• ‘‘Sure’‘
• ‘‘Yes.’‘
• ‘‘Go ahead.’‘
• ‘‘Please do it.’‘
• ‘‘You’re hired.’‘
• ‘‘Great.’‘
• ‘‘Excellent.’‘

I was always paid and I never spent more than 5 minutes at each house ‘‘selling‘‘ and ‘‘closing’‘ the homeowners. Since the product I was selling was my labor, and the stuff I put on the driveways cost only a few dollars per house, my profits were great no matter what I charged. I went from doing one or two houses on a street each year to doing virtually every single one of them. My business boomed and I am confident I became the largest residential asphalt sealing contractor in Michigan almost overnight. Each night I would come home and there would be so many checks in my mailbox the postman would have then banded together with rubber bands. None of this would have happened if I had not developed the ability to ‘‘close,’‘ push homeowners over the fence and turn them from casual snoopers into buyers. This is about the ability to ‘‘close’‘ and get the sale. In your business the most important ability you can have is the ability to ‘‘close’‘–without the ability to close very little is likely to happen. You will be on the sidelines and others will be hired instead of you. It is easy to get in the door anywhere. Getting in the door, however, is only 1% of the battle. The most difficult thing to do once you get in the door is to close the sale and move the employer from a ‘‘browser’‘ to a buyer. In a poor economy, the price of things typically starts coming down. The reason for this is that stores and other merchandisers are doing everything within their power to ‘‘close’‘ you and get you from someone who may not purchase something to someone who will. A short time ago a local Ford dealership in Los Angeles discounted a bunch of new Ford Mustangs by around 50% to move them out quickly. This gimmick works. When I drive down the street in Los Angeles these days I have been seeing people standing on corners promoting incredible going out of business sales at various businesses, offering 90% off of retail price in many cases. Low prices are a very effective tool for closing consumers. One of my favorite scenes in the movies that highlights the incredible importance of closing, is from the 1970s movie, Kramer v. Kramer. In the movie, the protagonist, Ted Kramer, is going through a divorce and is unemployed. He wants to get custody of his son, but his wife is about to tell the judge in an upcoming hearing that he is unemployed and she should be granted custody. Ted has to get a job immediately. He first goes to an employment agency and finds the only job available in the entire city, but the recruiter tells him that now is not a good time to set up an interview. Ted fights with the man in the employment agency and finally manages to coerce the man into setting up a very quick interview. Ted manages to get a few minutes with some hiring personnel while they are having a Christmas party on the Friday before Christmas. He goes into the interview and knows this is his one shot. Here is the dialogue from the movie script

91    INT. OUTER OFFICE, J. WALTER THOMPSON -          LATE AFTERNOON          The large room is crowded with secretaries, junior          executives, researchers, editors, ad-men, etc., etc.          They all have drinks in their hands and there is a good          deal of kissing and general conviviality going on.          THE CAMERA TRACKS WITH ACKERMAN as he steps out of his          office, closes the door behind him and makes his way          across the room to MR. SPENCER, the Advertising Director.          At the moment, Spencer stands with his coat over one          arm and a drink in his hand talking to a very pretty          young woman. Ackerman approaches him, whispers some-          thing in his ear. Spencer shakes his head and points          to his watch. Ackerman says something else and finally,          with a look of weary resignation, Spencer excuses him-          self from the pretty young woman and follows Ackerman          back to his office. THE CAMERA FOLLOWS THEM. As          Ackerman opens the door to his office, THE CAMERA IS          ANGLED so that we can SEE past them, into the office          where Ted stands waiting.                                ACKERMAN                          (as they enter)                    Mr. Spencer, Mr. Kramer.                                 SPENCER                         (not wasting any time)                    So you're the go-getter. All                    right, you've got ten minutes.          As the door closes behind them, blocking our view, THE          CAMERA PANS UP to a clock over the door. It reads          five-fifteen.                                                     MATCH DISSOLVE TO:    92    INT. ACKERMAN'S OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON          ON A CLOCK--which now reads five twenty-two. THE CAMERA          PULLS BACK TO REVEAL Spencer, now sitting in Ackerman's          chair, his feet on Ackerman's desk. Ted has just          finished his pitch.                                SPENCER                          (sipping his drink)                    That's very interesting, Mr.                    Kramer. I must say, it's very                    interesting. Let me think about                    it. I'll let Jack...                          (indicating Ackerman)                    ...know and he'll get in touch                    with you.          Spencer gets to his feet, starts to retrieve his coat.          ON TED--as he decides to take a gamble.                                TED                    Excuse me, I believe you said                    I had ten minutes.          ON SPENCER--almost at the door, looking around.                                SPENCER                    Well?          ON TED--checking his watch.                                TED                    That means I've got two minutes                    left. I understand you're paying                    twenty-five.          Spencer nods.                                TED                          (a deep breath, then                           a real huckster)                    All right, I'll tell you what                    I'm gonna do--I'll take the job                    at twenty-two-five. Now, that's                    twenty-five hundred less than                    you're offering. The only thing                    is, you have to say yes right                    now. Not tomorrow. Not next                    week. Not after the holidays.                    It's worth it to me for a                    yes right now and I'll take                    twenty-five hundred less.          There is a long beat of silence as Spencer and Ackerman          look at one another. They were clearly not prepared          for this.                                TED                          (watching them)                    Today only. One day only.                    Twenty-two five.                                SPENCER                    Mr. Kramer, can we talk privately                    for a moment?                                TED                    Certainly.                                                     CUT TO:    93    OUTER OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON          ON TED--as he steps out of Ackerman's office, sits down.          Now, all of the fear, all of the anxiety that he has          been fighting down comes welling up. What if he pushed          too hard? What will he do if he doesn't get a job?          If Ted Kramer could fall to his knees and pray, he          would.          CROSS-CUT WITH THE CHRISTMAS PARTY-- that swirls around          him. We notice in particular, one very pretty young          woman flirting with a number of men. She is wearing          a dress with straps, one of them has broken and she          has patched it with a piece of masking tape.          Finally the door to Ackerman's office opens and he          steps out.                                ACKERMAN                    Mr. Kramer?          Ted jumps to his feet, starts into the office.                                                     CUT TO:    94    INT. ACKERMAN'S OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON          ON SPENCER--He looks at Ted carefully for a long time,          then:                                SPENCER                          (grins)                    Welcome aboard, Mr. Kramer.          C.U. TED--There is an instant of relief, then, with          astounding cool:                                TED                    Well, gentlemen, I'm pleased                    to be with you.          ANOTHER ANGLE--as they shake hands, say their good-          byes. THE CAMERA TRACKS WITH TED as he makes his way          through the Christmas party that is still going strong.          Then, suddenly, as he passes the very pretty woman we          noticed earlier, he turns and kisses her.

