organ donation. In countries where you have to opt out of donation, there is nearly 100% donation rate. In countries where you have to opt in, there is typically less than 10% donation rate.
The tendency to choose the default option is not because people don’t care about organ donation. In fact, they care so much—because it deals with their own death and also with ethics—that they don’t want to think about it. Ariely says that if there is a difficult decision and a default option, people go with the default.
So back to grad school. When your parents were graduating, grad school might have been a safe choice, but today, it’s actually a really risky path. This makes it even more dangerous that people have a proclivity to choose grad school because we naturally look for a default in the face of confusion. To make a good decision about graduate school, do it when you are feeling safe, focused, and certain about what is right for you in life.
3. Take pride in making bad career moves.
The truth is that even when we think we have a good understanding of our preferences, we totally overestimate our ability to control our lives in relation to our preferences.
So now it makes sense that most of us have made terrible career decisions. It also makes sense that people who have not made some terrible decisions are not living, not trying to find what’s best. The only way to have a perfect, straight and narrow path is to not open yourself up to your own irrational decision-making process. And if you are not making decisions for yourself, then what are you doing in this life?
So today, let’s celebrate all the times we went down the wrong path. That’s our nature. That’s how we know we’re really guiding our own careers.
The first time it hit me how important mentors are is four years ago, when I interviewed Ellen Fagenson Eland, former professor at George Mason University. She gave me stunning statistics about how important mentors are to your career.
Eland gave me a seven-step plan for finding mentors (yes, you need a small group of them). And since then, I’ve written about other aspects as well — mostly as a way to keep myself focused on the task because it’s so important and so difficult.
Getting mentors is difficult because it’s just like dating: You have to invest a lot of time in a lot of people to find the ones who will really change your life. Over the years, I’ve had lots of different types of mentors. The eccentric CEO who showed me that success does not preclude weirdness, and my secret mentor who popped up unexpectedly. But the one I am feeling best about right now is a guy in Palo Alto, Chris Yeh. He turned out to be a real gem, so I’m going to tell you how it happened.
1. Recognize someone who thinks in ways that complement you.
I was interviewing a guy for my column in the Boston Globe, and I asked him, as I often do, if he had any friends who would be interesting to talk with. He gave me Chris Yeh’s name. I was immediately struck by Chris’s ability to talk on a wide range of topics that I care about a lot. And as a Harvard Business school grad living in Palo Alto, he brings a fresh perspective to my own.
2. Do favors. Again and again.
I immediately thought to myself, what can I do for Chris? I asked him what he is aiming to do next, what his plans are for the future, where he’s headed. He said he wanted to write a book about fatherhood, so I put him in contact with my agent.
3. Stay in touch continually.
I did not actually do this myself. Chris did. He would call at random times, just to say hi. I know very few people in business who do this. Most people email or IM, or, if they really want to talk on the phone, we schedule a call. Chris was different—I was not really his friend, and we were in different time zones, so he made the effort to figure out when I was most likely to be able to talk. Now I see that this as a super smart approach I should have initiated myself to build the relationship.
4. Ask for a formal relationship.
When I started my company, I asked Chris to be an advisor. He said yes, and then he told me the best way to use advisors, based on his experience at his own companies: Call at times you know are easy for them to talk, keep them up to date, and ask them what you should be asking them about.
The first time I asked Chris, “What should I be asking you now?” I felt silly. After all, it’s a line he fed me. But now I use it with him all the time, and it’s actually an invitation for him to tell me what he thinks I’m missing, which is information I wouldn’t get if I directed the conversation the whole time.
5. Invest time.
I had talked with Chris for hours and hours without meeting him in person. When I interviewed Edward Hallowell about his book, Crazy Busy, he described his research about face-to-face contact—how meeting for a just a few minutes changes the nature of a relationship. So I decided to meet Chris in person. On a trip to Los Angeles, I decided to fly to Palo Alto especially to meet him.
