[Gllug] Camalyn Vacancy Posts

[Balbir Thomas]

Hi,

> How does one get ahead on MERIT if nobody knows who you are?
>

In academics getting a job in the intial 10-15 years of your career is
almost totally a matter of who you know and what they think of you, both
professionally and personally. I can only speculate why it is so, but it
seems to be a vestige of the feudal practice of apprenticeship. In the
industry in my experience there is a little more opertunity for competent
people who may not have a network.  This brings in a few socially inept
people out there who spent all their time locked up in rooms
reading/programming (or whatever else). Some of them eventually get known
but most don't. I have myself interviewed and recruited people for the
previous company I worked for and discovered that there tend to be two kinds
of recomendations one gets, when one is in the business of recruiting. Type
A) Professional recomendations : ex - "he worked for (with me) and is pretty
smart fellow" B) Personal : ex - "I know him, he happens to be my brothers
friend. Can you help him ?" . The former more often than not brings in
competent people (depending on the competence of referrer him/herself) and
the latter almost always brings in the trash.

It  is true that some of the biggest and best companies as a rule rely on
recomendations (Usually of type A and in some cases type B too). In my
experience they do this with one good reason. They are not just concerned
with competence but also with wanting candidates who can fit right in, into
the existing work atmosphere and develop good working relationships with
their existing employees.  Since whatever they might be worth the reclusive
geniuses are a tad bit difficult to manage. And also IMHO industry generally
needs disciplined and knowledgeable workers rather than geniuses. The latter
kind hence generally end up in smaller lesser know companies or barely
manages to hang in some academic institution till they publish that one "big
deal" paper. This may be one reason why some smaller companies tend to have
a disproportionate share in industrial innovation, with respect to the size
of work force they employ (I wish I had some data to prove this ? Does
anyone here ? Is google and exception to the rule ?).

Correct me if I am wrong but I believe this is the way things are. If so
getting "ahead on merit" in industry would mean looking for those smaller
innovative companies who don't give a damm who or what you are and are
looking for people who can think laterally and give them the cutting edge
they need to make a fortune (at least till they get taken over by some
gaint) . Smaller companies tend to find it hard to get good people and do
use recruiting agencies, since the sheep usually flock towards mecca.
However recruiting agencies may/may not have the ability to match innovators
to the innovative organisations. Hence putting in some effort searching for
such companies may be well worth it, or at least asking the right questions
at interview time can not be under emphasised.

And finally if you are indeed that reclusive genius you more likely than
not, don't even give two hoots about "getting ahead", but are more
passionate about what you do. In that case all I would say is keep going and
stay focused, just make sure you manage to eat (however you do :-) ). If you
are lucky you will turn into a bronze bust some where or into a show doll of
some big circus . Do you care ? :-)

regards
B Thomas

PS: I am new around here and suck at spelling :-)
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