I’ve only once been tasked with hiring a new staff member, and I was in my mid-20s when it happened and unaware of all the ways a person might blossom or wither in a job. So when a friend recently mentioned how difficult he was finding it to select the right candidate for a role, how he was deciding between two people who were equally experienced and capable, and it seemed unfair to select one based on the vague criteria of “vibes” alone, the only advice I could offer was paraphrased from someone else. In her 2011 book Bossypants , the comedy writer Tina Fey repeats a lesson she learned from Lorne Michaels while working at Saturday Night Live , which is to hire people you wouldn’t mind running into in an elevator in the early hours of the morning.
If I were offering the advice of a different boss, it might be: never hire someone who’ll sell you out to the tabloids. That’s one of many things homemaking mogul Martha Stewart went through during her downfall in the early 2000s, a tidal wave of controversy that’s depicted in extreme detail in Martha , the new Netflix documentary on her ascent, criminal fall and digital rebirth. Stewart has been the queen of the domestic, the paragon of perfection, a model turned caterer turned author of books teaching the American woman to host, cook and live.
She’s worked on Wall Street and later returned there when the company built around her finicky, fanatical approach went public and transformed her overnight into a truly self.