Harmonize With the People in Your Environment

One of the most unusual candidates I ever worked with back when I was a job recruiter, was someone who had basically worked for five different law firms in a five-year period. He had absolutely stellar credentials, having attended the best schools, and having worked at the best law firms. The only problem was that it seemed he could not last more than a year at any place where he worked. When I started sending him out to various law firms, all the prospective employers came back and in no uncertain terms told me they were not interested in the guy. It was the strangest thing and I could not understand it at the time. On paper, the candidate looked like someone who would easily secure at least a handful of interviews. He was also very personable. One day I was driving down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles near the federal building and I saw a man with a giant sign: “KICK THE JEWS OUT OF ISRAEL AND GIVE IT BACK TO PALESTINE!” He was screaming at cars while waving the sign in the air to get everyone’s attention. Incredibly, it was that candidate. When I recognized who it was, it suddenly made sense why nobody was interested in hiring the man. He was apparently a complete rebel who did not care to fit in with those around him. Since there is probably no law firm in Los Angeles without a substantial number of Jews in it who would be deeply offended by this guy’s views, I realized this guy was going to have a really hard time fitting in anywhere. Marching against the people who are likely to also be your employers and clients is probably not ever a good idea. Over the years I have seen many attorneys like this who, for whatever reason, make a decision to really stick out. They lose jobs and quickly develop a “do not touch this person with a ten foot pole” reputation that follows them wherever they go. Law firms want people who are going to fit in and simply get the work done. They do not want to offend clients. It is the same with any job–you need to fit in with the people you are working for and they need to see you as fitting in at all times. If you do not fit in and harmonize with others in your work environment, it can create serious problems for you. Several years ago I hired an employee who came across as a very quiet library type. He did excellent work and was quickly given raises and increased responsibility. He was a nice guy who kept a very low profile at work and seemed to be respected by his peers. Apparently he had gotten romantically involved with a coworker. One day a few weeks after I heard the two had ended their relationship, the female coworker and I were talking about something unrelated, and suddenly she started saying negative things about the guy in a roundabout way, making subtle digs. I was not interested in listening and attempted to change the conversation. Then she brought up something that really shocked me: “He has tattoos across his entire chest of skulls and stuff.” “Excuse me?” I said. “He is covered in tattoos. You have just never seen them because he has kept them covered up all these years at work.” She knew this would shock me. She then proceeded to tell me that the guy liked to hang out at industrial Goth-type clubs in Hollywood. The reason she was telling me all of this was because at the time our company was somewhat formal and comprised lots of attorneys. I am not the sort of guy who is generally into tattoos and the woman could look around and see that I did not have any other tattooed employees, as most of the staff was pretty conservative. This woman was trying to get me to form a negative opinion of the guy and I could tell she was also trying, as best as she could, to get him fired. In essence, what she was implying was “here among you is a traitor!!” She was trying to send me a signal loud and clear that this guy did not fit in, and that he was not who he represented himself to be. The girl did not stay with our company very long and a short time later the guy she had tattled on got a significant raise–and a year or so later, another raise. I was incredibly impressed with him and what he had been able to achieve. Not once did this guy come across as the sort of person who would have a bunch of tattoos and be interested in strange night life, vampires, and whatever it was that interested him. He was an impressive, intelligent person who, when at work, did his job very well and served as a role model to his fellow employees, especially the younger ones. The fact that his ex-girlfriend had seen him with his shirt off and could testify that he was covered in tattoos did not make the slightest difference to me. In fact, it made me think even more highly of him. He had managed to completely fit in at work and play the work role that was expected of him. When I was in college,  the entire time I dated a girl who was Jewish. One time she came home with me over Christmas break and we went to a family Christmas party. My girlfriend, mom, sister, and I had driven from Detroit down to Ohio to visit the family of my mother’s second husband. We were in Toledo, Ohio, celebrating Christmas with this large Irish family in a very small house and at some point I wanted to get out of the house and get some fresh air. Down the street there was a giant church and I thought it would be fun to go look at it. My girlfriend and I decided we would go look at it and I informed a couple of my relatives that we were going to make the visit. