Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
—Calvin Coolidge
As I continue my job search here in the UK, I occasionally check the online job boards for positions that might appeal to me. The job openings listed on these sites are almost exclusively posted by head-hunters and recruiters. The dynamic between these agencies and the client company presents what I consider to be a most unfortunate hiring scenario.
Inevitably, the recruiters and agencies are inundated with a deluge of CVs for each position. They whittle the stack down to a few candidates who match the job description in every detail. That is, they have 3 - 5 candidates who have previously done this exact job, in this exact industry. These square pegs are offered to the client for a fit into a square hole.
What is wrong with this picture? Why would you hire someone who has done the exact job in the same industry? Employees perform best when they are challenged—when they are stretched to grow into new areas. Instead of square pegs in square holes, you should hire people for whom your position is the next step in their career development. Identifying this potential is much harder than checking of a list of requirements but it is absolutely essential to find the people who will grow your business while they grow themselves.
The dysfunction of the recruiter / client relationship is that the recruiter is forced to put forth vanilla candidates that precisely match some sterile list of requirements. There is no room to find the dynamic, ambitious, energetic candidate who can master a new environment quickly and thrive in the new role.
And yet, I remain optimistic . . . 
A favourite quote
Most people don't realize how important luck is. For example, Rembrandt was lucky that just about everything he did was good.
flew from Heathrow to San Francisco yesterday. As with every other trans-Atlantic flight that I have flown on United Airlines, the flight attendants came through the cabin about 70 minutes into the flight with hot towels.
This is a 10 hour flight! Why don't they bring the the hot towel 70 minutes before we land rather than an hour after we take off? After nine hours in the cramped, dry, cabin I would relish a hot towel to clean my tired face. Instead, they bring the towels at the beginning of the flight when I am still fresh and awake.
I have submitted suggestions to United Airlines on the timing of their hot towels, but to no avail. I am left to conclude that there must be some kind of reasoning to their logic. It remains for me to figure it out. Could it be that:
At this point I am assuming that the answer is 'b.'
ast year I had the opportunity to watch The Fog of War, the Errol Morris documentary interviewing Robert McNamara. I can't really comment on the Vietnam War since I grew up in Canada and was too young to understand much of what was going on at the time.
However, I heard an excerpt from the film recently in which McNamara made a haunting and prescient statement. He said,
We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe that we should EVER apply that economic, political, or military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have been there. None of our allies supported us: not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause we had better re-examine our reasoning.
What else can you add to that?
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