This is one of my favorite scenes from the movie because it shows the absolute power of ‘‘closing’‘ in getting a job. In this particular example Ted used money to close. He also used the power of a deadline. This is similar to what I did in the asphalt business by telling the homeowners they had to make a decision ‘‘right now’‘ and not later. The ability to pressure people to make decision now, and not later, is one of the most important things you can do in ‘‘closing.’‘ However, it is not something that is always going to work in getting a job like it did with Ted. I would like to tell you a quick story about how I once hired someone and how this person ‘‘closed’‘ me to get a job. It is an unusual story but it is something that taps into something that I believe is one of the more powerful methods out there of ‘‘closing’‘ to get a job. I used to work in downtown Los Angeles and worked in a building called the Oviatt Building, which was directly across the street from the Los Angeles Athletic Club. The Los Angeles Athletic Club is a nice club, however, anyone can join for the most part. I believe at the time it cost $500 to join the club and then cost around $100 a month to keep your membership. This is in contrast to several other ‘‘downtown’‘ social clubs which could cost $30,000 or more to join and sometimes require years of evaluation and references from other members in order to be accepted. I was perfectly happy with the Los Angeles Athletic Club but the longer that I was around people in Los Angeles and got familiar with the scene downtown, the more I realized there was a giant pecking order among clubs. In fact, the people who were from the oldest families and the more prestigious people in terms of their professional accomplishments and so forth tended to belong to these more prestigious clubs. The situation was compounded by the fact that you had to be invited to the more prestigious clubs by a current member, then they introduced you to current members and then a board would vote on you after a certain length of time. One day I had been with a recruiter of ours from Texas and we had walked into one of the more prestigious clubs to see what it was like and how to join. We were kicked out of the club and they threatened to call the police since we had come in from off the street. It was at that point I realized that there was an entire subculture in my midst of extremely private and exclusive clubs in downtown Los Angeles. They were far different than the Los Angeles Athletic Club. One day I was interviewing a man a few years older than me for a position in our company and the interview ended about 5:00 pm. The man was from an old waspy sort of Los Angeles family and was pretty classy and well spoken in all respects. Generally, if an interview ended around 5:00 p.m. I would take someone out for drinks or to dinner, but on this occasion I simply asked the man if he had plans. He told me he was going to his club to exercise and I asked him which club. He informed me that it was the same club that I had been kicked out of with the recruiter from Texas just a few months previously. He then did something extremely smart: ‘‘Would you like to come to the club with me and have a look around?’‘ he asked. This is something I was definitely interested in. He took me to the club and then proceeded over the next few weeks to introduce me to other members. In the process, I ended up hiring him. While he was very qualified for the job I hired him for at the time, I am not sure if from an economic standpoint he was someone that made sense for me to hire. He was a great guy, but at that point the company simply was not at the level where it needed him. In retrospect, and this is a sad thing to say, I think a part of me hired him because I had a desire to belong to his group which I had been an outsider of previously. This brings me to you and ‘‘closing’‘ and getting a job. When someone is hiring you or making a decision about whether or not they should hire you, one of the things they are always asking themselves is ‘‘What’s In It For Me’‘–or WIFM. You need to look at getting hired and getting a job from your perspective, and from the perspective of the person who is doing the hiring. I once heard a well known copywriter, Ben Mack, say something along these lines. I wrote this down so these are probably not his exact words, but I wanted to share them with you because they are so powerful: People will follow you anywhere to the extent you encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies. For the past several years, a great deal of my time has been spent interviewing and working with the very best-educated attorneys throughout the United States. One of the things you will find in the resumes of attorneys who went to law school from the 1990s onward is that, if they went to most of the top 10 law schools, they generally have an extreme amount of liberalism in their background. By this I mean they are extremely liberal politically and were involved in very liberal organizations in college. They generally were the head of these liberal organizations. Why this is relevant is due to the fact that most of the administrators and admissions officers at top law schools around the United States are extremely liberal as well–I do not know why this is, but it just is. I know this because I have met most of them. It probably has something to do with the fact that a good portion of these admissions officers were student activists during Vietnam. If the admissions officers are young, their predecessors were probably activists during the 70s and hired their replacements based on having similar views. When these liberal admissions officers are making admissions decisions for top law schools they are faced with an overwhelming number of highly qualified applicants. Accordingly, they need to ‘‘look beyond the numbers’‘ when they are making admission decisions. What I believe happens is that they do everything they can to admit people who share their same ultra liberal views and this is what their ‘‘looking beyond the numbers’‘ means. Admitting ultra liberal students:

• Encourages their dreams of a liberal society
• Helps confirm their belief that social action is necessary
• Helps them ‘‘throw rocks’‘ at their conservative enemies.

These are the people who ultimately ‘‘get the job’‘ and get into many of the best law schools. This same thing also occurs at most top colleges throughout the United States. Admissions officers are seeking to admit the most liberal people they can among a pool of similarly highly qualified candidates. I once worked for a very conservative federal judge. Most of the people that he hired to work for him were also extremely conservative. I once worked in the office of a law firm where almost everyone was the Catholic religion. What ends up pushing many employers over the fence is a powerful group affiliation. Why does this occur and what does this mean for your job search? People who are offering you a job want to hire people who they believe are part of the same group as them and confirm the way they feel about the world. This is something that is incredibly important for your potential employers and they will be more likely to hire you, and you will be more likely to ‘‘push them over the fence’‘ and close the deal, if you are able to identify with a particular group or cause that is important to an employer. When I was in high school I remember being invited to a college to spend the night there as a prospective student. Something very strange happened when one of the hosts (who was a college student) came up to me and said: ‘‘You seem too white bread and boring. This school wants people with passion.’‘ Actually, I am the opposite, but I was acting very subdued because that is what I thought it was going to take to fit in. When you are yourself and have passion one way or another, that is something that often closes the deal. The student who told me I was ‘‘white bread’‘ was right in many respects because he was pointing out that the more normal we seem the less likely we are to influence people one way or another. Pushing an employer over the fence to make a hiring decision is no easy thing to do. There are a million closing techniques that I could write about, and a discussion over every closing technique could compose a 1,000 page book. I think you have the ability to close because we all do. Your ability is instinctual. What you need to do is tap into your instinctual closing ability and push employers over the fence to make them hire you. You need to push employers that little extra bit to ensure you get the job. Anyone can go out on an interview, but only the most talented can actually close the deal.

• the loss of a job.
• a divorce.
• a traumatic injury.
• a death.
• the alienation of a loved one due to a fight or disagreement.
• a severe illness.
• or even your own impending death.

Crisis is absolutely one of the most challenging things that we face, and when many people are in crisis they simply cannot cope and therefore fall apart. The key to managing any crisis is to look towards the future while you’re inside the crisis.  You always need to be thinking about the future and the fact that a better future lies ahead for you.  Knowing that there is a positive future in the picture and that you can control the future is extremely important. Today I saw a man speak who recently had a horrible accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. I have known other people who became paralyzed as well.  Due to their paralysis, those people confined themselves to their homes and stopped living the lives they were capable of living.  In the case of this man, he started diving, surfing and doing all sorts of things that he never did before he was paralyzed.  Despite the fact that he cannot walk, he made his future bigger than his past. If you were faced with the prospect of paralysis, what would you do?  Would you look forward to doing things you had never done, or would you decide you would make your future bigger than your past? In terms of your life, you are going to be faced with crisis at some point.  You may be in crisis right now.  If you have recently lost a job, or are about to lose a job, you may be in crisis.  I want to give you a few words of advice about how to navigate the crisis of losing a job or any other crisis in your life. If you have lost a job, the first thing you need to do is start thinking about your future and where you want to be.  If you are about to lose a job, you should do the exact same thing.  You need to concentrate on the future and how you are going to make your future so much better than your past. Your future is going to be much, much better than your past because you have learned so much in your current or last position.

