You may have the smarts and hard skills to get the job, but if your "soft skills" aren't up to par, you can kiss that corner office goodbye.
That seems to be the lesson from Harry Markopolos's experiences, anyway. The famed Madoff whistleblower has a host of ideas on how to transform the Securities and Exchange into a lean, mean crime-fighting machine, but some just can't get past his, well, oddness.
Markopolos proved that he had the financial and quantitative chops to uncover Ponzi schemes. And now he's gone on the record saying he'd like the SEC top job. But his critics say that his eccentricities might be too much for the staid organization to handle.
"He is what the commission needs only if the commission needs an emotionally unstable idiot savant," John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia University, told David Weidner. "You cannot be serious."
Why the backlash? Well, Markopolos's descriptions in his new book of buying a gun and getting his house ready for Madoff revenge don't exactly come off as rational. Couple that with his allegations that the mob and Russian mafia were also Madoff customers, and you can begin to see where critics are getting their material.
Most seem to agree that Markopolos is qualified to lead the agency, especially with the recommendations he's put forth (train more forensic analysts, get rid of the lawyers, beef up examiner staff). But his credibility is nonetheless undermined by the "whistleblower" stereotype -- a portrait of someone who might be determined, but very possibly unhinged.
Moral of the story: It might be wise to keep your gun-toting tendencies to yourself, unless you know the human-resources person is a member of the National Rifle Association. More generally, keep the lid on crazy. At least until you get the job, anyway.
Write to Julie Steinberg.