Jake

To signal a desire for learning, do cool things that require you to learn and do more than the job requires. Employers are, in general, sort of like archeologists: They study artifacts to understand the people who made them. So make artifacts that demonstrate you like to learn things.

In an ongoing study, Wilson observes college students who are left alone in a room, with no phone or other distractions, for 15 minutes. "They hate it," he said. "One would think we could spend that time mentally entertaining ourselves. But we can't. We've forgotten how."

A major difference between my friend's team and most teams is that my friend's team was composed of people who had a track record of being highly effective across a variety of contexts. In an earlier job, my friend started a job at a large-ish ($5B/yr revenue) government-run utility company and was immediately assigned a problem that, unbeknownst... See more