Dress Up; Bob for Apples; Hold the Party at Staples

Good news for all the “Larry the Cable Guy” types: You’ll never get a Ph.D., but you will get the job.

Start by applying to be a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. The dean there, Roger Martin, says in a blog post on the Harvard Business Review site that he’s more or less inclined not to hire the smartest person he can find.

Resurrecting a 21-year-old article “Teaching Smart People How To Learn,” Martin says it “convinced me of the exact opposite of what I had believed before I’d read it.” And that was that the smarter the people he hired, the better.

If Tom had a smartness rating of 10 and Sally was a 12, then she was just plain better. And if Jorge was a 15, he was better still.

Nowadays, he’d be hiring Tom.

Trick or Treat Boss

Count off by tens. Every multiple of three, step forward (see what happens when you don’t hire 15s?). You guys go tell the boss you want him or her to dress up in a costume for Halloween.

C’mon now. Glassdoor says three out of 10 of you want the boss to come in costume on Wednesday, even if only one out of 10 will do that themselves. Party poopers. But then, only 40 percent of companies will celebrate Halloween.

Hey boss, here’s a hint if you’re still trying to figure out what to do for the troops: 70 percent want a free breakfast or lunch, or failing that, they’ll take candy. Six percent want to go bobbing for apples. We suggest you put them on medical leave.

For Your Next Meeting

The next time you need a conference room and HR tells you they’re all booked, here’s a suggestion: Staples has a lot of empty chairs.

WerkJerks

I almost didn’t do it. I vacillated. Argued with myself. Yet here it is: the mention of a site whose name tells you all you need to know. But since some you reading this may have gotten hired because you were a 10 and not a 15 (you will eventually read that first item, I swear), let me explain. WerkJerks is a site for ranting about stuff that happened at work. If you figure out why it exists, let us know. Ties will be decided by answering this question: What is this item doing here?

Oh, duh, I know, I know. It’s because you could win $5,000 for a 30-second video. Here’s the sample WerkJerks pointed me to.