The trip took a lot of time, but I discovered that, true to what Hallowell says, meeting in person makes the relationship feel qualitatively deeper by virtue of the fact that you get that whole other layer of nonverbal communication.
Addendum: I called Chris this morning to make certain it was okay to use his name in this post. And he said “Sure, and tell people if they can’t find a mentor, they can ask me questions”?and you can link to Ask the Harvard MBA.” So there’s the link. And see, I told you—you have to keep doing favors.
I am trying to figure out what is the right kind of guy for me to be dating now that I’m getting a divorce. As an incorrigible go-getter — with all things I do — I am getting a jump start on dating. So if it’s offensive to you that I’m dating before I’m divorced, you should probably stop reading. But I want to warn you that you are probably from the same contingent of people who do not approve of looking for a job from your current job, and I’ve got news for you: Everyone’s doing it. Both.
At first I thought I should be dating people who are recently divorced. You know, shared experience. So I went out with this guy who was married for sixteen months, and his wife is getting about three million dollars in the settlement. Of course he is very upset about the whole thing. But mostly because he thinks she’s crazy.
My alarms go off immediately. I think he might be crazy. Because, as my divorce lawyer says, “A ten never marries a one.” Which is to say that you get what you are.
I ask my date why he’s so upset that she’s getting three million. Because, after all, he earned way more than that while he was with her. (Yes, true.)
He says that she is a raving alcoholic and he didn’t know that when he married her.
Then he orders his second Jack and Ginger.
I have had so few drinks in my life that I don’t even know what Jack and Ginger is.
But here’s what happens: We go out on one date, and I drink. It only takes me about a half a glass of wine to be way more easy-going and flirty than I could ever manage if I were sober. And he asks me out again.
On the next date, he has four beers and I don’t drink, and it is obvious to me that things are not going well.
And it is also obvious to me that he will marry another alcoholic. He likes that in a girl.
But he still complains that he can’t believe he married someone who is so unstable. I can’t believe he doesn’t see what marrying that person says about him. I do not tell him that people who have four drinks on every date marry alcoholics. I do tell him, “A ten does not marry a one.”
The wisdom falls on dead ears.
But I know this is true because after our marriage counseling ended up in our divorce, I went back to the marriage counselor to understand why I chose my husband in the first place. Really, all the things I loved about my husband when we got married are still there. I just need to understand why, of all the things I could love in a person, I picked those to marry. There are millions of reasons to marry someone, really, like that the person is a genius (my husband) or that the person is fun when drunk (definitely not my husband).
It’s easy to judge other people for what they pick. But to be honest, all reasons have their pluses and minuses and we’d do best just to understand why we do what we do. My friend married a woman because she had little world experience and he could show her what he knew. Lame, right? But the marriage is working. And another friend married someone because he’s the male version of Mother Theresa. Great, right? But the marriage fell apart because in the end, she wanted someone to pay attention to her, not save the world.
So I try to not complain about my husband because there’s a lot that is good about him. I try instead to focus on how to be better at understanding myself. Because who you pick to be around says a lot about who you are.
And this is true for a lot of areas in life. Like, look at your friends. Good-looking people hang out with good-looking people. And who you hang out with is so influential on you that fat friends make you fat.
It’s true at work, too. A former boss used to tell me that you should always hire A players because one B player brings everyone down — teams perform to their lowest performer. I think that’s true. I also think that when an A sees a B on the team, the A doesn’t want to come.
So if you are complaining that you are in an office with people who are terrible at what they do, ask yourself why. And instead of broadcasting that you chose to be with terrible people, do some self-reflection and figure out why, so you don’t do it again.
It’s very hard to avoid duplicating the same mistake over and over again — that’s why most second marriages fail, and that’s why people who work at lame companies generally make their next move to another lame company. But if you are really honest about your own responsibility for choosing lameness, then you are less likely to choose it again.