• You know what employers in your industry generally like and do not like.
• You presumably have dealt with more people and are now more proficient with people.
• You know how to look for employers in your industry that are doing well.
• You are more mature.
• You know how to do your job better.
• You know what aspects of your job you are good at.
• You know what aspects of your job you are not good at.
• You know what aspects of your job you enjoy.
• You know what aspects of your job you do not enjoy.

Another incredibly positive thing is that you can start looking at other sorts of professions and jobs you may be good at.  I have seen so many incredible transformations of peoples’ lives after they lost or left a job, that it is difficult for me to recount all of them.  The number of success stories of people who have transformed their lives after losing jobs is inspiring. Many of these people I have even hired. So many positive things lie in your future if you lose your job. I know of a guy who hated practicing law and was fired from a law firm.  He ended up going back to school and is planning on becoming a professor.  He has never been happier. I know of another guy who was fired from a law firm and ended up becoming a recruiter.  He has never been happier, is making more money, and is more well known than he ever was when practicing law.  I know of a man who failed the bar exam in New York several times, lost his job with a big firm there, ended up moving to California and founded one of the most prestigious law firms in the nation.  I know of so many people who were in crisis, who looked towards the future when they lost a job, and ended up changing the world as we know it.  Lee Lacocca, for example, was fired from Ford Motor Company.  He went over to Chrysler and literally saved the company. He became world famous in the process.  He made the absolute best of a huge crisis. People who succeed when losing jobs are able to get a perspective in their life that the loss of a job would not normally force them to get.  This incredible perspective they get is something that enables them to dramatically increase their options and long-term happiness. If you are in crisis then feel good about this.  The crisis you are in is going to force you to reexamine your life, and see what opportunities are potentially awaiting you.  You will now be able to get out of what may have been a rut.  This is something that is incredibly positive and you should be happy about it. In a divorce, for example, people will learn a lot about themselves.  They will learn the sort of mate they get along with and do not get along with.  They will learn about aspects of themselves that one mate may not like and that they need to be with a mate who happens to like that particular aspect of themselves.  They will learn how they want and do not want to be treated.  If you are in a crisis in a relationship right now (and you believe it is not solvable), then look to the future and the fact that you will one day have a much better mate who appreciates you. If you are in a job right now that you do not like and are in “crisis,” then look towards the future and see that there is likely something out there that will be meaningful for you. Look towards the future when you are in crisis. I have been in crisis situations many times. I have been in these situations in my career and in my personal life.  Whenever I find myself in a crisis I just do what I am telling you right now: I look towards the future.  You can feel bad all you want about the present situation you are in.  This is what most people do.  In fact, a lot of people spend their entire lives feeling bad about their situation and the life they are in.  For example, they find friends and other people who will listen to how bad their situation is, and they sit around talking about this incessantly.  They wallow, and may eat or abuse food or something else, while feeling bad about their situation.  They simply do not allow themselves to enjoy life because they focus on what is wrong with their life right now.  This is a serious problems for many people. The thing about the future is that it is always getting better.  Even if you are about to die, depending upon your religious beliefs, you may be about to go to heaven or some other incredible place.  You can mourn your departure from this earth, but you can also look towards the future.

• If you are sick, look towards the future.
• If you did not get into the college you wanted to get into, look towards the future.  Maybe you can get into a better graduate school than the college you went to.
• If you did not get the job you wanted when you applied, do not give up. Look towards the future, because you may be able to work for that employer again.
• The future is always improving.

Juan Enriquez, the founding director of Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, has written extensively on the topic of the future.  One of the most interesting topics he studies is that we are now in a position, using stem cells and other methods, where we can regrow teeth such as molars in a petri dish.  We can regrow the ear of a soldier injured in battle.  We can regrow a bladder.  We are even in a position now, where we are working on artificial eyes. The future that Enriquez sees is one where we will actually be a different class of humans that he calls “Homo Evolutis.”  This name signifies that our species is continually evolving.  Instead of being content with being able to hear, like we do right now, through science we will be able to engineer ourselves to hear like bats if we choose.  Instead of seeing things normally like we do now, we will also be able to see infrared if we want.  We are very, very close to doing this because we are taking direct control of the evolution of our own species. These findings are profound and they signify to me that even if we are deaf, if we cannot see, if we are missing an ear, if we are losing a bladder, there is hope.  There are incredible miracles out there for the taking and the most important thing we can do is look towards the future when we are in crisis. The future can always be better than the past, if we allow ourselves to focus on what is possible. You manage crisis by looking towards the future and what you can accomplish there, instead of dwelling on where you are right now. THE LESSON Crisis is among the most challenging things that anyone can face, and many people cannot cope and fail in the face of it. To survive in the midst of a crisis, look to the future; doing so will make you feel more confident about your current situation. Crises can force you to reexamine your life, and make you seek out potential opportunities. The future can always be better than the present or past, and focusing on the future can be incredibly positive and guide you out of what may have been a rut.

Over and over I have discovered that the people in the bizworld who are most successful, and happiest, are the lovecats. These are the people who you always like the most, the ones who are passionate from 9 to 5, or 8 to 10, or whatever their hours. They are the ones who are most generous with their knowledge, their address book, and their compassion.

There are real benefits to sharing what you know. Ideas are open knowledge that anyone should have access to. There are never any benefits in not sharing most knowledge with the people around you. I have always believed in the power of sharing ideas and have found that the more I have done this the better our companies (and I) have done. In closing, I want to share with you an email I sent to every member of our company this morning. It is about ideas and the importance of sharing. I send this email (in one form or another) each year as one of our companies, BCG Attorney Search, completes a book for every law firm in the United States:

