Megan Hustad, a native Minnesotan and University of Minnesota alumna, first turned to "success literature" (self-help books on jobs and business leadership) when she noticed diverging career trajectories among her peers: Some had plateaued, some had switched industries and others were thriving. "It wasn't a matter of intelligence or capability at all," Hustad said. "I really started trying to dissect where are things going wrong for people." So she launched her own investigation, eventually publishing "How to Be Useful" (Houghton Mifflin, 232 pages, $19.95), a sharp, witty book brimming with advice for young people on how to manage the demands of the modern workplace. We caught up with Hustad in New York City, where she has lived and worked for the past 10 years.
Q You write that young people overestimate the value of authenticity in the workplace. You advocate, instead, that entry-level employees learn to be poseurs [to be somebody else for a few hours, "maybe somebody better than you"]. Why?
A I think that a lot of the problem that young people have in coming into the office is that all their lives they're so accustomed to being driven, metaphorically and sometimes literally, from one enriching opportunity to the next. Their schooling is catered around their developmental needs, so when they come into the office and they're in the lower-level ranks, that's not the case. The definition of being low on the totem pole is that you are there to facilitate someone else's development. If you go in there thinking that it's going to be about you meeting your needs immediately, you're going to be sorely disillusioned. The thing about being a poseur is that, at this stage of your career, you really need to get some more tools in your toolkit. And that's what your focus should be on: learning how to move in these hierarchical organizations.
Q You devote an entire chapter to the art of self-deprecation, describing it as a kind of alchemy. How does one use self-deprecation effectively?
A Well, I think that a lot of people use it but they just do it incorrectly. It's a very American -- especially, I think, very Midwestern -- way of being funny, putting yourself up for ridicule. The problem is a lot of young people do it in a way that gives their bosses too much information about their private lives, and that highlights the wrong traits. You need to pay closer attention to what messages you're sending out with your self-deprecation. You can tell a self-deprecating story, but the subtext has to ultimately be "yay me."
Q You say it's OK -- even desirable -- to fail from time to time. How does that work?
A Well, I think that failure is good because it's good to get it out of the way when you're young because you learn a lot. The people I've known who haven't encountered any career set-backs until their early or mid-30s can't handle it. It totally undoes them -- they have no experience with being a "C" student. If the first time you've been a C student is when you're 33, then you're not going to be able to handle it very elegantly.
Q One of the office archetypes you discuss is Dickens' mealy-mouthed paper-pusher, Bob Cratchit. You say that you yourself narrowly avoided being relegated to Cratchit-dom when you first started out. How?
A Well, partly it was a function of the industry I was in: book publishing. But I was also a little too quiet, a little too shy and didn't know much about how to ingratiate myself to my superiors. I realized after about 2 1/2 years in a company that wasn't promoting young people that if I stayed there I wouldn't get above the Bob Cratchit level, so I quit. I had made enough of an impression on some people that I was able to make a lateral move into another organization and then found someone who was a good mentor and helped pull me up with her as her star rose. So I'm a big advocate of taking career risks, especially when you're that young and have time to recover.
Megan Doll is a recent graduate of New York University's graduate program in cultural reporting and criticism. She lives in Brooklyn.
