Bait and Switch Read Free Page A

example. I'm patient and crafty; I have stamina Dimed . Physically, it would be a piece of cake—no scrubbing, no and resolve; and I believed that I could do this too.
    heavy lifting, no walking or running for hours on end. As for behavior, In fact, the project, as I planned it, seemed less challenging I imagined that I would be immune from the constant subservience than I might have liked. As an undercover reporter, I would of and obedience demanded of low-wage blue-collar workers, that I course be insulated from the real terrors of the white-collar work would be far freer to be, and express, myself. As it turns out, I was world, if only because I was independent of it for my income and wrong on all counts.
    self-esteem. Most of my fellow job seekers would probably have come to their status involuntarily, through layoffs or individual firings. For them, to lose a job is to enter a world of pain. Their income collapses to the size of an unemployment insurance check; their self-confidence plummets. Much has been written about the psychological damage incurred by the unemployed—their sudden susceptibility to depression, divorce, substance abuse, and even suicide. 11 No such calamities could occur in my life as an undercover job seeker and, later, jobholder. There would be no sudden descent into poverty, nor any real sting of rejection.

    11 See, for example, Katherine S. Newman’s Falling From Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) or, for a highly readable first-person account, G.J.Meyer’s Executive Blues (New York: Franklin Square Press, 1995).

    one

    Finding a Coach

    in the Land of Oz

    Where to begin? My first foray into the world of job searching, undertaken at my computer on a gloomy December afternoon, is distinctly intimidating. These days, I have gathered from a quick tour of relevant web sites, you don't just pore over the help-wanted ads, send off some resumes, and wait for the calls. Job searching has become, if not a science, a technology so complex that no mere job seeker can expect to master it alone. The Internet offers a bewildering variety of sites where you can post a resume in the hope that a potential employer will notice it. Alternatively, you can use the net to apply directly to thousands of companies. But is the resume eye-catching enough? Or would it be better to have formal training through programs like the Career Coach attempt face-to-face encounters at the proliferating number of Academy's fifteen-week course; others are entirely self-anointed.
    "networking events" that hold out the promise of meaningful You can declare yourself a coach without any credentials, nor are contacts?
    there any regulatory agencies looking over your shoulder—which Fortunately, there are about 10,000 people eager to assist me—means that, for the job seeker, it's the luck of the draw. 13
    "career coaches"—who, according to the coaching web sites, can I find Morton on the web, listed as a local career coach, help you discover your true occupational "passion," retool your although—as I will soon learn—most coaching is done by resume, and hold your hand at every step along the way. The phone so there is no need for geographic proximity. Morton coaches, whose numbers have been doubling every three years, has been there, is my thought. The background material that he are the core of the "transition industry" that has grown up just sends me shows a history of what appear to be high-level, defense-since the midnineties, in a perhaps inevitable response to white-related jobs, including, somewhat datedly, "Senior In¬telligence collar unemployment. 12 Unlike blue-collar people, the Analyst and Branch Chief Responsible for Analyzing Soviet white-collar unemployed are likely to have some assets to invest Military Research." He has given seminars at Carnegie Mellon in their job search; they are, in addition, often lonely and University and spoken frequently at