Good Morning, I am happy to enclose The 2009 BCG Attorney Search Guide to America’s Top 50 Law Schools(the “Guide”). Special thanks go to Lalita and her team. Indeed, they have spent the past year working on this important project that signifies what BCG Attorney Search and our other companies represent. Each year since BCG Attorney Search’s inception we have written the Guide and sent it out to every law firm in the United States. I remember first working on the Guide when the company had less than 5 employees. Providing the Guide to law firms each year and working on the Guide is more of a symbolic act than anything. First, it is something that insures that our company always has very strong research skills and is “going deep” and knows how to work with voluminous amounts of information. This focus on research has enabled us to venture into numerous fields where these skills are valued that I never could have imagined–whether it is job sites or researching hiring contacts for Legal Authority. Recruiters who know how to do good research and find information that others do not know about typically do the best here. Our sites which are best at researching information (LawCrossing) also do much better than newer job sites that are not as good. Our company has been benefited tremendously by the power of research and the more and better we have become at this the better we have done. Second, working on the Guide each year forces us to pay attention to writing well and our editing skills. Writing is something that is incredibly valuable. Our recruiters are expected to write well. Our companies write hundreds of articles each week. We are always improving our writing-related skills—even in something as simple as how we list jobs. For example, last weekend we did a giant project to eliminate junk characters in our job listings. The more we have written the better we have done. We owe a lot of our success to our ability to get search engine rankings which has a lot to do with how much we have written. Search engines and others look at us and say “these guys have a lot to talk about” and people come and they listen. We need to always be sharing what we know and writing and speaking. This is an important core value of BCG Attorney Search and it has made our recruiters strong. Third, the Guide is about sharing information. Our company has always believed and continues to believe that it is best to share information rather than hold it close to the vest like so many other do. We want people to know what we know. Sharing information brings people to us and allows people to see us as authorities in our field rather than dabblers. We want people to know what we know and we are not afraid to tell them that. If we feel someone cannot get a job through BCG Attorney Search because they do not have the pedigree, our recruiters are happy to share with them another way to get a job. This is not something many other recruiters will do. Our recruiters share information, however, because this is who we are. Fourth, the Guide is about providing value without expecting something in return. At BCG Attorney Search we spend a great deal of money and time working on the Guide each year and provide it to law schools, law firms and others for free. We want them to benefit from interacting with us and we want to be seen as someone who is an asset and not someone just interested in short term rewards. It is important to always be providing value. We want to provide value at every turn. I once read something written by Joe Vitale, a well known copywriter. Vitale started a habit of giving away books to people. Pretty soon he realized that the more books he gave away the more books came back to him. He constantly was giving away books and he realized after doing this for some time that for every book he gave away he received far more books back than just one new book. His library just kept growing and getting bigger and bigger. And if he gave away a book about one idea someone would give him a book about a related idea that he knew nothing about. The point he was trying to make was that the more you give away and the more you share the more comes back to you and the more you ultimately learn and know. This is an incredible concept but it is something that can really change your life and change our business. It is something that the Guide represents and, if anything, it is its greatest meaning. A lot of who BCG Attorney Search is and what our companies represent is signified in the Guide. As we go into an incredible economic storm and watch companies and law firms around us that once seemed invincible collapse, I am confident that what is signified by in the Guide is something that will enable us to continue growing and provide for our future. The more our companies have steered towards the values signified in the Guide the better they have done. The more we have strayed the worse we have done. I believe in these values and that is why I am so proud to present you with the Guide yet again this year. Providing you with the Guide forces me to think about our values each year and what really matters. –Harrison

THE LESSON You must share information freely, and never hide information from anyone. When you give away all your ideas you create the need to replenish them, which opens the door to creativity and innovation. Furthermore, sharing your ideas with others give you access to more ideas. People who hoard information tend to have stale ideas because they only share or seek innovation when relevant, meaning that their own store of information stagnates.

Contemporary practitioners, both clinical and organizational, are faced with the pervasive presence of narcissistic disorders in those who consult us. It is a disquieting encounter, because–even as we recognize that our work to understand and assist persons and organizations with narcissistic pathology has increased the reach and efficacy of our interventions, and the lessons of this work in turn have transformatively impacted psychoanalytic theories-there are particular qualities at work with narcissism that are painful to work with analytically, perhaps in significant part because they militate against a defensive introduction of non-analytic methods into analytic work. It is in the nature of narcissistically organized persons, and perhaps also, I will argue, narcissistic organizations, to deny the reality of the other (i.e., the analyst), to wrench the analyst into playing a hated but necessary part in the patient’s internal drama, to try to disable or destroy the analyst in the service of a soothing return to a narcissistic self-sufficiency, and to project onto the analyst, with resentful hatred, a whole internal world of persecutory and toxic part-objects, as the first step toward eventual understanding, health, and wholeness.

While this quote may seem overly complex, it does elucidate a final characteristic of NES that I believe merits consideration: That a person with NES will not confront his or her weaknesses because doing so would interfere with his or her inflated sense of self. Instead, institutions and individuals that call into question that sense of self of the person with NES are perceived by the person as toxic objects. As a final point, this explains why people with NES may change employers frequently or leave their chosen profession. I realize that the picture painted above of NES may appear extreme, however it is important to note that NES is s quite common, especially among the highest performing people inside most organizations. Again, I would estimate that over 10 percent of people starting their careers in major firms have NES and will have more difficult careers for that reason. People with NES are generally the people who have come from the very best schools and have had a historical pattern of academic achievement that is nothing short of extraordinary. NES is something that can actually create the sort of super achiever who shows up to work and truly excels. In a scholastic environment, where such persons have the luxury of choosing most of their courses, working hard, and getting immediate feedback via grades, and in conditions that demand performance at a high academic level, persons with NES are likely to thrive. It is very easy for me to pick up the signs of NES when speaking with young people in the job market and others. People with NES generally believe that they should be given the type of work that they want. They also tend to believe that they are extremely intelligent and valuable to their employer. In addition, these sorts of people tend to be very calculating, analyzing most situations vis-à-vis whether or not they are getting the upper hand. If they are criticized by their employer, they may simply leave, rather than facing the possibility of any shortcomings in ability or performance. As a recruiter I can tell you that I see this occur frequently. Because our firm solicits telephone calls and interest from the highest caliber people on a daily basis, the NES person is one of the types of people we often speak with. The following similarities generally define the people with NES, whom I speak with: -They generally have not worked at a “real job” before starting as a first-year associate inside a law firm; -They generally did exceptionally well in college and attended a top 10 law school (NES, in fact, appears to be more likely to occur in a person who has attended better law schools); -They generally come from a sheltered, upper middle-class background, or their parents are academics; -They generally believe they are smarter than the people they are working with. In essence, people with NES would likely never have made it into a prestigious law firm had they not been sheltered by school, parents, and others for so long. The artificial academic environment, the home environment of privilege, the constant positive feedback from academic institutions (where social dynamics are not as emphasized as much as common academics might have been), and the lack of prior work experience all serve to isolate the person with NES, allowing their condition to grow in the absence of a “real world” environment. While I would be the first to argue that a law firm is not necessarily a real world environment, it is much more like the real world than a school or a sheltered upper middle-class upbringing is. The issue with NES inside a law firm and other organizations is that the persons with this disorder are primarily in service of themselves. For the most part, working for an organization is something that is not going to quickly lead to massive glory, riches, or fame. Instead, employees are hired to work hard to make money for their firm. There may be little opportunity for the sort of continual positive feedback and the kind of reassurances the NES person needs, and may be used to from his or her upbringing. What usually happens to the NES persons is that he or she does not hold up well against the initial criticism that all new workers in most companies receive–no matter how constructive the criticism may be.  The person do not take orders well, nor do they understand why others are considered to be their peers. Such people most often leave the employer quickly with fantasies about achievement in a much higher caliber work environment. Or, they may switch between firms for a few years. Some start their own businesses-most of which fail. A few stick with it and become better employees. While this topic has gone largely unexplored, it is very real and it affects numerous people-especially the ones who appear strongest on paper. I do not pretend to know the answers. Certainly, the inability to find a balance between one’s self and others is a serious condition. Recognizing the presence of a problem like this is usually the first step. The second step, then, would be correcting the problem by getting help. The biggest challenge in dealing with this condition, though, is that those who need help are not likely to ever realize or admit they have it. If you have completed reading this article, you most likely do not have NES because, if you did, you would not confront it by reading all the way through. You would have stopped several paragraphs ago. What you should understand, though, is that the people you work with who have NES are likely on a dangerous collision course with failure. If the NES person does not fail within your organization, the chances are great he or she can negatively affect you if you work with him or her. Do your best to avoid NES people. THE LESSON Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome (NES) afflicts many people in the current job market; they see themselves as special, and deserving of whatever they want at the expense of others. NES puts these people on a collision course with failure. Even if they do not themselves fail, colleagues with NES can negatively affect you; avoid NES and people afflicted with it at all costs.

