Job hunting at The Office: Career tips from the bleakest workplace this side of Slough
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- March
- 22
U.S. News & World Report has compiled an extensive career management guide for the rough economic times that might lie ahead.
And the entire guide is presented using The Office as object lesson.
I can just see how that editorial meeting went.
Reporter A (whispering): This editorial meeting is as painful as one of those conference room scenes on The Office.
Reporter B (also whispering): I hear you. The new guy reminds me of Dwight Schrute. Let’s prank him!
Senior Editor: Is there anything you two would like to share, like your brilliant ideas for the next issue?
Reporter A: Well, now that you mention it…
Anyway, it’s extensive and sharp, with topics like “Jim Halpert and the First-Job Trap”, “How Pam Beesly (and You) Can Find a Dream Job” and “What to do with a Boss like Michael Scott.” Here are a few snippets…
On The Office as career guide
In an age of cubicles, the characters from NBC’s The Office have come to represent our everyday lives (oddly enough, at desks sans cubicles). Asking how to succeed at The Office, then, is not just a hypothetical question—it’s what a lot of us are trying to do every day.
On Jim Halpert
A talented salesman with mad people skills, Jim has worked at Dunder Mifflin for several years—it was probably his first real job out of college—and has advanced from sales rep to assistant regional manager, but he is quite frank about his dispassion: “If I advance any higher, this would be my career. And if this were my career, I’d have to throw myself in front of a train.” He isn’t alone in his ambivalence.
On Jan Levinson
Instead of firing hapless branch manager and subordinate Michael Scott, she dates him. She then makes the relationship public even though she admits it will cause her career to “collapse like a dying star.” Ultimately, perhaps convinced that she is incompetent, her bosses decide to replace her with former intern Ryan, who possesses a freshly minted M.B.A. degree.
So what’s a laid-off midlevel executive like Jan to do? Wallowing in grief for a week or so might be the first step, but the next is to quickly replace despair with hope and excitement.
Photos: NBC Universal
This entry was posted
on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 pm by Brian Howard.
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