sbarbarian

I've had a string of running across 'unqualified gatekeepers': people who have tremendous power over access to a certain resource, yet lack the knowledge to accurately discern how to grant such access. These bottlenecks are disturbing - and I pose the question to HN on what tactics you use to (i) circumvent these gatekeepers when you're attempting to gain access to a resource, as well as (ii) design organizations to prevent these from emerging.

In case its helpful, some examples of 'unqualified gatekeepers': 1. executive recruiters: a (young) recruiter at a prestigious headhunting firm recently told me how she dinged a candidate against all future consideration for a lack of 'executive presence' displayed in a 30 minute call 2. VCs in Specialty Fields: analysts with no work experience outside of VC screening complex enterprise startups 3. Admins / Chief of Staffs: Blocking access to calendars / agendas 4. Sales Teams: Account managers who zealously guard access to their customers from internal teams (e.g. product team needs feedback) 5. etc.

Worth noting that for the above roles there are dozens of people doing a great job for every one who's bad, but the bad ones are who I'm focused on.