Now, if I can only get as good at choosing dates as I am at choosing companies…
Do you want to know what you should do right now? Do you want to know what your best bet is for your next career? Look at what you were doing when you were a kid. Nothing changes when you grow up except that you get clouded vision from thinking about what you SHOULD do — to be rich, or successful, or to please your parents or peers — the possibilities for should are endless.
When I was a kid, my brother and I went to Hebrew school every Tuesday and Thursday. It didn’t take me long to realize that the classes were absurd. Parents didn’t make you do your homework, and teachers just kept teaching the same thing week after week. At some point I realized that all kids would get bar or bat mitzvahs as long as we showed up on a regular basis. So I stopped paying attention.
Except for the best class ever. That was the class when my teacher told us to close our books and she described her time in Auschwitz. She talked in a thicker German accent than usual. And she showed us the number the Nazis tattooed on her arm. I remember every second of her story.
The second best day of Hebrew school was when I convinced my younger brother to ditch with me. I had to sell him on the idea: First that we wouldn’t get caught. (I had a plan to be back in time so that we could walk to the parking lot with the other kids.) Second I had to convince him that we would have a good time. (I brought money to buy ice cream at the store five blocks away.)
He was really not happy about the idea. He kept telling me that it wasn’t so bad to go to Hebrew school and that it was over in an hour, and in that one hour you could ask to go to the bathroom two times.
I prevailed.
This is what’s true about me in my Hebrew school story:
I have no patience for group learning.
I love a good story.
I enjoy trying to convince people to see things my way.
I’m a risk taker.
And all those things are true of me today, as well. That’s why I think that you can figure out who you are and what you should be doing by telling yourself the stories of your childhood. In fact, in almost every story I can think of, I’m trying to convince someone to do things my way.
Here’s another thing you can do to figure out what you should do with your life: Close your eyes and think of a great memory of childhood… Do you have it?
In my own, haphazard studies of this test, you can always learn something from the moment you pick. The first time I did this exercise, I thought of playing in my grandparents’ huge front yard. Of course, I was telling all my younger cousins what to do. Probably telling them why croquet was a great idea and I was going first. Something like that. But the bigger thing I learn from the story is that I am connected to space and nature and running around. All still true for me now, but it took me years of living in big cities before I could figure that out.
It’s nearly impossible to eradicate our life of SHOULDS, because we all want to make the right decisions. But I think I could have figured out right decisions for me a lot faster if I had realized how much we reveal about our true selves when we’re young.
Recently I have fallen back into my evil habit of writing a to do list and then ignoring it because I don't think I can get it done. I know from past experience that the best way out of this rut is to read research about productivity. Even if I don't act on the research, taking the time to think about productivity inspires me to be more true to my to do list.
Here are four ways to get out of a rut and start making progress again:
1. Pay attention on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Tuesday is our most productive day at work, according to a study from Robert Half International. Apparently, Monday is the day we get our lists in order, and Tuesday is the day we plow through them.
Bill Driscoll, from Robert Half, recommends that you recognize your peak performance times, and schedule as few interruptions during that time as possible. This is one of those pieces of advice that makes sense, but very few of us manage our calendars so carefully that we are actually implementing the advice.
But also, what about being as gung ho about Wednesday and Thursday as you are about Tuesday?
2. Stop obsessing over your choices and just decide.
Most people overestimate the regret they’ll experience after making an emotionally charged choice, according to research from the University College London. In fact, Karim Kassam, a psychologist working at Harvard, shows that we figure out how to justify most of our big decisions, no matter how good or bad they were. He calls it our “psychological immune system.”
The Harvard Business Review also reveals that we are not good at making decisions with a lot of data points involved. Which means that frequently, the longer you spend on a decision, the less productive you are. This research, maybe, gives you the temerity to take a leap, knowing that your decision won't get smarter or easier to live with if you take longer.
3. Go to church.
Lisa Cullen reports that girls who go to church work harder than other people. Maybe you think this is because church girls are so bored in their upstanding lives that they can’t think of anything better to do than work. But I think it actually has something to do with optimism.
