职场新人不可不知的老板小心思

    如果你即将毕业，迈入职场，那你肯定听过许多关于求职的好建议：反复检查简历是否有拼写错误、准时到场、说话时直视招聘主管的眼睛、面试中关闭手机。

    当然，这些都是好点子。不过，如果你碰巧在明显的部位有穿洞、纹身，或像查尔斯•默里所说的，有着“非自然色的头发，”那应该怎么办呢？“乖戾的领导可能不会录取你，除非他们不必去那些岗位上见你，但就算这样你也可能求职失败。”默里在《坏脾气者的前进指南》（The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead）中这样写道。这还不够：即便公司的其他人把你招了进去，“乖戾的领导也不会给你一个公平的机会来证明自己。”

    他补充说：“我知道这非常不公平。不过你根本没地方说理去……（在我们看来）你没法争辩说眉毛上的针形装饰绝不是毁容。”哎。

    默里是华盛顿智囊机构美国企业研究院（American Enterprise Institute）的W.H.布雷迪学者，而这个机构从来不掩饰自己保守的风格。莫里依然坚持认为，除高科技和娱乐业以外，所有行业的大多数公司高层都赞同他的观点——尽管也许是默默赞同。

    默里认为，企业界被性情乖戾者所掌控。他将此定义为“极其成功的人士，无论男女，在当代文化的许多方面都表现得很暴躁，他们会迅速对你在工作中的表现做出冷酷无情的裁定，在决定谁要被提拔，谁将被开除时，他们从不犹豫。”

    所以，应该怎么做才能打动这些家伙呢，这些很可能“在四十多岁时就担任高管，表面上显得无比开明和优秀”，私下里实际上却十分乖戾的人？

    首先，注意自己的言辞。默里不能忍受的事情之一是许多千禧一代经常挂在嘴边的“F开头的脏话”。他见过一些年轻的求职者由于在采访中溜出这样的脏话而被淘汰出局（某次有个愚蠢的求职者还连说了两次）。不过，默里写道，“戒掉这种不正经”的最大好处在于你会成为更有效率的沟通者，并最终成为管理者：“一旦你树立了严谨的形象，就可以放松下来去看看其他人的震惊的表情了，这是非常有意思的一件事。你会立刻得到他们彻底的、甚至怀有意思恐惧的关注。”

    默里表示，另一个要避免的错误是像给朋友发邮件一样撰写办公邮件。比如使用“冲击（impact）”当动词【他推荐使用不那么时髦的“影响（affect）”代替】，在说“问题（problem）”时用“事情（issue）”代替，或者使用“之类的（like）”这样一些词来做句子的结尾，即便用得很少，也“会降低我们对邮件作者的智商的看法。”

    这些建议似乎像是鸡蛋里挑骨头，其实并非如此。默里写道：“我感到很惊讶，有相当比例的人在升到高层之后对正确使用英语与否仍然十分介意。还有更多人执着于所有事情的精确严密。”

    默里对某些“认为一切都是理所当然”的千禧一代进行了严厉批评。他表示，这让他们不愿意在琐碎的事情上花费精力。他指出，许多性情乖戾的人（换言之，也就是老板们）都是在五十岁、甚至年龄更大的时候才当上管理者，“他们在九岁或者十岁时，就得早上五点钟起床送报纸”，他们也许靠着艰苦的体力劳动挣钱进入大学。他写道，此外，“许多乖戾者二十二岁毕业，在就业市场找工作时，等待他们的只有薪酬微薄且枯燥乏味的低级工作，也几乎没有就业保障。”

    因此，他们“在要求你去收发室拿点东西时，对你表现出的任何情绪都十分敏感。你什么也不用说，甚至转一下眼珠也不行，”他写道。“最轻微的叹息都会像初吻一样牢牢地钉在他们的记忆里，只不过是以一种不好的方式。”

    如果这些建议让性情乖戾者听起来难以被取悦，那是因为他们通常本来就难以被取悦。但是，默里指出，这包含着一个重要的优点：他们通常是伟大的导师。他写道，为了迅速进步，“你会想要被分配给一个成功的乖戾者，要求越苛刻越好。”

