Bait and Switch (11 page)

predicament on the economy, or the real estate market, or the inhuman corporate demands on their time. But these culprits were The obvious liberal rejoinders come to mind: What about the summarily dismissed in favor of alleged individual failings: child whose home is hit by a bomb? Did she have some bomb-depression, hesitation, lack of focus. It's not the world that needs shaped thoughtform that brought ruin down on her head?

changing, is the message, it's
you.
No need, then, to band And did my boot-camp mates cause the layoffs that drove together to work for a saner economy or a more human-friendly them out of their jobs by "vibrating" at a layoff-related frequency? It corporate environment, or to band together at all. As one of my seems inexcusably cruel to tell people who have reached some kind fellow campers put it, we are our own enemies.

of personal nadir that their problem is entirely of their own But it's all too easy for me to sneer at the EST-minded gurus.

making. I find my thoughtforms massing for an attack on When I get past my revulsion, the boot-camp experience and subsequent reading have one clear lesson for me in my role as a job 27 Ibid., p.67.

seeker, and that is that I may not be
doing enough.
If I don't find that it's freezing cold with icy patches on the sidewalks and a five-a job, and that is the goal I set for myself, it may in fact be my block walk between the Metro station and my hotel, I go in own fault. I resolve to try harder, do more, put those slacks and sneakers, though the upper body is, I think, respectably thoughtforms to work! I need to get out more, network more, put together.

and network with people who have more to offer me than the Ah, sweet luxury! The get-together takes place in an uppermiddle-unhappy crew assembled by Knowles.

type hotel, at least S100 a night beyond the Hampton Inn, in a spacious conference room where an entire buffet awaits us: fruit and cheese, egg rolls, satay sticks, coffee, andsoda. All we are SEARCHING FOR NETWORKING opportunities closer to home and missing, one of my fellow job seekers observes, is the wine. Before hopefully closer to the people who do the actual hiring—I come the program begins, we have half an hour to network, which is easy across a conveniently timed ExecuNet meeting in Richmond, enough to do since there are only five—not the promised forty—designed to help retool executives "in transition." When I other people present, and there's no way for anyone to escape my call to inquire, I am asked about my salary expectations, and overtures. Paul, a deadly pale, thirtyish fellow, tells me that he is this time, in a surge of positive thinking, I say $100,000.

still reeling from a conversation he had with his boss last week, who But that turns out to be half as much as what you need to get warned him of a coming wave of layoffs and that he, Paul, was into the Richmond confab; for pikers like me, there's another likely to be let go, if only because he is paid more than anyone else in meeting in Washington. The cost is a mere $35, plus the $150 I've the department. His title is impressive—director of business already spent to become an ExecuNet member and receive its development—and he must earn over $100,000 to be here. But monthly newsletter—a small price to pay, I guess, to network with success, in his case, has had a perverse effect.

a superior class of people. I am advised to bring forty copies of I also approach Donald, who unnerves me by starting with, "I my resume and to dress in business clothes. But when I get to know I've seen you somewhere before!" Before he can recall that Washington, the latter instruction is overruled by the weather: given the previous sighting must have been on TV, someone speaks, his eyes slither warily from one of us to another, reminding intervenes to tease Donald about his "dumb pickup line." A laid-me of the Time Warner executives I once lunched with years off sales and marketing VP with a wife and three children to ago, who seemed poised at all times between arrogance and support, Donald confides that he's been through "some deference, nervously calculating which to project. A line from a very wild emotional mood swings. I've gotten defocused, kind Robert Lowell poem comes to mind: "a savage servility/slides by on of hiding from my reality." But he seems to have absorbed the grease."