People who go to church regularly are more optimistic people in general, and optimism makes people feel more positive about their work. If you feel like you will affect your work in a positive way, you’re more likely to dig in and do it. (Here is a small study to support my claims. There are a ton of these studies, and I’m hoping the Christian bloggers who read this blog—there are a lot, surprisingly enough—will aid in this cause with some more links.)
4. Put a treadmill in your office.
People think better from getting a little exercise. Not the kind of exercise where you feel like you are going to pass out. But the low-level, reasonable-pace type of exercise. The difference in mental capacity while we are active and passive is huge.
Leverage this knowledge about yourself and do your work on a treadmill. I thought I was a genius taking work calls at the gym, on the elliptical trainer, (until the manager told me absolutely never again because people were sick of overhearing my calls.)
But now everyone’s got an idea for working while walking, and there are workstations designed especially for use on a treadmill. Ask your boss to buy you one. They're $3,000, but that's a great company investment if you can get your to do list done every day.
I have never let anyone guest post anonymously on this blog before, but today is an exception, and you’ll see why if you keep reading.
Every time I write about stay-at-home dads, tons of them write to me. They always want me to tell their story. The only emails I get that say “contact me if you want to interview me about my life” are from stay-at-home dads.
Not much ever comes of this, but there’s one exception: a guy I’ve been corresponding with for the last year about what life’s like as a stay-at-home dad. Today’s guest post is actually a bunch of his emails that I’ve edited, with his permission. I like this guy because he is more honest with me about his life than any other stay-at-home dad I know.
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When a person asks “What kind of marriage works today?” they learn that there are so many more options available than there were even 25 years ago. My mother and grandmother never would have been able to ask that question because there was only one type of marriage in the past. My wife and I have pretty much taken the old template and switched genders.
But it’s hard on me having a similar education and background to my wife and yet having her be the big success in her field while I’m not in it at all. There are many times when my wife accomplishes something and I say to myself that I never could have done that. And as my wife spends less time with our family and more time with work people, my focus and my social circle is different from hers.
So let me give you two of the positives about being in my position as a stay-at-home husband.
First, it is so great that my wife has a kick-ass job, makes good money, and provides so well for our family. She rocks. And it’s great for the kids.
Second, she’s really good at letting me do what I do. Not a lot of second guessing or interference. She’s never ever complained about anything I’ve spent or what I do. Not that I’m irresponsible or frivolous, but it’s just nice knowing that I can pretty much do what I want to do. I wouldn’t be staying home at all if not for her income.
Yes, there is a power imbalance, but I’ve gotten used to it. If I thought about it a lot, it would probably drive me crazy. But that imbalance comes with some of the perks that I embrace. Being able to commit and make this huge leap of faith is something that I’m very proud of myself for doing. And I know that my wife very much appreciates it. It’s certainly made me more vulnerable, but it’s added strength to our relationship.
But I’ve also been amazed as to how many propositions I’ve received since becoming a househusband. I have a pretty good sense of myself, so take my word that I’m not Brad Pitt but I’m not The Elephant Man either. But until I started staying home, I was never the object of this kind of attention.
Especially one winter, tagging along with her at a business conference.
On the first day I met a woman who really had her act together, single, about 50, and from Boston. A real flirt too. I flirted back. Same thing the next day. Each time we talked, she would talk about the seminars and other BS she’d attended (which my wife never does), and basically roll her eyes while giving the company-line on all the “interesting” things that she had learned. It was pretty funny.
On the second to last night, she said that, finally, tomorrow afternoon, she was actually looking forward to a meeting. I asked her what it was about. I’ll never forget what she said: “The two of us. I’m leaving the morning meeting early. Come to my room and we can have lunch and the afternoon together.”
The next morning, slinking around and probably acting like a burglar, I knocked, went in, and we spent three really great hours together. And that was it. At the last cocktail party, we bantered again.We’ve emailed a few times since them, but never gotten together.