Your career needs to be supported by multiple pillars. The more pillars that support your career, the better. If you are in a situation wherein you are supported by just one pillar or just a few, you are in danger and need to make sure you get more pillars.

I left a job as an asphalt contractor to be an attorney due to the Principle. I left the first law firm I worked for due to the Principle, and I left the second law firm due to this Principle. I run my career right now due to the Principle. The Principle is something that can guide your life and enrich your career as well, and it is something you should always be aware of. The more you understand and employ the Principle, the better off you will be. Here are some of the rewards for understanding and guiding your career under the Principle:

• If you lose your job, you do not care for the most part.
• If you do not get an important job, you do not care for the most part.
• If a business you are involved in fails, you do not care for the most part.
• If something happens in one part of your career, you do not care.

The rewards gained from understanding the Principle are profound. Over the past year, for example, I have seen incredible reversals of fortune in two businesses I operate–a student loan business and a recruiting business. The financial losses from these have been millions of dollars a month. While the loss of jobs and business from this has been painful, other businesses have picked up the slack, and I have been largely unaffected. I feel as secure today as I felt before this turn of events. I feel this way because I am running my career according to the Principle. The scariest and worst thing I believe I could do for myself would be to support my companies on one pillar alone. At all points in time, I have multiple businesses running, and this enables me to feel secure. In fact, I would say I feel more secure than the CEOs of most Fortune 500 companies because I have tried to create a Parthenon with my own career. You should do the same. The Parthenon represents the fact that we cannot just do things in one way in any pursuit, and rely upon that one way of doing things. We cannot be dependent upon any single method of support in our careers. If we are to rely upon one way of doing things, then we are taking a massive gamble. A career and life needs to be supported in multiple ways and through multiple outlets. Being overly dependent for your income on one data point is extremely dangerous. For example, about 18 months ago I was in the student loan business, and this was my largest business. Overnight, the value of student loans on Wall Street went almost to zero. The government changed the compensation that student loan lenders could receive. I was almost entirely put out of business overnight. At the time, our company had probably $20,000,000 in real estate and other assets dedicated to this business. We had hundreds of employees who were dealing with this business in one form or another. Then overnight everything changed. The business stopped operating, and even the company’s real estate holdings lost probably half of their value within the following 12 months. We pulled through this catastrophe quite easily and without too much difficulty because we were anchored by so many other businesses. Then something else happened. Our second largest business, a large group of recruiting companies, experienced a dramatic and devastating loss in revenue. The company coughed a bit due to this, but has since pulled through just fine due to even more businesses that we have started. Due to the Principle again, the business ended up being fine because there were so many other companies there to pick up the financial slack. This is how it is with the Principle: Multiple pillars help you survive. This does not just apply to companies. It also applies to you and your career. About a decade ago, I was sitting in my office in front of a computer and I received an email, and everyone in the office received the same message. In the subject line it said something like “All Personnel: Partnership Class Decisions”. At the time, I was in my third year of practicing law and I was very dedicated (at least, I thought) to what I was doing. The Holy Grail for young attorneys is to become a partner in a law firm. Attorneys go to college and work and compete very hard to get into the best law schools. Then they go to law school and continue to work and compete very hard. Only the best attorneys from the best schools typically get jobs with the best law firms, and very few of the attorneys who go to work in the best law firms ever end up becoming partner in these “best law firms”. The entire process is extremely difficult. Once an attorney is inside one of these law firms, he or she typically needs to dedicate himself or herself to the work with a great passion, in order to succeed. It is not uncommon for these attorneys to work 3,000 hours a year for many years in order to become partners. When this email came into my inbox, you could hear the entire office go silent as everyone started reading it. Although the subject line of the email mentioned “All Personnel”, the more I read the email, the more I realized that this email was not something I should have been reading. It should have been addressed to “All Partners”. Someone had made a terrible mistake. While I am reconstructing this from memory, I remember that the email contained statements such as the following:

Jack will not quit if we do not make him partner this year. We have decided to string him along until next year at which point we will make him partner. He is clearly material to be a partner in our firm right now but we will delay making him a partner yet one more year. Cindy is someone who is not partner material in our firm. Nevertheless, the decision has been made that until she quits, or otherwise leaves, we will let her know that she should “keep trying,” and in the outside chance that she does leave, she is easily replaceable.