    为什么呢？默里说，是因为他或她“更可能具备发现错误的犀利眼光——同样也更容易注意到没有犯错的情形……并欣赏那些出色的表现。”利用好这点，你乖戾的老板就会在其他上级那里成为“你的最佳推荐人”。在职场上，无论是新鲜人还是经验丰富的老手，有谁会拒绝这样一个最佳推荐人呢？（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    If you're about to finish college and venture into the corporate world, you've no doubt heard plenty of perfectly good tips on job-hunting: Double-check the spelling in your resume, show up on time, look hiring managers in the eye when you talk to them, turn your cell phone off in interviews.

    That's all fine, of course, but what if you happen to be rocking a conspicuous piercing, a tattoo, or "hair of a color not found in nature," as Charles Murray puts it? "Curmudgeons will not hire you except for positions where they don't have to see you, and perhaps not even those," he writes inThe Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead. And that's not all: Even if someone else in the organization does hire you, "curmudgeons will not give you a fair chance to prove yourself."

    He adds that "I know it's terribly unfair. But you won't get anywhere by trying to reason with us ... There is no way (in our view) to argue that a pin through an eyebrow is anything but disfigurement." Whew.

    Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the unabashedly conservative Washington think tank American Enterprise Institute. Still, he insists his views are shared -- though perhaps silently -- by people at or near the top of most companies in every industry except maybe high-tech and show business.

    The corporate world is, in Murray's view, ruled by curmudgeons, whom he defines as "highly successful people of both genders who are inwardly grumpy about many aspects of contemporary culture, make quick and pitiless judgments about your behavior in the workplace, and [who] don't hesitate to act on those judgments in deciding who gets promoted and who gets fired."

    So what does it take to impress these folks, who may well be "executives in their forties who have every appearance of being open-minded and cool," but are in truth closeted curmudgeons?

    First, watch your language. Among Murray's pet peeves is what he perceives as many Millennials' frequent, casual use of "the f-word." He's seen young job hunters instantly disqualified for dropping the f-bomb during interviews (twice, in one clueless candidate's case), but the real advantage in "abstaining from casual obscenity," he writes, is that it will make you a more effective communicator and, eventually, manager: "It's a lot of fun, once you have established a restrained persona, to watch the startled look on others' faces when you do let loose. You will instantly have their complete and perhaps terrified attention."

    Other missteps to avoid, Murray contends, are writing office emails as if they were texts to friends; using the word "impact" as a verb (he recommends the less trendy "affect" instead); saying "issue" when what you mean is "problem"; and clogging every sentence with the verbal tic "like" which, even in moderation, "lowers our estimate of the offender's IQ."

    If these tips seem nitpicky, they're not. "I am struck by the high percentage of people who have risen to senior positions who also care deeply about the proper use of the English language," Murray writes. "An even higher proportion of them are obsessively precise about everything."

    Murray has some sharp words for Millennials whose "sense of entitlement," he claims, has made them reluctant to pay their dues doing menial tasks. He notes that many curmudgeons (read: bosses) are managers in their fifties and older who "were getting up at five in the morning to deliver newspapers when they were nine or ten" and may have worked their way through college doing hard physical work. Moreover, "when the curmudgeons in your life were twenty-two, most of them found that getting started in the job market was characterized by low pay, boring entry-level work, [and] little job security," he writes.

    As a result, they're "hypersensitive to any vibe you give off when you're told to go pick up something in the mailroom. You don't have to say anything or even roll your eyes," he writes. "The slightest of sighs will lodge in their memory like their first kiss, only in a bad way."

    If all this makes curmudgeons sound tough to please, that's because they usually are. But, Murray points out, there's an important upside: They often make great mentors. To get ahead fast, he writes, "you want to be assigned to a successful curmudgeon, the more demanding the better."

    Why? Because, Murray writes, he or she is "more likely to have a gimlet eye for mistakes -- and by the same token is more likely to notice when they don't occur … [and] to be in love with excellent performance." Deliver it, and your curmudgeonly boss is "your best bet to become your self-appointed advocate" to other higher-ups. And whose career, entry-level or not, couldn't use one of those?