At times I can’t believe the course my life has taken and I doubt that my wife has a huge amount of respect for me. Maybe it’s because I’m a chauvinist and always had a condescending view of women who stayed home, who live very pampered lives. Well, now I’m one of them. But I have to say that I’m really no different than a lot of women who are married to power husbands and play a supporting role. I just do what they do, with a masculine twist.
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ADDENDUM: YIKES!!! The comments below (there are now about 40) ask the same question over and over again: What is the point of this post? So here are some questions that I think the post brings up:
Is being a stay-at-home dad any different than the life that Betty Friedan and Sylvia Plath worked so hard to get away from?
Is the world really ready for stay-at-home dads? Will the world ever be ready? We have done a more successful job, I think, integrating women into the work world than men into the domestic world. Are women crossing these boundaries more validated than the men who cross the boundaries?
Why is the world not talking about the downside of being a stay-at-home dad? Moms complain about this lifestyle all the time –when they are doing it — but men don’t.
Do women respect their stay-at-home husbands? I wonder if women might have to work very very hard to respect their husbands who stay at home. Perhaps gratitude comes easily, but respect takes a huge effort and a lot of mental tricks.
Why do women hit on stay-at-home dads?
One of the most important indicators of whether or not you should switch jobs is if you are in line for a promotion. It’s not so much that you should be climbing a ladder, but more that if you are not being recognized for great work then you’re probably not doing great work. And if you are not doing great work, this is not the job for you. We should all be doing great stuff.
So take this quiz to find out if you will get promoted.
1. Are you friends with your boss?
The hardest workers don’t get promoted. The most likable people get promoted.
Here is the big test for you: Did that sentence make you angry? You lose one point. That’s because you are wishing that you did not have to be likable and you are mad that people who work less than you do get promoted ahead of you.
If the sentence did not piss you off, then you are in good shape. But maybe you should work a little less and do office politics a little more. This is not obnoxious advice because office politics is about being nice.
Did you already know it’s about being nice? Give yourself a point. If not, click here to read about it. And then give yourself a point for reading. Hold it. Look. I’ve just invented a new form of the self-quiz where you become more likable by clicking on my blog posts. Great traffic-building tactic.
2. Are you working on high-profile projects?
Do you work on the project that everyone else wanted? Give yourself a point. Did you say to yourself, “Who knows? I don’t know what everyone else wanted.” You lose a point. How can you get yourself onto good projects if you are not in the middle of the fray finding out what’s available and what’s hot?
The key to making yourself useful to your boss is to work on the stuff that matters to your boss. Sure, everything matters, but some stuff matters more than others. The stuff that your boss’s bonus depends on matters more than properly filling out your expense report. That’s a good place to start. Hopefully you can approach the issue of managing up in more nuanced ways than that.
If you made a mental note to click on the link to managing up, give yourself a point, because you care. If you moused-over the link and saw you already read the post, you can still take the point.
3. Are you paid at the high end of the range for your position?
Investigate the salary range for your job. Check PayScale, and then ask around at work — don’t be shy because everyone else is asking too. If you’re at the top of the range, give yourself a point. If you were embarrassed to tell your co-workers how much more you are making than they are, give yourself two points, but don’t bring this topic up again.
If you’re at the low end, then you were not highly valued to begin with, so getting people to switch their opinion of you is going to be hard. You can do it by asking your boss to get you to the top of the range, and then back up your request by listing all the achievements you’ve made in your new position.
Too scared to do this? You lose three points. Did you do this and the boss ignored you? Lose two points (and remember that you got a point for trying—it’s a good lesson meant to inspire fearlessness later.)
4. Do you work fewer hours than everyone else?
If you work fewer hours than everyone around you, I can promise you that they are annoyed. Did you just click to your email to tell me that you work less hours because you’re smarter than everyone else? Take away two points. Because no one cares how smart you are (see number one on this list).