The email then listed various individuals who would be made partner that year, and a smattering of people who would not make partner and would be asked to leave the firm. I could not believe what I was reading. A few minutes later, all of the computers in the building were turned off by some sort of remote switch. Someone had made a terrible mistake by sending out this particular email to everybody. Incredibly, a couple of days later, the head of the law firm sent an email to everyone implying they had fired the head of human resources for sending this email. There was someone in our office in Los Angeles that I referred to as “Jack” in the quote above. He was one of the more solid and good guys I had ever known, and I liked him a great deal. He had been working in the law firm for over a decade and was then in his fourteenth year of practice or so. It is rare for someone to be an “associate” and not a “partner” for fourteen years and not leave the law firm or decide to do something else altogether, but Jack was someone who was solid and really stuck things out. I remember walking by his office the day the email had gone out, and he had a noticeable perk to him that was absent before. I think he was on the phone with his wife and telling her about what had just happened. Over the next year, an incredible number of changes occurred within the law firm. The most important change was that the power structure within the law firm was reorganized. An important partner from another law firm, whom I’ll call “Robert”, had come over and assumed leadership of the office. Under Robert’s leadership, the firm was eliminating many of the attorneys who had been there before his arrival, and Robert also ensured that many of the attorneys he had brought with him were placed into the partnership ranks. The next year when partnership decisions were handed out, Robert made partner a few young associates he had brought with him from the other firm, but not Jack. The day after Jack learned that he had not been made partner, he reported to work as usual and was in his office that morning. Robert came into his office and asked Jack to do a very simple assignment that an attorney with six months of experience should have been doing–not someone with 15+ years of experience. Jack responded with some hostility. From what I heard, Jack said something like the following: “You know, I am a little upset right now because I have been working here over a decade and believed I was going to be made a partner in this law firm yesterday. I am not sure why you are demeaning me by giving me this work right now. I am pretty upset right now, and would rather not deal with you while I am upset.” Robert apparently looked at him for around 10 seconds and said “okay” and then walked away. Less than 30 minutes later, Robert walked into Jack’s office and said something along the lines of the following: “I have two pieces of paper here. One is a check for $30,000. The other is a severance agreement for you to sign that says you will not sue us. If you sign the severance agreement you can have the check. If you do not want to sign the agreement you cannot have the check, and you are fired. Either way, I want you to be out of the office within the next 15 minutes and never come back.” Robert may very well have had good reasons for doing this to Jack, but the episode was quite alarming for me to hear. It was astonishing to me how a 10+ year career could just come to a screeching halt like this. The good news is that Jack was able to find another job eventually, and everything ended up being okay. However, I have seen similar things happen to scores of other attorneys, and it does not always turn out okay. Many of those people did not find other jobs for a long, long time. What is the lesson of this? Under the Principle, you need to have many options available to you at any given time, and it is dangerous to put all of your eggs in one basket. Here, Jack was entirely dependent upon the whim of one law firm and their decisions about what happened to him. He also did not have numerous clients at the time. If he had had numerous clients and were he not as dependent upon the law firm for most of his work, he would have had better leverage. He could have left the law firm and easily made money with those clients. However, Jack did not have any of these things, and it held him back. The Principle demands that you give yourself multiple methods of support in your career. If you want to be a lawyer, that is fine; however, you better be sure that your career is not entirely dependent upon the whims of one person. You need to have clients or a skill so profound that you can help dictate the terms of your career. The more you support yourself with multiple methods of doing things, the better off you will be. This is why the Parthenon survives to this day. Its weight is supported in multiple ways, by so many pillars. The Greeks built the Parthenon to celebrate their victory over the Persians, and it was completed in 432 B.C. Over the course of the next 1,000 years, this building was a temple to the Goddess Athena.

• Sometime in the Sixth Century, the Parthenon was converted to a Christian church.
• In 1456, after Athens fell to the Ottomans, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque. The Ottomans added a minaret to the Parthenon; however, the building was not further modified.
• In 1687, the Venetians attacked Athens and the Ottomans used the Parthenon to store gun powder. The Parthenon was hit with a shell and the gun powder exploded destroying much of the building. But the Parthenon still survived and is still standing today.

The Parthenon is now a massive tourist destination. The building just keeps providing value no matter what age it is, and it is all due to those columns. If there were not so many columns, it would not still be standing. You too need to provide value and run your career in such a way that you are always providing value. Although I am an attorney, I originally did not want to go to law school and become an attorney. Instead, my dream was to be an asphalt contractor. The problem with me being an asphalt contractor, though, was that my skin was not very good at being out in the sun, and specifically, on asphalt in the sun. As an asphalt contractor you need to work on black pavement all day around smoking hot asphalt. The black asphalt really absorbs the sun and it is not the equivalent of being out on a sports field, for example. It is much worse. I would get so sunburned being outdoors that several times a summer I would literally physically have to peel a layer of my skin off that had become very burned. My face was constantly coated with zincs and all sorts of lotions to keep the sun out as much as possible. Being outdoors on hot asphalt was not something I believed my body could handle over the long term. “You would do fine being an asphalt contractor,” I remember a relative saying to me one day. “But your body probably would not, and you could not last doing this.” So I decided to practice law instead, where I could work mainly indoors. You need to choose what you are doing and your career based on the idea that you can keep doing it forever, and will not be stopped. You do not want to be stopped by the sun, by one person who does not like you, or anything for that matter. You need to run your career in such a way that you are supported like the Parthenon and can adapt to all climates. One of the interesting characteristics of the Parthenon and its columns is that they were designed to be thicker at their bases than they are at the top. Architecturally this was done so that they would appear taller when standing at the base of the Parthenon. This creates an optical illusion for people visiting the Parthenon and portrays more strength and height than really exists. In your career and life, you need to be supported with a strong foundation and always need to be portraying strength. The less weaknesses you have, the better. Although it occurred a long time ago, most Americans remember the controversy surrounding Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in the 1994 US Figure Skating Championship in Detroit. Here, acquaintances of Harding struck Kerrigan on the knee after a practice. Both skaters became almost overnight celebrities due to this particular incident. In my mind, what makes this so interesting is that it highlights the incredible vulnerability that many people have in their careers. The idea that a career could be taken down by a blow to the knee is a dangerous lesson. In our careers, it is extremely important that we are not just dependent upon a knee, or one potential outlet. We need multiple outlets in order to succeed. One of the saddest things that I regularly read about is the careers of child stars who end up not succeeding later in life. I have heard about some becoming robbers and having similar problems after having had incredibly successful careers when they were younger. There are also stories of young stars who have ended up having great careers when they are older, but these stories seem less common. The idea that I am trying to stress is this: if you do not have other options in your career and job search, then you are making a horrible decision. Your career needs to be supported with multiple pillars because the idea of long-term security should factor into how you run your career. My first legal job was with a law firm and group of people whom I really liked. However, the longer I was at the law firm, the more I realized that I would never be able to run my career from the standpoint of the Principle. The business and clients that came into the law firm came primarily from two or three very powerful partners who earned millions of dollars per year. The other partners in the law firm were partners in the sense they had titles but they really did not have any business for the most part. Consequently, their careers were controlled by those with clients. While my perception may have been off a bit, the idea I got while working in this law firm was that the partners had so much work that they were not really looking for others to bring more clients into their business. Instead, they were most interested in worker bees whom they could control. The firm had so much work that the worker bees did not have any time to go out and meet people and get business. It was largely due to this reason that I left this firm; I did not see much of a future in it. The primary partners were, at the time, making twenty-five times as much money, in some cases, as the other partners. The idea of continuing to work in a firm wherein I would be so dependent upon a few people above me did not appeal to me. The challenge of all of our careers is to be supported like the Parthenon on numerous columns and with numerous potential sources of work, should one source fail. You should never allow yourself to be boxed in by being dependent upon just one person, skill or income stream for your success. If you are an attorney, you probably need to have lots of clients. If you are in a company, you need to have lots of allies. If you are good at one thing, you need to make sure that you have other skills, in case whatever job you are doing becomes obsolete. You do not want to be vulnerable to any one person, or to the economy. I left the practice of law and eventually went into recruiting because, for me, this seemed like something that was more in accordance with the Principle.

• First, I felt the profession was safe because recruiting has been around in one form or another for thousands of years.
• Secondly, I knew I could be diversified because I would have several candidates at one time, whom I could work with, and since recruiters get paid if and when a person gets a job, I knew that if one person did not get a job, another person would.
• Third, I knew that since the job required me to find candidates, and my success would be determined based on this skill, I would not be dependent upon another person to give me work.
• Fourth, I knew that I could work with numerous law firms and not just one, and this would give me extra support.
• Fifth, I knew that since I was working with law firms, even if the economy was poor, there would still be business and recruitment opportunities. When one practice area in a law firm is doing poorly during a recession, another is doing well. For example, corporate work may dry up in law firms during a recession but bankruptcy will take off.