EST-like ideology of the job seekers' world, reporting, "Now

"There are four ways to find a job," Ron is explaining: "net-I'm totally past any sort of victim mentality, which is so working, networking, networking, and networking." As for dysfunctional."

posting your resume on job boards like Monster.com—don't When we are seated comfortably around the table, Ron, our bother, if only because you'll want to send a customized resume leader for the evening, introduces himself. He identifies him-for each job you apply for. I can only wonder what "customizing"

self as a "serial entrepreneur" who has launched all sorts of involves and how much it borders on fraud. Tim, the sandy-small companies providing business services. The high point of haired man on my right, who has carried Ron's tight-collar theme to his career seems to have been the years he spent at the RNC

what looks like a painful extreme, chimes in to testify that in thirty (Republican National Committee), though he assures us, "I years as a VP of HR, he never posted a job advertisement on a don't go around with a big
R
on my chest," perhaps on the off board. Donald observes that the boards are for "your fifty-K people chance that there might be a Democrat present. I don't hold that and below." Apparently, in the exalted circle I have entered here, against him, but if I had to "design," as Kimberly might put all jobs are attained through personal contacts.

it, an RNC operative, Ron would be it. He has the bur-Continuing his introduction, Ron reveals that he does not actually nished skin of a man who can afford regular facials, and a collar work for ExecuNet, but for some other firm called McCarthy and so tight that his face puffs out alarmingly from the neck. As he Company, which is in possession of 300 high-level networking contacts. The purpose of this evening's program is to teach us Neal appears unmollified by this advice, which of course I how to make use of such contacts, should we be inspired to pay recognize from the Forty-Plus meeting: turn your job search into McCarthy for the right to pursue them.

a job, and not just a freelance-type job. You have to structure it But any sense of having arrived at some place of comfortable hierarchically, complete with someone playing the role of boss, superiority evaporates with a comment from Neal, a fortyish preferably a paid coach like Ron. Thus the one great advantage of former media manager with an Australian accent and unruly unemployment—the freedom to do as you please, to get up when blond hair. Sounding like a thousand blues songs, he says, "I wake you want, wear what you want, and let your mind drift here and up and say, 'Oh God, another morning' . . . I have no focus."

there—is foreclosed. Just when you finally have a chance to be fully
Focus,
I am beginning to realize, is a code word for an emotional autonomous and possibly creative, for a few months anyway, you rather than a cognitive state; to lose it is to be not just have to invent a little drama in which you are still toiling away for confused or distracted but seriously depressed. Patrick would the man. The arrangement brings to mind Erich Fromm's best-have come to life at Neal's admission of despair—digging seller of the fifties,
Escape from Freedom,
which was an attempt to into him to find the buried depression, challenging him to understand the appeal of fascism. What clearer sign of an confront, of course, Neal.

aversion to freedom than actually paying someone to play the role of Ron, however, is impervious to desperation; the secret of focus, your boss?

he says, is "to make the search process like going into the office, Ron opens the session up for questions, and Donald asks whether whether that means going to the library, to a friend's house, or he should mention a recent illness, which cost him three months to our [McCarthy's] office." Furthermore, you have to have of work, to prospective employers. Ron's advice: "Turn [the illness]

someone to "keep you accountable," meaning a surrogate boss-into a sound bite that could be positive for you." Emboldened by figure. "We're used to having bosses, being responsive to Donald, I ask, "What if you've lost time due to homemaking and someone, so you've got to create the same dynamic."

raising children?" Ron replies:

The challenge is to be a beggar with a great story. If that story doesn't land desirable "interim jobs" they have found, which is "another reason you [get you a job], you've probably got a values mismatch. Turn it into a you've got to be the banana split." All this is delivered in a low-compelling story.

key, noninvasive tone unlike that of any of my previous coaches—

A beggar? Well, perhaps that does sum up the status of moth-just a casual sharing of information among equals. Here's an erhood in our society. I glance at the one other woman at the idea: Write to executives who are profiled in business publications table, whose resume describes her as having spent much of the and tell them what their company needs at this stage, which is, of last decade bringing the idea of "competition" to Latin Amer-course, you. Tell them how you're going to "add value" to their ica for some New York–based bank, but her eyes dart back firm. "Stand out. You've got to get into that banana split area."

