The higher profile and higher paying the job, the less it hurts to get fired.

Think of the best coaches and managers of professional sports teams and chances are they have been fired several times in their careers. Some have even been rehired by the same team that fired them previously.

Some professional athletes get even better treatment. They get released by the team they are under contact to but the team is still required to pay them, albeit to not play for them.

Senior executives in corporations are afforded the same treatment too. They often get recycled by one company even when they failed miserably – and very publicly – at another. Their incompetence is on full display and yet they will probably be in hot demand by other companies who have recently fired this person’s counterpart, also for incompetence.

Think of it as a Circle of Incompetence (COI). The same names keep getting hired despite apparently poor performance elsewhere. You wonder what it takes to become part of this club. It’s sort of like being outside a gated community and no one is answering the doorbell. Or like when you want to join a club but no one will teach you the secret handshake required for entry.

In some cases, getting fired is actually good news because these people tend to have guaranteed contracts which means that they continue to get paid by their employer after they’ve been fired. They’re probably leaving a lousy situation too which is most likely the primary reason they were fired to begin with. So they get to leave a bad situation – that they were at least partially responsible for – and they continue to get paid. Where can I sign up for that gig?

The organization firing them also gives them a golden parachute that would set most of us up for life. If you don’t know what a golden parachute is, it means you aren’t going to get one so I wouldn’t bother looking it up. Finding out what incompetence pays will only make you angry you aren’t getting the same treatment for being competent.

The best part about the Circle of Incompetence is that participants don’t even have to let anyone know that they are now looking for a new job because everyone knows about it. Plus the media will probably do them a favor if they’re famous enough and will discuss their entire career in chronological order for future employers to see.

Unfortunately, if you are not part of the Circle of Incompetence – and you know if you aren’t – these rules do not apply to you. When you get fired – with or without cause – you need to worry about what your previous employer will say about you during a reference check. Clearly, your screwups weren’t big enough to warrant someone else hiring you without worrying about the screwup in question. Nor were you important enough to receive the Golden Parachute that really incompetent people get when they screw up.

The key to remaining employed is to ensure that your name stays out of the company directory.

A former colleague of mine once told me this while we were working for a company that was known for having restructurings several times per year that resulted in job losses each time.

I was working on contract at the time and my name hadn’t been added to the company directory yet so he suggested I do what I could to ensure it stayed out of the directory.

I saw his point, and suggested that it was true that if our name wasn’t in the company directory, those making the decisions regarding job cuts wouldn’t know we were still employed and couldn’t downsize us. I already had an unlisted home phone number I told him, so being unlisted at work might have a further benefit based on his advice.

The theory was that senior management wouldn’t be able to find us at work because when they typed our name into the company directory to find out what floor we worked on, our name wouldn’t be there so they’d probably assume they’d turfed us in the previous round of layoffs.

The sad part is that as much as we were joking about it, at the time it actually seemed quite true and accurate. Headcount meant everything and a contractor like me didn’t actually count as an official staff member which had its advantages when it came to laying people off.

Moral of the story: The best way to remain employed these days is to ensure that the company you’re with understands your value. If you can show that you’re adding value – or more specifically adding revenue – you stand a better chance of remaining employed than someone who is doing a job that isn’t seen as bringing in revenue or is seen as doing a job that the company could do without.