This is an example of a career that uses the Parthenon. Eventually, to keep this business going in all economic climates, I started other businesses that supported this business when it slowed down, despite the support it had. Year after year, I have had an enjoyable career that is without a lot of stops and starts, due to my understanding of the Principle. You too need to use the Principle in your own career. Support your career and life with multiple pillars. THE LESSON If you are good at one thing, then you need to make sure you develop a diversity of skills in case demand for your primary skill goes away. You need to shape yourself and your career to withstand all kinds of economic and other climates. Like the Greek Parthenon, you must have a strong foundation and project strength, supporting yourself with multiple pillars.

But once these minor requests were complied with, the men found themselves pushed to submit to related but more substantive requests. A man who just agreed with his Chinese interrogator that the United States is not perfect, might then be asked to indicate some of the ways in which he thought this was the case. Once he had so explained himself, he might be asked to make a list of these “problems with America” and to sign his name to it. Later he might be asked to read his list in a discussion group with other prisoners. “After all, it’s what you really believe isn’t it?” Still later he might be asked to write an essay expanding on his list and discussing these problems in greater detail. The Chinese might then use his name and his essay in an anti-American radio broadcast beamed not only to the entire camp, but to other POW camps in North Korea as well as to American forces in South Korea. Suddenly he would find himself a “collaborator,” having given aid and comfort to the enemy. Aware that he had written an essay without any strong threats or coercion, many times a man would change his image of himself to be consistent with the deed, and with the new “collaborator” label, often resulting in even more extensive acts of collaboration.

A huge secret of getting the results you want from people, organizations, and others is to start small and get them to make larger and larger commitments. For example, when a man asks a woman out, he never says, “Hey, let’s go have sex and then spend the next 60 years of our lives together in a committed relationship.” Instead, he invites her to have coffee, go see a movie, take a walk, and so forth. Everything begins with very small steps, and these small steps lead to greater and greater commitment. When a religious organization comes to your door, the people do not say: “Hey, we would like to invite you to renounce every other religion on the planet, come to our church every Sunday for the rest of your life, and give us as much of your money as you can until you die.” Instead, they offer you a pamphlet and then ask if they can come back to see you at another time after you have had a chance to review the pamphlet. They seek smaller commitments from you at first. They know that the most important thing they can do is get their foot in the door. Once they do that, everything else falls into place much more easily. The Scientologists do not ask people on the street if they are interested in getting therapy for the rest of their lives, in order to get aliens out of their body. No, they know it would be “crazy” to do this. Instead, they ask people to take a personality test, and then they build on this. You need to start small with anything, before you can build on it. Organizations are all smart enough to know that the first step and challenge they face is getting their foot in the door. One of the funniest things I have seen that business schools, college career counseling offices, and other organizations often do with their students is encourage them to ask for “informational interviews” with various alumni of the school, who work in important positions, and in the cities they are seeking to work in. For example, the counselors will coach their students to go out and contact various alumni and tell them they are planning on working in a given industry, in a certain city (the industry could be large and very broad such as banking, retail, law, health care, etc.). The students tell the alumni that they are interested in getting some information about what it is like to work in a given industry in that city and to “learn from someone in the trenches” or something along those lines. Since this is such a small request and seems quite harmless–”I’d love to provide this alumnus of my school some information”–the alumni of the school almost always agree. They figure that since there is some sort of affiliation between them and the student (having attended the same school), and the student is simply seeking some harmless information, there is nothing wrong with speaking to the student at all. The student will invariably show up at the person’s place of business well dressed, with a folder containing a résumé, and with a list of a few prepackaged questions to which the student already knows the answers. The student will then sit down with the employer and commence speaking with him or her. The entire time the employer is speaking, he or she is, on some level, evaluating whether or not the student would make a good hire. The student is not really there to get information 99% of the time, but to “get a foot in the door” and hopefully get a job, or future interview at the least. While the employer has easily agreed to the small request of an informational interview, he or she suddenly starts feeling a small tug to potentially hire the student. The “informational interview” is an incredibly effective tactic, and a brilliant example of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. We see the foot-in-the-door phenomenon in shopping centers, grocery stores, and all sorts of places every day. The “free sample” in the grocery store is an example of the foot-in-the-door tactic. You are offered a piece of something to eat or drink, and you try it. You then end up buying something you normally would not have bought. Someone sprays some perfume on you while you are strolling through a department store, and you decide to purchase it. It happens all the time. What does the foot-in-the-door mean for your career? It means that you do not always need to ask for the moon when looking for a job. You can start out small and build from there. David Geffen started out working part time at the William Morris Agency. You can start out working in your dream job part time. You can start out as a contract employee. If you want an important job inside the company you can start out doing something that is relatively unimportant. Who cares what it is? Starting out doing something unimportant is a good way to get your foot in the door. This is what internships are in many companies. Numerous companies and other organizations have unpaid internships for students. People come from all over the country to work for one organization or another for free each summer or during the school year. You might ask, why would someone want to work for an organization for free? This is a great question. Working some place for free does not seem to make a lot of sense, until you realize that the person is really just doing everything within their power to get their foot in the door. If you really, really want to work for a particular employer, the most important thing you can do is get your foot in the door. In a bad job market you can really make the foot-in-the-door phenomenon work for you. For example, many people are looking at the prospect of being unemployed for potentially weeks (or longer) in a bad recession. If you are going into a job interview where there is a lot of competition with an employer you really want to work for, a good strategy might be to say something along these lines during the later stages of your interview: “Listen, I have really wanted to work at this company for a long time. Financially, I am okay and do not have any pressing need for money at the moment. I am more concerned about having something to do during the day. I like working. I like the atmosphere here, and I really like this company. I would like to come work here for free for a month so you can see what I am like. Regardless of what happens, I will make the best effort I can during this time; you will have someone doing the job right away, and it will not cost you anything.” This strategy is incredibly effective and it can work wonders. Why? Because you are showing a commitment to the employer. You are showing that you like to work. You are not making the employer feel guilty about not paying you. You are not obligating the person in any way, and you are giving the employer something for nothing. This strategy works and it is like a guided nuclear missile you can use against your competition for the jobs you are most interested in. Try it if you really want the job. If you pull it off right, it will get you a foot in the door, and once you get your foot in the door, this can lead to a full-time job later. You need to get your foot in the door and knowing how to do this will pay huge rewards. The most successful salespeople, job seekers, and others all know that the biggest step they make in their march toward a job or sale is getting the employer, or prospect, to open that door. THE LESSON Getting your foot in the door is an important, necessary first step towards getting the job you want. Once you are “in”, your colleagues will protect you if you work hard and you will have the same opportunity to compete with others. The biggest step you can make in your progress towards your goals is to get your prospective employer to let your foot in the door, even if only a little.

