Walk me through it. Explain the reasoning step by step, out loud.
Show your work. A math teacher’s instruction. Write down every step, not only the answer.
Poke holes in it. Look for the weak points in an idea or a plan.
Grill. Question someone hard and at length.
Deer in the headlights. Someone who freezes and cannot answer.
Keep your cool. Stay calm under pressure.
Looks good on paper. The record is strong, but the person is not yet proven in practice.
Foot in the door. A first entry into an organization that can lead to more.
Name-brand school. A university that employers recognize at once.
Résumé builder. A job or activity chosen mainly because it looks good on a résumé.
Book smart, street smart. Knowledge from study, and knowledge from experience.
Prove yourself. Show by the work that the confidence was justified.
Sink or swim. Succeed alone or fail.
Thrown in the deep end. Given a difficult task with little preparation.
Trial by fire. A first test under real pressure.
Learn the ropes. Learn how things work by doing them.
Figure it out. Find the answer without being told.
Self-starter. A person who begins work without waiting for instructions.
Wear many hats. Do several jobs at once, often in a small company.
Ready for the next level. Able to take on a larger role.
Low-maintenance. Needs little supervision.
Up-and-comer. A young person who is advancing quickly.
Rookie mistake. An error typical of a beginner.
Ready for prime time. Ready to perform in front of a larger audience. The negative is more common: not ready for prime time.
On November 9, 2011, Texas governor Rick Perry stood on stage at a Republican presidential debate broadcast by CNBC from Oakland University in Michigan. He said he would eliminate three federal agencies. He named Commerce and Education. Then he could not name the third. He said: “I can’t. The third one I can’t. Sorry. Oops.”
The missing agency was the Department of Energy. Afterward Perry said: “I stepped in it, man.” The Texas Tribune called the moment perhaps the greatest embarrassment yet in a series of missteps.
McKinsey and Bain hire through case interviews. The candidate receives a business problem and works through it while the interviewer watches. McKinsey describes the case as a way “to evaluate your approach to solving complex problems.”
Bain tells candidates what the interviewer watches: “We’re evaluating how you think, not the framework you memorized.” Its advice is to “pause, structure your thinking, and talk us through your logic.”
In medical training, senior doctors question medical students and residents during rounds, often in front of their peers. The questions get harder until the trainee misses one. Medical slang calls the practice pimping.
In 1989 Frederick Brancati described it in an essay in JAMA, “The Art of Pimping.” He wrote: “On the surface, the aim of pimping appears to be Socratic instruction. The deeper motivation, however, is political.”
In 2015 the sociologist Lauren Rivera published Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs. She studied hiring at elite professional service firms. Each firm has a few “core” universities from which it chooses most of its new hires. It also has a few “target” schools that it considers when the core schools do not supply enough candidates.
“By far the most important hiring factor, Rivera said, was school prestige,” NYU Law reported.
In June 2013 Laszlo Bock, who led people operations at Google, gave an interview to the New York Times about hiring. “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless,” he said.
Bock also said: “What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well.”
No NFL team drafted the quarterback Kurt Warner in 1994. He stocked shelves at a Hy-Vee grocery store in Cedar Falls, Iowa, for $5.50 an hour. He then played Arena Football for the Iowa Barnstormers and led them to the ArenaBowl in 1996 and 1997.
In 1999, with the St. Louis Rams, he was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player. That season ended with a Super Bowl win over the Tennessee Titans, and Warner was the game’s MVP. He entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017.