I have had more than my amount of trouble in getting a job. I did everything I was supposed to do. I went to an Ivy League school, got a 3.75 grade average, and then graduated as president of his class. Then I entered the job market.

I soon found out that human resources are geared to screen you out of a job. The asked for work experience, which I didn't have. After all you have to be hired to get the experience. After two years of trying to find a job, I took a temporary assignment. Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to eat. After that assignment I was again asked for my permanent experience. I didn't have any, so I took another temp assignment. After only two temp assignments I was dubbed a "job skipper". An unreliable employee, who must be rubbing his boss the wrong way - otherwise they would keep me. I didn't know what to do about this reputation. I couldn't argue the obvious path I had to take, and so I continued to let the reputation stand and took temp assignment after temp assignment.

The good news is that I was a good saver, and by seeing a lot of different working environments I got to see some common business problems, and I came up with ideas on how to solve them. I went ahead and wrote some books on the subject of project management, and program management. I soon found that I was one of the first to do so, and that my books sold in the USA as well as overseas. Due to this success, I went on to write over several patents and cashed in on about half of them. It is ironic to me that that for whatever reason corporate America didn't want to hire me, but instead they embraced and used my ideas and my inventions to help them solve their problems.

It would seem like I would be of value to some of them, but at the age of 47 I continue to look for an elusive perm job, and wish that someone would hire me so that I could claim a normal retirement.

After all I've made millions to date, and that was during "part time" employment. Just think what I could do if I was on a full time payroll.

Thomas Knutson is an inventor of over 200 globally used financial applications, a home designer, and an award winning poet from Minnesota. email@tko-usa.com