You should not be the hardest worker because that makes you look desperate. But you can’t work the fewest hours either, because then you look like you don’t care. And that’s being a bad team player, even if you are getting the work done. If you find you have a lot of extra time because you’re a total genius and you finish everything early, spend more time networking at the office. Because you can never have enough time for that.
Can you remember the last time you initiated a conversation with someone who dislikes you? Give yourself a point for good office politics and a point for bravery.
5. Do you feel like you are due a promotion because of your experience?
No promotion is set in stone. Even if you have it in writing. You can be laid off, right? So you need to work constantly campaigning for yourself if you want to get that promotion. Do you spend your days focusing on doing your job, or do you do a little bit extra so you can be a star performer?
Give yourself a point for setting aside time each day to let people know how great you are. Take a point away if you think people who do this are annoying.
Give yourself a point if you can think of the last thing you did where you consciously said, this is way beyond the call of duty, but it will be good for my career.
Score yourself:
5 or more points – You will probably be promoted. Maybe you should announce your score in the comments section of this blog and leave a link to your resume, because everyone should want to hire you.
3-4 points – You’re doing well. Look at where you lost points and fix it. Obvious advice but in fact, very few people can actually fix their shortcomings. With a score of 3 or 4 points, you probably can.
1-2 points – You need coaching because you’re not understanding what you need to do at work in order to meet your goals. You’re focusing on the wrong stuff and you’re going to come to a point where you want things in your life and your career that you can’t get because you didn’t understand the underbelly of the business world.
less than one point – You’re in trouble. Maybe your best bet is to retake the test…
I love that each twitter has to be 140 characters. I love the game of that. Word choice is so important. I am not prolific, but I am infatuated.
I think that most of the blog readers here don’t use twitter, so I wanted to let you know that my recent twitters are listed on the sidebar of my blog, and you should read them because I love writing them so much.
I am enticing you with two:
Friday I leave chocolates for the guy in the next office. Maybe I like him. Today they are still there, and I have PMS, so I eat them.
My second book is very late. Barack and I have the same book editor. His fame keeps my editor distracted, so I give money to his campaign.
You can see all 21 twitters listed here:
A lot of times we think we know what we’re doing in the job hunt, and then someone surprises us with information we didn’t think of. My latest bunch of surprises came from the book, What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here? by Cynthia Shapiro, who I have interviewed before, and she is always super smart.
So here’s some advice, based on the surprises I found in the book:
1. There’s one trick to all trick questions.
“All trick questions, even the really scary psychological questions, are crafted so that you will give a negative answer.”
The truth is that positive people are hired more often. And in an interview, people can show that they are that type of person by intentionally presenting their information in the most positive way.
So get all your bitching about your career out of your system before you get to the interview. And each time you are inclined to say something negative, change it or leave it unsaid. Once you get hired, there will be plenty of time to open the spigot of animosity if you need to.
But you work so hard on presenting yourself in your best light in the interview — why not attempt to extend that best you to your whole life instead of those two hours of interviews? People will like you better at work, and your positive outlook will help you to make all your experiences in life better.
2. A thank-you note is too late to express enthusiasm for the job.
“A hiring manager’s mind is made up in the first twenty minutes of an interview, and often nothing can be done to change that.”
During this twenty minutes, most hiring managers are subconsciously screening for enthusiasm. Because people want coworkers who are excited about their job. Ironically, though, most people who are interviewing for a job go into that interview unsure if they want the position, and they tell themselves they’ll make a decision based on the interview.
But if you decide to be enthusiastic about the job at the end of the interview or, worse yet, when you write the thank you note, you are way too late.
To solve this problem, go into the job convinced that you want it. Be enthusiastic about the job and get the job. You may decide later that you don’t want it. That’s fine. But this way you’ll have that decision to make. Note that this means the interview is not the time to ask difficult, probing questions about the company. Save those for after you have a job offer. Ask questions that convey a positive, sunny attitude toward your interviewer and the company. That will get you an offer.
