you're too smart to get a job

Are you good at what you do? Better yet are you the best at what you do? Even better are you the best at what you do but yet you are hanging out in the unemployment line with no job? If so, you're not alone. It kind of goes against common sense wisdom huh. "Well if I'm in the top 5% at what i do, i will have no trouble recovering from this dreaded layoff..." That is what a lot of people similarly situated would think, but it just isn't so. Why? Why else - money. Why hire the best to do what three people much less qualified can do...and still come out ahead over what it costs to pay the best. Simply put - cheap labor. This is exploitation at its best or should i say worse. Indeed some companies, these days, would rather hire the bottom ten percentile than the top ten percent for no other reason than money. Kind of goes against what your mother and father have taught you about working hard, being the best, loyalty and all that jazz huh. Sad but it's true. It's even worse if you're stuck with student loans to pay for the smarts you've acquired in your career field, but can't explain why you don't have a job. Hell that's enough to make you want to head on over to China for a teachers job. At least you will be paid what a teacher is worth in China...and still have money left over - quite a bit of it too.

So short of heading over to China for a job, what can you do? That's a good question with no simple answer. The reason being is that everyone in a position to help you just assumes that the best are working or will be swooped up immediately by someone else. Talk about a negative self fulfilling prophecy. What those employers are saying is that they expect to hire less than the best, since the best are already working for someone else. So along comes you who is stuck between a rock and a hard place as my grandparents tend to say. The sad reality is that if you have the smarts or the "know how" but not the "know who"...you are in trouble. Your best bet might be to head on over to Twitter and tweet your way to a job or over to Facebook and call upon a friend of a friend or something like that. This is indeed a problem that Washington believes doesn't exist or will otherwise correct itself. Thus, social networking is likely the best option. Like i said, its crazy who would have thought that you get penalized with no job for being good at your profession. Wake up - smell the coffee (french vanilla or breakfast blend, not the cheesy stuff). The smart ones are having the hardest time out there, perhaps this new kind of Washington, we have, will work to address this issue. Until then, it's gung-ho social networking for a job.