brag.txt

Smells like Self Help
Scott Ogle

Brag, by Peggy Klaus, carries the distinct scent of self help, that laudable genre that has endorsed everything from outsourcing your own job to India, as in Tim Ferris’s Four Hour Work Week, to making realizing your dreams through nothing more than wanting them really, really bad, as in Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (I am terrified of the judgment I might have drawn on myself if anyone ever sees that I searched for that).

Yes, I am making a straw man argument, but I don’t think it’s entirely without merit.  I’m unconvinced by her examples that seem to demonstrate unpleasable management more than stellar interviewing skills.  In one anecdote the interviewer asks the candidate to suggest some potential funding sources.  When she comes up with several sources from which the organization actually does get funding, they scoff at her inability to be one step ahead of them.

I can’t quite make sense of this situation, at least not what it’s doing in a book like this.  One scenario is that the organization has a reasonable expectation that nearly anybody off the street would be better at finding funding sources than they are, an unlikely bet.  Another possibility is that they are looking for someone occupying the center of the Venn diagram of people who are both significantly more knowledgeable than they are and lack any kind of desire to challenge themselves in their career.  In other words, for someone who is simply settling for the job.