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon and several of them were pretty buzzed on Miller High Life at that point. One walked up to us and said: “Why would she be interested in a church? She’s Jewish!” “Huh?” she said. “That’s right. We all know your secret. What’s it like seeing Christmas celebrated? Are you even allowed to go inside of a church?” Right then and there I realized we had been at this house the entire day and although not once did anyone say anything about her religion, it was clearly on their minds. Try as they might have, once the beers got rolling, they felt like they needed to make an issue out of it. My girlfriend ended up laughing it off; however, the conversation, short as it was, made us both feel incredibly uncomfortable. It had been nothing less than a tacit statement that my girlfriend did not fit in and was not one of the tribe. She thought the entire thing was pretty humorous but for me it actually felt a little menacing. People around us are always looking closely to see if we fit in. They are judging us and making assumptions even when we are not aware of it. In many cases, especially in the working world, it is important that we do our best to fit in at all costs. It can become a matter of survival. A couple of months later my girlfriend got back at me, albeit unintentionally. She took me to a Passover Seder in Chicago. My girlfriend had been raised a very conservative Jew. She spoke and read Hebrew and was incredibly well versed in her religion and all its traditions. The Hillel Center at the University of Chicago had a program where students could go have Passover with local families around Chicago. That night was really unusual to me; I had no idea what was going on. In the reading of the Haggadah I was unable to read in Hebrew and the people at the table looked very surprised. I managed to mess up virtually every ritual involved in the Seder.  At the end of the evening, the man who had hosted the event approached me and started asking me all sorts of questions such as which synagogue I went to in Detroit and so forth. It was his subtle way of letting me know he knew I did not belong at the dinner, and it was very unwelcoming. I felt so uncomfortable. Some incredibly awkward moments followed. Clearly this man was insulted that he had opened this sacred event to include a non-Jew. I am not sure why he felt this way and in my experience with Judaism this is certainly not par for the course; nevertheless this particular person was very angry. In fact he became downright hostile. The following day someone from the Hillel Center called my girlfriend and told her that she should not have brought me to the Seder. The next year they also posted an “addendum” on the sign up form for the Seder, which explained that it was “bad judgment” to bring non-Jews to the Seder. Throughout my relationship with this girl, she broke up with me numerous times at her parents’ and family’s request because I was not the same religion as her. Many groups go a long way to protect this ideal, because  maintaining the sense of solidarity within their group is so incredibly important to them. What these two events taught me–my family at Christmas and my girlfriend’s family at Passover was that people are incredibly sensitive about people fitting in with them. And every group seems to have both implied and expressed rules about who may or may not be allowed to fit in, based on how a person acts, looks, speaks, or believes. I ended up marrying another girl who was Jewish, several years ago. I had a Jewish wedding and during this wedding I could see that a lot of my relatives were confused as to what was going on. For most of my relatives, this was the first Jewish wedding they had ever attended, and for most it felt like a completely alien culture and set of traditions. I could relate to this because it was how I had felt too, before I had learned about and experienced it all first hand. A month or so ago I was having dinner in the Harvard Club of New York to celebrate my cousin’s birthday. At one point in the evening, my great uncle came up to speak with me and I noticed he had some information written on a piece of paper. He had gone to Harvard and Phillips, Andover, and was from a very old American family, out of which had come the first American Senator from Kansas (and the President pro tempore of the Senate)–among other things. My great uncle is a really nice guy who is always curious about various ideas. Recently, he decided to have some genetic testing done by some group affiliated with National Geographic. For the past several weeks he had been pondering the results: It turned out that his mother’s side was Jewish, which meant that my father would have been Jewish due to blood lines. My great uncle was very intrigued by this, and he told me how this side of his family had come over from Holland hundreds of years ago and must have been Jewish. He was actually in a state of disbelief–not sure what to make about any of this information. A couple of years ago I also took a genetic test and got interesting results: It came back that my mother was Jewish. My mother, of course, had no idea and for days sat puzzled in front of the computer. She had been raised in a small town in the Midwest and did not understand how her mother could possibly have been Jewish. When my wife and I went to visit her last Christmas she had put a Star of David on her window and appeared to be going with it in terms of what she had discovered. My point is not to instruct you based on my religious learning and what I have discovered about my roots. Instead, my point is far more general and far-reaching. Historically, at least in terms of the places my family has lived (Michigan, Kansas), Jews were treated poorly and not given the same opportunities as the rest of the general population. What I am surmising is that in order to get ahead, what many Jews [Read more]

