One of the most important lessons about business I ever learned happened one morning in my friend Dan's kitchen when I was 17. We were hanging around on a Saturday morning, doing what high school kids do, when his dad came in and plunked down a pile of about 40 envelopes on the kitchen island.

"Want to help me hire my new secretary?" he asked with a wry grin.

Dan's dad was a very successful business consultant who had applied his degree in counseling with his MBA to carve out a niche consulting with family businesses. It was a brilliant idea because he could tackle both the family dynamics part of the problem and the business issues the family was facing. He had written a book about his work and because he was the only published author I knew at the time, I thought he was a really cool guy.

"Sure!" I said, feeling proud to be asked to help in this important task.

"OK! Here's what you do:"

"If the envelope has a hand-written address, throw it out."
"If the envelope has any errors on it, throw it out."
"If the envelope's OK, open it up. If there's no cover letter, throw it out."
"Next, check the resume. If there are any typos or it's sloppy, throw it out."

Sounded easy enough. Soon I had reduced the pile of envelopes from a hefty forty to a more manageable pile of about four neatly-printed cover letter/resume combos. I handed them over to my friend's dad.

"Thanks!" he said, "I'll take it from here."

I remember just sitting there and chuckling to myself in disbelief. I'd reduced the applicant pool down to the top 10 percent without even having looked at a single piece of job experience or checked a single qualification! Me, a 17 year-old high school student! I was blown away and I never forgot the lesson.

Look: if you're applying for a job you'd better have an understanding of what that job's about and how you're going to demonstrate from the very first contact how you're qualified for that job. My friend's dad was hiring a secretary and basic secretarial skills such as neatness, good spelling, and knowing proper form were the absolute basic requirements of the job. Those qualities were supposed to be a given. All the other stuff -- job qualifications, prior experience, computer experience, education -- mattered only after the applicants showed they could do the basics of the job by appropriately creating and packaging their resumes.

I never forgot this, but it seems to me that based on the "applications" I've seen recently while we've been trying to hire for two senior positions, it's a lesson that a lot of other people never learned.

It's not really all the important what the positions are (let's just say they're both creative management jobs that pay very well) , but both of them had a few simple stipulations:

1. Include a portfolio;
2. Include a cover letter that demonstrates you understand our company;
3. Pay some modicum of attention to the prerequisites for the job;
4. Being detail oriented is a must.

That's it. The basics. You'd think it'd be easy.

You'd be wrong.

We got resumes without portfolios. We got resumes without cover letters. We got resumes from people who obviously didn't have the slightest idea what we did. We got resumes from people who lacked the basic experience we were looking for. We got emails with psychedelically-creative (and incomprehensible). We got resumes rife with typos and cover letters that were basically form letters. We even got one angry email from a guy who swore that he'd spoken to "Janet" and "Janet" had assured him that he met the criteria. We don't employ anyone named Janet.

On one hand it made it easy to quickly cull out the bad applicants. On the other hand it made me sad. Why? Because some of the ones that made it into the trash can may have actually been nice people. They may have actually had incredible portfolios. But we'll never know because they blew it by not being able to do a few simple things.

I'd hate for this to happen to anyone else. The frustrating thing is that the basic stuff anyone needs to do to at least get considered for a job aren't all that hard. Heck, the things that'll get you in the door are easy enough that even a retarded monkey could handle them. We ain't talkin' brain surgery here. All we're talking about is demonstrating that you can handle the basics of any job in business and that you've shown your potential employer a little respect by understanding what they're looking for and not wasting their time. Simple stuff, but stuff that so many people seem to be incapable of handling.

That's the lesson I've learned. Tomorrow I'll share my Top 15 Tips To Getting A Creative Job That Even A Cognitively Challenged Monkey Could Follow.