The "N" Words

From the halls of Congress to a town hall near you, it’s damned near impossible to go a week without hearing about a public official being brought up on ethics charges. Sometimes the accusation is as clear-cut as getting caught with their hand in the communal cookie jar but, more often, it’s a slyer form of chicanery, like giving high-paying government posts to family and friends or taking kick backs for maneuvering lucrative contracts into the waiting arms of a campaign contributor.

This is called nepotism and is considered a bad thing.

When listening to the advice of the many “career consultants” whose numbers have swelled along with the unemployment figures, it’s equally impossible not to hear them extol the virtue of tapping into your sources to land a job or build your business. This entails putting the arm on everyone from work associates to Grandma Nettie to get that all-important “foot in the door,” or linking into various forms of social media sites including Facebook, Twitter and, yes, LinkedIn.

This is called networking and is considered a good thing.

Or is it?

Looking back on my long years with my old employer, I can think of three instances when a chit was called in and a person or company was forced into our department’s ranks. The first was a young woman whose step uncle, a big shot in the company, had us create a junior designer position just for her. She was funny, sweet, kind and couldn’t design her way out of a brown paper bag. The second was also a designer, this one a certifiable psycho, who was in danger of being laid off until her boss hoodwinked my boss into taking her on. I had to spend a year sharing an office with this crazy bitch and held my breath every morning, convinced she was coming to work packing heat instead of lunch. The last was a printing company whose president was the friend of yet another of our corporate higher-ups. My boss and our print production manager were called into a meeting and not-so-subtly told to give this printer “special consideration” when bidding out jobs. I can’t say for sure what, if any, back door dealings were involved with this “arrangement,” but I can state unequivocally that the quality of our print materials sucked for years to come.

All of this begs the question: Why is “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” accepted in the private sector but condemned in the public sector? Isn’t it just as duplicitous to use a position of power, no matter how that power was attained, to give jobs to people and companies who are unqualified? Some might argue that, in the public sector, it’s our tax dollars that are being put to criminal use but, if you own stock in any corporation (and chances are, you do), your investment dollars are being used to employ equally incompetent nincompoops and hurting the bottom line.

An accountant in California recently posted an ad on craigslist, offering to pay three grand to anyone who could land him a job. The money would be handed over as soon as he signed the employment contract.

Would this be considered networking, nepotism or simply the nadir of merit?