How to Win: The Argument, the Pitch, the Job, the Race

4

Winning the Job

If at first you do succeed, try something harder.

Ann Landers

This is probably an all-too-familiar story. A couple of years ago, a buddy, whom I'll call Zachary, was feeling intensely frustrated that he wasn't getting the recognition at work he felt he deserved.

But let me backtrack a little. When I first met him at university, Zachary was a looming, burly guy with an unruly shock of muddy-blond hair and a tendency to deliver the most witheringly sarcastic put-downs I'd ever heard. Upon graduating in the mid-1990s, he started his career by taking a job as an accountant with a medium-sized accountancy firm. He specialized in the provision of tax advice and over the next decade was promoted a handful of times.

He occasionally ...