Miraculously he had been asked to temporarily take a position as manager at a financial institution.
Art told some of his friends, and all thought he was pulling a joke. And why would that be; why could an artist not be a manager at a financial institution?
Sure, Art can think of a few reasons or prejudices that would make it "improbable":
- where artists strive to reach an ideal without really looking at money as a purpose, the purpose of financial institution is to make money
- people at financial institutions seem quite homogeneous; many middle aged men with standard shirts and suits. And Art Burshy has noticed that people at work look frequently at his beard and clothing style, even taking the liberty to make negative remarks.
- where people and businesses in finance try to be predictable and deliver predictable results (is that what they call reliable? ) artists actually try to avoid being predictable.
- where people at financial institutions often seem bored, but get stuck there as wages are so great; artists use boredom to be the basis of reinventing themselves and search for new directions and inspiration.
- where financial institutions do large efforts to install values and become socially responsible, artists take values as their basis and spend their days reflecting on themselves and their social context.
Still, at the same time it is obvious to Art Burshy that artists like himself can have an added value in these type of organisations. Primarily around bringing inspiration at times that the primary focus seems to be on cost cutting and efficiency.
Well, here I stop Art from speaking as this is his typical pet peeve, and I heard this story many times before.
Mr A. Burshy (at least that is what is written on his business card) is reviewing candidates for the person that will replace him and take the permanent position. Going through stacks of CV's and letters Art observes a few trends:
- people overestimate relevance of their experience: I guy that mobbed the floor at Goldman Sachs describes himself as Floor Manager and feels he has sufficient financial experience
- people exaggerate their experience; a guy that started his career at age 22 gave as his first position: Senior Manager. How can you be a good manager if you never did a normal job before?
- loads of spelling and language mistakes; very odd to display such sloppiness when the job description asked for accuracy.
- managers seeing this job as step 2 of 21 on their way to the top; Art Burshy feels that such motivation is not right. You should become a manager because you like to work with people and enjoy to see the team grow. Any other reason will make managers run away from their position when the first difficulties arrive.
Actually here Art agrees with the view he once heard that "a manager gets the people he deserves within 2 years". If a manager manages terribly in the end people reporting to him will change behaviour and become completely dysfunctional. This is - in the view of Art Burshy - why many managers change jobs every 2 years. He calls these managers seagulls; they fly into the company, covering it in a shitload of problems, and fly away after 2 years to the next company to start all over again.
And yes, now he is reviewing the CV of a person claiming to have 50 years of management experience. So, what would that mean:
- either the man is retired or started managing at age 3
- maybe this guy solved the time travel-challenge and manages in several time zones in parallel?
- he is too stupid to understand there are limits to exaggeration
- it is a typo, and should read 20 instead of 50...
Well, Art is not gonna read any further. It is not his task to take time to understand people that are incapable to communicate; it is their task to convince Art.
So, Art continues with the stack classifying the candidates in "Good", "Bad" and "Terrible". And actually Art has gone quite mild in his judgement:
Good - when it is possible that experience is somehow relevant for the job
Bad - When there is no relevance at all
Terrible - When the persons experience is not relevant and he/she displays pathetic or stupid behaviour through their letter or CV.
Unfortunately the bucket for "terrible" is almost full, so Art will need to empty it or even be milder than before and put them on the "Bad" stack.
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