The Best Way to Prepare for a Job Search and Interviews

Several years ago when looking for a position in Los Angeles I interviewed with numerous law firms. In virtually every one of these interviews I ran across an attorney who knew not one, not two, not three—but numerous, numerous attorneys in my current firm. If this is the case in a market the size of Los Angeles (and the market in Los Angeles is huge), I cannot even imagine what it must be like in smaller markets. For example, I am from Detroit. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. When it came time for me to decide where to work after law school, when I started interviewing with firms in Detroit I knew many of the attorneys before I even arrived at the interviews–they were the parents of people I grew up with. The following are my suggestions for the best way to prepare for a job search and interviews: 1. Know you are always being watched, observed and judged When I was in high school I remember that one of the best looking girls in my school was known to be a prude and someone who would date boys but never let anything all that exciting happen. She was also a star athlete and a student counsel leader and a very respected student. My parents were divorced and lived about an hour apart. I lived with my father. The funny thing is that this same girl [Read more]

Have Trust in Others and Be Ready to Seize Opportunity However it Presents Itself

Trusting people and being ready to take advantage of opportunity when it presents itself are two of the greatest skills anyone can have.  My life has been enriched in so many ways by often trusting people I should not have and by being aware of opportunities.  I have always been eager to trust people who do not appear to be trustworthy, because I know that in the act of trusting them I can allow them to see themselves as better people.  It also feels good to show people that you trust them.  Fundamentally, I have a belief that deep down all people [Read more]

You Need to Stop Competing and Seeing Differences Between You and Others

If you are looking for a job, trying to improve in your current job, or simply wish to experience a better life, there is one thing you need to do: You need to be friends with everyone you meet in business, and stop competing and seeing differences.   This is a statement that falls on deaf ears for most people.  In fact, this is the exact opposite of the way most of us think.  Instead, we view others as competitors and the slices of pie as limited.  We view opportunities as few and limited, and feel the need to compete for what little there is. What are the rewards for looking and seeing commonalty between you and others?  They are incredible.  In the Year 2000 I started a legal recruiting firm.  I did not start the firm until around March of that year. I had no legal recruiting experience and knew absolutely nothing about the market.  Since I had been a practicing attorney for years, the fact that I was now recruiting seemed almost surreal to me in many respects.  I had decided to just enter a zone where I did not care what happened to me.  When you are in the recruiting business, what typically happens is that law firms will call you in a very formal way to tell you they have no interest in a candidate of yours.  The conversations will typically last no more than 30 to 45 seconds. “We are calling to let you know that we have no interest in John Smith,” they might say. “Thank you,” would be the standard response. After several weeks of this I began to feel that the entire situation was somewhat absurd.  This is what recruiters do all over the country. I decided that the best [Read more]

Do Not Be Immobilized in Your Job Search

Several years ago, I was sitting in my office and the most amazing candidate came across my desk.  The attorney had a degree in a hard science discipline from a school like CalTech or MIT (I believe it was physics), had gone to a good law school and finished first in his class.  Not only that, he was currently working at one of the top law firms in the world and was in a practice area that was not just desirable at the time, it was white hot.  His practice area was so in demand at this particular point in time that one law [Read more]

The Most Important Person You Communicate With is Yourself

“The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven”

-John Milton

Several years ago, I was home after graduating from college and I met a guy who was friends with my girlfriend’s brother. He had graduated from Yale University a year or two before and was driving a truck all around Detroit delivering meat to restaurants. He typically drove this meat truck from 4:00am until noon each day. He got paid in cash at the end of each day by his boss. He had been the first person from the public school he had attended to go to Yale in [Read more]

Do Not Be Controlled By Your Need to Feel Significant

When I was around 15 years old, I was in front of an ice cream parlor in Grosse Pointe, Michigan and there was a large group of kids around my age gathered around a well-dressed man who appeared to be in his mid 30s.  The man was wearing a good-looking dress shirt, khakis and good shoes.  I quickly realized, however, that the kids were all making fun of him.  The man was quite off emotionally, and all he kept saying was that he used to work for a United States Congressman.  The kids were all making fun of him and [Read more]

The Peter Principal and Being Ready for More Responsibility

The most important thing you can do in your work and in your career is to do what you know. It is fine to try new things.  However, when you try new things, you need to be very careful that you remain focused on the things that you know and understand.  If you venture outside of what you understand, you are likely to get into massive trouble and this trouble can come quickly. People who do well in their positions are typically rewarded with more responsibility and a better position.  Eventually, however, this position will exceed a person’s level [Read more]

The Dangers of Getting Jobs Through Friends

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. “Oh, I already have a friend there. I’ll just contact him.” In the job market, it’s one of the more common things we hear after informing a job seeker that a certain employer has a job opening. There is a lot you need to consider before you decide to apply to a job through a friend or relative, or take a job working for a friend or relative. First, it is exceedingly rare that a friend or [Read more]

King Henry II and Understanding Your Employer

Under King Henry II in the twelfth century, England established a common law.  This was a body of law that was common to all parts of the country.  Throughout Europe at the time, there was a wide body of law that was applied—there were feudal customs, Germanic customs and other differing customs.  For example, French King Louis IX was well known for having allowed each province of France to have its own laws and procedures after becoming part of France.  He created a Parliament of Paris to hear appeals from the feudal lords around France. Each year, [Read more]

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