my pal retains asking me to get him a job, however he is utterly inexperienced and unqualified — Ask a Supervisor

A reader writes:

I work in a reasonably specialised area within the nonprofit sector, however one which typically options within the information and which many individuals not within the trade due to this fact take a passing curiosity in (suppose one thing like selling girls’s soccer. My area will not be one which has a hard and fast path to get into, equivalent to needing to go to legislation or medical college. However there are not any entry-level roles — it’s a must to have related abilities and experiences gained elsewhere. To take the ladies’s soccer instance: some folks have beforehand been girls’s soccer gamers; some have intensive expertise organizing newbie soccer groups or volunteering with women’ soccer charities; some have specialised abilities and {qualifications} like being a sports activities bodily therapist; and a few have beforehand labored in different-but-adjacent nonprofit sectors.

Which brings me to my present state of affairs. A detailed pal retains asking me to get him a job within the trade, however he has completely no related data, abilities, or expertise. He’s a kind of who will learn and be fascinated about information articles once they seem, however past that basically doesn’t know a lot. When he first requested, I assumed he was joking, and that it was only a good approach of telling me my job sounded attention-grabbing. However then he saved asking, time and again. This has gone on for … a very long time.

Once I level out that he is aware of nothing about girls’s soccer and has no expertise of nonprofit work (or something which that entails equivalent to mission and grant administration), he says that he can study that on the job. Once I level out that there are not any entry-level roles and that no one would rent any individual with no related background simply because the applicant thinks they’ll study the required abilities on the job, he says I might suggest him.

One factor making this stranger is that he already has a profitable profession in his (completely completely different) area, within the non-public sector. I’ve recommended that if he actually does wish to work in my trade, he might transition to nonprofit work in his present area (there are plenty of alternatives to take action), then after a number of years use that have to attempt to transfer into mine. Once I recommend that, he asks why I can’t simply get him a job.

I’ll quickly be transferring to a brand new position, and he has now began asking if he can have my present job after I go away it. Except for the truth that I received’t be the hiring supervisor, the reply is unsurprisingly no. However he’s constantly asking and getting irritated and pissed off after I maintain saying no.

I’m undecided if this stems from a real naïveté about how folks get jobs (he mainly fell into his present area after which simply stayed with it, so perhaps he thinks that’s the case for each job) or if he’s simply making an attempt to be an opportunist as a result of he thinks my trade pays extra, or a mixture of each. Is there any method to shut his questioning down as soon as and for all?

I feel your error could also be that you just’re nonetheless making an attempt to purpose him into understanding why you’re not going to seek out him a job. That made sense at first, when it was affordable to imagine he simply didn’t perceive how hiring in your trade works, however at this level you’re throwing good effort after unhealthy in making an attempt to logic him into understanding.

As a substitute, you most likely want to simply be blunt: “Dude, no. I’ve already defined that isn’t how my area works. There may be zero probability I might do what you’re asking. Cease asking!”

If he retains asking after that and since he’s an in depth pal: “It’s actually irritating that you just maintain asking this after I’ve informed you it’s unattainable. I’m calling a everlasting ban on the topic so it doesn’t begin affecting our friendship.”

Frankly, it is perhaps value including that his certainty that he might step proper into your area with no {qualifications} is fairly insulting to you: he’s devaluing your work, whether or not he intends to or not. (He’s additionally making himself look fairly delusional on the similar time, which is a bizarre — though unusually widespread — mixture.)