Consulting, outsourcing and investment provider Mercer and SMITH Magazine have partnered to launch a new online contest called “Six Words About Work,” and plan to publish a book featuring the best contest submissions. By participating, you could win a fancy new toy!

The free contest, a new edition to SMITH’s Six-Word Memoir® series, is open to the general public and will be conducted in four phases beginning June 29 and ending in late August. Each two-week phase will feature one work-related submission topic for contest submissions. The contest topics include:

  • Why I do what I do
  • What inspires my very best work
  • The best boss I ever had
  • Biggest lesson I learned at work

The contest will be held in the US, UK and Canada. Participants will submit their Six-Word Memoirs via the SMITH website. Each country will have four winners, one for each phase of the contest, selected by a panel of judges. Winners will be chosen based on the submission’s creativity, quality and relevance to the topic. Winners will receive their choice of a new Apple iPad or BlackBerry® PlayBook™. Winners will be notified on or around September 1, 2011.
Complete rules are available at www.smithmag.net/sixwordsaboutwork.

You read that right: you can win an iPad (or PlayBook) by coming up with something clever. What could be easier?

The current challenge is to write six words about bosses (come on now, you guys can do this), of which “Evaluation conducted over vodka on ice.” is a definite front-runner. You have until August 13th to answer this one.

Get on it!