May 25th, 2007

A friend and I were talking about careers ... and, in particular, how careers grow. And I mentioned how just bumping into people randomly at parties and industry shin-digs concrete those relationships that later (sometimes much later) turn into opportunities. It is, as I said to him, bizarre and counterproductive. But bumping into people on the street and asking how their pets and children are doing turns into bucks later, either for you, or for them (if you know of something that they could benefit from) or for some third party: "Say, I know someone looking for a job that would be perfect for that guy you used to be friends with ..."

Happens all the time. Job banks, newspaper ads, websites with "Career" pages are all good and they all help, but the schmooze is where it's really at, baby.

It isn't all that complicated to schmooze, either. After all, people with IQs in the normal and sub-normal range do it instinctively. Lots of smiling, dumb-ass laughter, exercising of memory skills to remember folks' spouses' names. Quite easy.

But folks who are smarter—those people with an intellectual pulse—can't see the point to playing the game. The artifice of it, the slimy feeling that washes over us, the sheer pointlessness that it should have, are all deterrents. In short, those with IQs over a certain level—say, 115 points—begin to overthink and underplay their social skills because they can see how inefficient, truly unpleasant (if we stop to ponder), and random the activity is. They see all this, and if they could only connect with people in a more intelligent and meaningful way, they'd never attend another cocktail party.

But there is nothing more intelligent until you get to small insular communities. The lowest common denominator is The Idiot, and so if you want to meet and mate, you have to stop overthinking the schmooze and just get out there and do it.

Now, a whole army of sub-gifted but slightly-more-intelligent-than-average process-makers and officious monkeys has risen up around this brain-dead schmooze and tried to imbue it with procedures and checklists. These are the folks that renamed it, "networking" and then (the lucky ones, anyhow) go on city-to-city talking tours after writing their obvious and repetitive books on the subject. They try to come up with personal goals and personal milestones. They talk as though they had invented the orgasm when they describe how they learned to talk like a networker—and you can too!!!

But there is nothing in their books that challenge the understanding of a truly intelligent person. It's just that they are used to being smarter than the average bear, and so they assume that everyone can benefit from their slight knowledge. They don't recognise superior intellect as such, they just think the person is weird. And so they get on you to network network network, as though your stupid little self didn't already figure that out.

I can assure you, as a very smart person, nothing insults me more than being told some little grain of pointless truth that is already obvious to me by some sub-gifted little monkey who clearly thinks he/she has just thought of something brilliant and transcendent and is now granting you a sneak peek at the mysteries of life through their generosity and humanitarianism.

"Get out there and network!"

Hmmph ... "Get back there and kiss my ass!"

There is nothing so irritating as when an amateur intellect tries to be meaningful at you.

And my friend currently has a problem that I have wrestled with all my career: Overcoming that high-intelligence-fuelled internal filter that says, "This is stupid, I feel fake, I can't do this because people will see how unnaturally awkward I am at schmoozing." You see, it hurts a lot more for my friend and me to sell our souls for a two-bit schmooze, because our souls are worth a lot more than an innate schmoozer's soul. Ours are gilded with self-respect, and have large precious gems of intelligent observation and social awareness embedded into them.

So to my friend, I say, "Sure. I understand. Yes. I'm there myself."

But I also say that there is no other way to grow a career. I see that, I know that from first-hand experience. And so I hang my head, hoist on my smile, and ask after Bob's wife Sally. Or tell Hank, who I bumped into in the street, that my company has an opening for a position just like his friend Art does ... is Art looking?

And so it goes. And the only thing that I fear about this, really, is that prolonged exposure to the schmoozing is going to damage my own IQ. After all, even folks who don't know me well can plainly see that there is nothing I fear more than being stupid!

Read more rants - Top Blogs - Comment on this rant - Email me