anxiously to Ron. I must be the only one here who didn't un-Maybe we are in the banana split area already, because derstand that homemaking is such an unusual experience as to sometimes things get too slippery even for Ron. On the subject of require an entertaining explanation. How would I begin my the "Five Achilles' Heels of a Career Search," one of which is "lack

"compelling story"? I met this guy, see, and, uh .. .

of focus," he launches into a meandering metaphor about being Ron goes on to the meat of the evening, though given his at a train station and deciding you might not want to get on the metaphors, the main course sounds more like dessert. Re-same train again. Or you might want to check out where the other cruiters, he counsels, are like the job boards on the Internet—trains are going, or you might get on your usual train and get something to be avoided. Ron's "significant other" is a off at another stop. Turning to values, he tells us, "Most recruiter, and he knows "they won't do much for you unless successful candidates get in touch with their values." But what you can do something for them"—which sends me off into ir-are values? "Values aren't the same as morals. Greed can be a relevant fantasies on the subject of Ron's love life. Things are value." Perhaps as a disclaimer, he tells us, "Males are not very good looking up in the job market, he continues, but this will at first with the vision stuff."

cause more competition, as people seek to leave the less-than--But there's all sorts of useful information here too, which I struggle to commit to my notebook. Ask people to give you from their seats to summarize careers spent managing multimillion-their contacts, and when they do, write them thank-you notes dollar accounts, launching new products and technologies, reviving by hand, on nice stationery. Get a fountain pen; ballpoint dying enterprises. Not only am I wearing sneakers, but I seem won't do. If you can't get a real interview, at least ask for a to have passed through the world without leaving a dent.

twenty-minute "contact interview" aimed at prying contacts This time I am somewhat prepared, though I haven't memorized out of people. Wear a suit and tie or the female equivalent at my speech and am counting on the presence of an audience to all times, even on weekends, and Ron seems to give me a awaken the impulse to entertain. I say that PR and event planning are warning glance here; the sneakers have been noted. Network very closely connected for me: my events make news, and my press everywhere. One fellow "landed" thanks to networking at a 7-conferences are
events.
As for speechwriting, I don't mean to boast, Eleven on a Saturday morning; luckily he had been fully but frankly I've found that events go better if I write the major suited up at the time.

speeches. By prior decision, I hint at successes that cannot be fully During a brief break devoted to restrooms and refilling our divulged due to confidentiality agreements: as a PR person currently plates, Paul catches me in the corridor and tells me his story doing a lot of work with celebrities, I say, I specialize in the hard cases again, only in this version it was just yesterday, not a week ago, where there are drinking problems or anger management issues. The when the boss warned him of the impending layoffs. I don't drinking-problem idea had come up when Kimberly asked me to put think he's lying; I think that the boss's baleful speech has sim-my career in something called "PAR" (Problem/Action/Results) form.

ply filled up Paul's brain and is occupying all the available time Once, on a book tour, my media escort had shared some dish about slots in memory. He will get to tell the story yet again, since our a certain well-known cookbook author who was inseparable from his final hour is devoted to giving three-minute "commercials"—a fifth of vodka, and what a struggle it was to enforce coherency sort of long version of the "elevator speeches" Kimberly and throughout a long day of back-to-back interviews. Kimberly felt this Joanne recommended. I listen in awe as my fellow seekers rise

"problem" was unsuitable for a résumé, but it was the only one I could come up with. I pause to let my audience picture me So Tim has principles, which, under the circumstances, is deftly herding a series of drunk and disorderly celebrities, and almost shocking. No matter what the temptation, he'd remain conclude that I have always handled these cases with discretion, loyal to the managerial class, just as, I suppose, Ron would reject an imagination, and cunning.

overture from the Democratic National Committee. I, on the other The word
cunning
seems to catch their attention, and I hand, have none. If Wyeth, the manufacturer of the hormone wonder if it's something I should use again. Donald suggests I replacement drug that probably contributed to thousands of cases of do some networking through the PR professional association, which breast cancer, offered me a job doing damage control in the I have so far known only as a web site. Ron promises to e-mail me a press—well, under the terms of this project, I'd have to take it.