Recently, my friend and website collaborator, Patrick P. Calderon, published  an essay on  how to get a job. But, in this day and age, with so much commodity fetishism around us all, who wants to really get a job, anyway? No, no. I think the true guide we need is how NOT to get a job. So, let’s review some wonderful ways to ensure a job is something you’ll never get:

1. Don’t look for a job.
2. If a job appears out of nowhere, run from it.
3. If you are invited for an interview, start by stating your political opinions. Show your edge by going as extreme as possible.
4. Send your CV to the Hiring Manager as a .docx, and not as a .pdf. They love reading random unformatted Mac fonts!
5. Purposefully forget to change the date of your cover letter from 2018 to 2019.
6. If you are waiting to hear back with an offer, make sure you create a Python script that sends an email to the recruiter every 19 minutes asking “did I get the job?”
7. When asked what is your biggest weakness, say “perfectionism”.
8. When asked what is your biggest strength, say “Honestly, don’t know where to even start.” Proceed to list three qualities, anyway.
9. Major in p̶s̶y̶c̶h̶o̶l̶o̶g̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶o̶l̶o̶g̶y̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶t̶h̶r̶o̶p̶o̶l̶o̶g̶y̶  pretty much anything other than Computer Science.
10. Focus on jobs in academia, in a non-STEM field.
11. Move to a small European town with deluded ideals of living in a castle, only to find yourself unable to find a job in the one local employer, Don Mario’s pizza tavern.
12. Put a picture of [Pick a 20th century authoritarian] as your profile photo on Facebook.
13. Use LinkedIn to recruit others to the Ponzi Scheme you fell for (yes, that one you’re trying to desperately convince yourself is not a Ponzi Scheme). When you realize your mistake, make sure to still leave the LinkedIn posts for future employers to see. Don’t forget to load them with emojis, employers love those.
14. If you’re trying to make it as an author, avoid getting out there in Huffington Post, Medium, or any other place with established network effects. Choose instead to post exclusively in your personal blog, where only your friends will read it.

Honorable Mentions:

• Find a lamp with a genie in it, rub it, and use one of your three wishes to say, loud and clear, “I wish not to get a job”.
• Become a dolphin, or a cat, or even a dragon, ’cause why not.
• Since we’re at animals, you could also become a drunk beaver.
• Move to a country where finding a job is illegal.
• Sign up for Elon Musk’s random Mars project, and volunteer to be on that very first ship.