—–Original Message—– From: [Suppressed] Sent: Monday, June 05, 2000 2:51 PM To: [Suppressed] Subject: The Now Infamous [] Charity Auction Debacle… Here is the story of what happened to me this weekend at my firm’s retreat. That’s the last time I ever drink before an auction: Aaron and I decide to leave for the Silverado Ranch by car instead of taking the bus at 2 pm. You have not lived until you’ve ridden through three hours of Bay Area traffic with Aaron at the wheel. By the time we got to Silverado, he was madder than fire. The first reception starts at like 6 pm. There are finger foods, etc., and lots and lots of wine and beer. Not really liking any of the food, I start drinking. Heavily. By the time I know what’s going on, I’m talking to the name partner, Bill Fenwick, in a redneck accent. Of course, he is from Kentucky, so we talked about basketball for an hour. It was great. About 9 pm the charity auction began. There were lots of “Fenwick” type items, like a dinner cooked by the managing partner, etc. One of the items was an entire night chauffeured by the hiring partner, [John]. In my inebriated stupor, I thought that if I won this, then they would have no choice but to give me an offer. The bidding starts at $50. People are bidding here and there, but I get tired of all the slow bidding, so I stand on my chair, and hold up my bidding card–without getting down. So the auctioneer takes this as a cue to just start yelling price increases, without even identifying other bidders. When the price hits about $800, [John] says that he will pay half if a summer associate wins. The bidding automatically doubles (John is a litigator). As the price gets to $2,000, I think I have the thing won. I get the “going once” call, and then this other summer intern, Aparna, goaded on by some partners, decides that she has to beat me. So the bidding hits $2,600, and before I know it, I’m on stage, taking the mike from the auctioneer, and yelling at Aparna to stop bidding. My exact quote, “Aparna, seriously, stop. I have to win, this is the only way I’m getting an offer.” So that just inspires more partners/attorneys/recruiting staff to contribute to Aparna’s pool. When the bidding hits $3,400, I start yelling, on the mike, about how this isn’t fair, because she has partners bankrolling her, but I only have a “few scrubby summers in my corner.” I keep trying to bid only like $5 more than her, but the auctioneer gets all mad at me, and is making me bid in hundred-dollar increments. When her bid hits $3,800, I get back on stage. After some banter, the auctioneer asks me if I want to bid $3,900. I ponder this for a second, and in front of the whole firm and spouses/significant others, with the mike in my face, say, “Fuck it–go ahead.” I won the auction.

This particular e-mail was rapidly circulated among most summer associates in large law firms around the United States after it was written. From a social standpoint, the reason this e-mail was so widely circulated is that it shows the antithesis of fitting in and highlights the importance of doing so. Regardless of where you work, chances are that you will be working close to a relatively small group of people. Because you spend so much time at work, these people are going to become quite aware of your style of work, your personality, and like it or not, a lot of details about your personal life. In all of this, these people want to feel comfortable around you. In addition, they want to feel that they can develop a relationship with you over time. 2. The Importance of Fitting In When Being Hired as a Lateral After you have been working for a few years and want to transition into a new employment environment, the importance of fitting in will arguably be further amplified. Shared experiences take on a different form when someone is trying to move laterally to a company. As a legal recruiter, my job is made easier by knowing the sorts of shared experiences that are likely to get people in the door in different law firms. For example, if someone is in Los Angeles and has worked for the Los Angeles office of a major New York law firm, I know that other New York-based law firms in Los Angeles are more likely to be interested in that attorney than Los Angeles-based law firms of a similar prestige level. The perception is that these attorneys will share a certain “New York outlook.” The same can hold true if one is moving in Palo Alto from one major law firm to another. He or she is more likely to be hired by another major Palo Alto firm than, say, somebody who has been working in another area of California. All of these similarities are based on shared experiences and the perception that these people will fit in. Certain organizations will simply not hire from certain other organizations (even those that are generally considered better than they are) because they believe that people from these companies will not fit in. Most often, these organizations will say things like, “These professionals are all too arrogant,” or something of the sort. When professionals are in the job market, an exceptional recruiter will instinctively know which candidates are likely to get interviews with certain organizations and which ones are not. This calculation is based first on externals such as the school and company the person is coming from; however, it is ultimately based on other important factors in the professional’s background that are often less evident. Recently, I have seen professionals ultimately hired over many other applicants for what I believe were the following reasons:

• I believe one executive was hired for a $200,000-a-year job over more qualified candidates because he, like the CEO that hired him, enjoyed surfing.
• I believe one manager was hired because she attended the same religious group as the hiring manager.
• I believe one executive was hired because she had formerly followed the Grateful Dead, like a director in the company did.
• I believe one professional was hired because of his military background.
• I believe one executive was hired because of her ongoing participation in a controversial protest organization.

I could continue this list indefinitely and give you countless examples. People always say things like, “You have to know someone there to get a job,” and so forth. Indeed, it does help if you know someone. The reason is that you have already proven that you can get along with someone who fits in with that company, which means you too will be more likely to fit in there. I know of dozens of instances at various major organizations throughout the United States where laterally hired employees with, frankly, horrible academic qualifications are working alongside people with first-rate academic qualifications. Why do you think this is? In many cases, these people with horrible academic qualifications may have some unusual and highly valued skill. Still, more often than not, I have discovered that these people knew someone. This is how things work in the world. If you fit in, you are more likely to get a job and succeed in an organization. I can also tell you that there are organizations out there that are somewhat racist and hire people that are likely to fit that mold. My purpose here is not to be judgmental. There are certainly other factors that organizations consider when making hiring decisions, too. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, many hiring decisions are the products of people’s ability to fit in. 3. The Importance of Fitting In as Your Career Progresses In order to survive in a company, you need people higher up in the company to be in your corner. You can get people in your corner by working hard. Nevertheless, there will always be people working hard in large companies. The people who most often get higher-ups in their corner are the ones who are able to establish bonds. These bonds will make people go to bat for the employee. These bonds will also humanize the employee to their employer and make it much more difficult for an employer to fire an employee. Conclusions Most of the conclusions from this article can be derived on your own. You need to understand, however, that fitting in is probably the most neglected topic when it comes to discussions about success. Fitting in can be accomplished on several levels, and often you might not even be able to articulate why you do or do not fit in with a particular group. Fitting in is also something you cannot fake. You can often get a job without fitting in, but you will have a very difficult time keeping it and advancing if you do not fit in. When you were in elementary school, junior high school, high school, and then college, there was probably a group or groups you naturally fit into. Think back about the reasons why you fit in with those groups. Certainly, you have changed over time and will continue to change. The most important aspect of why you have fit in with various groups in the past, though, was based on how comfortable you felt with that particular group of people and how comfortable they felt with you. Your happiness and success in your career depend on the ability to recognize when you fit in and when you do not. THE LESSON The ability to fit into your work environment is among the most important parts of obtaining and retaining a job, even more so than your skill level. Fitting in means nothing more than being comfortable in one’s work environment, and making others similarly comfortable. Employers want to hire people who will embrace their approach to business and the world on physical and moral levels, so you must strive to fit in with their worldview.