3. No one will tell you that you’ve made a mistake.
“No one will tell you that your resume wasn’t up to par; it will simply land in the trash. No one will tell you that you said something that scared the interviewer during a phone screen; you’ll just never be able to get that person on the phone again.”
Part of the reason is that you never get feedback is it’s too high risk to tell candidates what they do wrong: There is little benefit to the company, since they are not going to hire you anyway, and there is the remote chance that you will bring up a discrimination lawsuit.
The other reason no one will tell you what you did wrong is because it takes extra energy to take time to help someone, and we can’t do that with everyone, so we help the people who look like the strongest performers. It’s like that axiom, “the rich get richer” but in this case, “the best candidates get better.” How to fix this in your own life? Ask for a lot of help from people who are in a position to help you.
We all know that the workplace is a minefield for sexual tension. Where else do you lock up people of the opposite sex for eight hours a day, and tell them to talk with each other but not touch? It is unnatural, and ever since men let women into the workplace, we have been adjusting.
It is totally normal to have a crush on someone at work. And it is totally normal for people to tell you not to act on it. And it is totally normal to throw caution to the wind. According to Helaine Olen, author of the book Office Mate, more than fifty percent of the population is dating someone from work.
So if you're going to do it, here are some best practices for getting the guy:
1. Flirt verbally rather than nonverbally
According to research reported in the Journal of Psychological Science (via Live Science), men are not good at reading nonverbal cues. They mistake a friendly smile as a sexual overture, for example. But researchers found that men also missed nonverbal signs of sexual interest: “When images of gals meant to show allure flashed onto the screen, male students mistook the allure as amicable signals.”
At work, the context of flirting is less defined than a science experiment, which means there will be even more missed cues. On top of that, if your office is full of knowledge workers, who are paid because they do a good job of synthesizing information, the missed cues will probably be even higher.
Why? Because research about Asperger's syndrome tells us how the brain develops its ability to read nonverbal cues. We know that children's brains learn this skill early in life. And we know that kids who seem to think like a young Einstein often have Asperger’s syndrome, where the side of their brain for logic, spatial abilities, and memorizing grows at the expense of the side of the brain for reading nonverbal social cues.
So it seems to me that the cluelessness of men when it comes to reading sexual overtones is actually on a spectrum, and the more extreme their abilities are in the high-IQ side of the brain, the more extreme their inability to read nonverbal sexual cues will be. (And this explains why the conversation about this research on the geek-genius blog Slashdot is so spunky.)
2. If you know he's interested, play hard to get
If you know the guy is interested, make him work to get you. Live Science reports that the male need for the chase is so strong that it even happens in lab mice—given the choice of two girl mice, the boy mouse goes for the girl mouse who is more difficult to conquer.
And we know that both men and women do not take relationships seriously if there's no chase, because, according to Cosmo magazine, only 3% of couples who have sex on first dates end up getting married.
So you are going to have to play hard to get at work if you want more from the guy than just a fling.
(Interesting side note about the chase: Most women intuitively play hard to get, until they find Mr. Right, and then men and women want to have sex—and violate societal sex norms—at the same rate.)
3. Don't make the first move if you are not the same age
Match.com reports that roughly 80% of both sexes are willing to make the first move. But when the man and woman are not in the same age group, men usually make the first move at work.
In a study of long-term relationships between older women and younger men, more than 95% of the men made the first move.
And research from University of Santa Cruz shows an almost institutionalized way for older men to make the first move is to initiate a productive mentoring relationship with a woman and then follow that up with a sexual overture.
So if the guy is your age, buy the book Office Mate, which is a handbook for making passes at co-workers. If the guy is not your age, play hard to get. And either way, remember that the average worker today changes jobs every eighteen months, so if things go bad dating at work, you'll find a new job soon enough anyway.
And in the end, the problem of figuring out if you want to be involved with someone at work might be harder than actually making it happen.