Furniture Bribery and the Toppling of Nepotism

The maxim of “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” has never been more true in the spectrum of career and job searching as it is today, and projects to be even more painfully relevant in the future. I have no problem with the cut-throat nature of business, just as long as I have as equal an opportunity for a close shave as does Mr. Todd’s nephew but, regrettably, that’s not the way it works most often in the corporate Fleet Street of the twenty-first century.

Sure, it stings that much more when a) you’re qualified to the eyeballs, then b) make the second interview short-list only to learn you’ve been rejected in favor of the second cousin of the receptionist whose husband ceaselessly offers the “I’m sure you haven’t taken your mulligan yet, Mr. Hardy” to keep the boss from double bogeys during Friday’s extended “power lunches.”

I suppose you could tailor your job search to anywhere you might conceivably have a familial “in”, but for me that would mean another undergrad degree or wearing a name tag and little to nothing in between. For most of us, I imagine, the scenario would be disdainfully similar. So the question is – What can you do to give yourself an edge?

I haven’t come up with much so far, but I did happen across the Bestar furniture collection in search of affordable and pleasingly functional office furniture. After a short perusal, I (sheepishly) came up with this half-baked suggestion. What about bringing along a piece of office furniture to “curry their favor” as they say?

As ridiculous as this sounds, (and it does) what’s not to suggest that a particular hiring agent might be “touched” by the thoughtfulness of your bringing a ready-to-assemble Bestar corner desk up 8 flights of stairs? Or that your promise to bring back that most fashionable Bestar computer desk when (AND IF GOSH DARN IT!!) you start training on Monday morning sways the decision to your liking? Perhaps bribery is your thing and you combine a Bestar desk or maybe a Bestar workstation with a considerable dose of unfounded flattery to rig the outcome? Hmm?

What’s that you say? You’ve always dreamed of being a purchasing officer and the accountant’s drop-dead gorgeous daughter-in-law and her philosophy degree are, however incomprehensibly, massively intimidating? You need to up the ante my friend! How about a conference table as the proverbial carrot-on-a-string dangled in front of him or her? Maybe even a pair of office tables if you sense you’re in something of a dead heat.

Fast forward; now, assuming you are indeed the new purchasing officer, there’s no need to put to waste all of your ill-gotten knowledge of conference tables. Stand proudly at the round conference table (or maybe it’s a modular conference table – you are the purchasing officer after all, right?) you’ve so tastefully brought to the office and lay out your plans to furnish the entire place in just the right mix of traditional executive office furniture, contemporary office furniture and modern executive office furniture. Then soak up the accolades…

The end justifies the means, people, the ends justifies the means.