Bait and Switch (12 page)

contact.

But the way things are going, that is beginning to seem as unlikely as Finally, it is Tim's turn to speak. He has not been just a run-of-an AFL-CIO bid for Tim.

the-mill HR guy; he's a union buster, though that's not his phrase. His resume lists unions he has gone up against and de-

feated, and he stresses these victories in his "commercial."

Neal, who has been largely silent since revealing his problems with getting up in the morning, asks Tim whether, if he can't find another HR job, he would consider working for labor instead. I mumble insincerely that Tim's experience might be really welcome at the AFL-CIO, right here in Washington. A beat goes by before Tim says, "Yes." Then he thinks for another few seconds, swallowing hard and blinking repeatedly, before saying,

"Probably not. That would be a big adjustment."

four

The Transformation

Ron instructed us to devise a "Winter-Spring Plan of Attack," and I find the military metaphor oddly reassuring. This is not just a matter of "attitude," or hope, or the projection of winning force fields; no, everything hinges on the cool logic of strategy. I will need a three-part plan, I decide, because in Western culture important things come in groups of three. Every public speaker knows this: two points are unconvincing; four are long-winded and superfluous; it takes exactly three to suggest roundedness and completion. And the first part of the plan is, once again, as emphasized by Ron, networking—sustained and furious, skilled and highly targeted, relentless and dogged.

My major takeaway from Ron, now that I have a chance to this part two of the Winter-Spring Plan of Attack: product reflect, is that getting a job is like gaining acceptance into an enhancement.

eighth-grade clique. There exists an elite consisting of people But what about part three? An upgraded persona will not help who hold jobs and have the power to confer that status on others, without upgraded marketing methods, and to this end I read and my task is to penetrate this elite. Since my actual eighth-grade
Nonstop Networking
by Andrea R. Nierenberg, described in large status never advanced beyond that of loathsome pariah and nerd, I print on the book jacket as "the Queen of Networking." The book have no practical experience of elite crashing, but it makes seems to be addressed to the same market as the antidepressant that sense to include a ruthless scrutiny of the "product" I am is advertised as a cure for "social anxiety." "Standing in the trying to sell. My resume was finally judged "great" by Joanne, doorway," Nierenberg acknowledges, oblivious to the dangling perhaps only because we ran out of sessions. It's the wrapping, so to participle, "a networking event can seem scary." The trick is to break speak—my physical appearance—that concerns me now.

the networking process down to "baby steps," such as "establish Sociologist Robert Jackall observes that in the world of

[ing] eye contact" and "ask [ing] an open-ended question." If you are corporate managers, "appearances—in the broadest sense—mean still nervous, you can "use a script," rehearsing it "until it comes across everything,"
28
and, if it is to keep up with the standards set by naturally."
29

the resume, mine needs a careful reevaluation.

Sample ice-breaking questions are offered: "Why did you Fortunately, I discover on the web, there are companies that will come to this session? Where do you work and what do you do?

do this for me, and I call one of them, Image Management in Where do you live? What other sessions have you attended?"
30
I Atlanta. The man who answers the phone asks whether I am interested in "body language or colors." Both, I say, the whole package, and am told it will cost $250 for a three-hour session. Call 29 Andrea R. Nierenberg,
Nonstop Networking: How to Improve Your Life,
Luck, and Career
(Sterling, VA: Capital Books, 2002), pp. 77,78-79.

30

28

Ibid., p. 18.

Jackall,
Moral Mazes,
p.59.

study the photo of Nierenberg on the book cover—the gray about twenty adults are seated at desk chairs with their backs to the jacket and thick silver necklace, the dark lip gloss and the excessive camera. He wanders through his spiel, holding my attention only eye shadow, which gives her a slightly loopy, half-asleep look—and when he embarks on an anecdote I had not heard before, about imagine myself approaching her with the incisive question "What how he once had Si million, and then, well—his gaze wanders from other sessions have you attended?"

the camera to the wall—apparently it got away from him.

I decide to go to Atlanta for a session at the image management Occasionally the action is interrupted by a screen containing a text firm and, it occurs to me as an afterthought, a follow-up visit to message, generally in the form of three bulleted points. I give Patrick, who has indeed called, though I was not home at the up in boredom halfway through, only later in the evening realizing time, to inquire as to what further coaching I might need. On the that I am a PR person, and what Patrick desperately needs is
me.

same trip, I will make use of any networking events I find The plan takes form in my last day at home. Patrick will advertised on the Atlanta Job Search Network. No more shyness or think I am coming for a coaching session, but I will in fact be prideful reticence; I resolve to be a networking fool.

coming to propose that he hire me himself. The best outcome I make a reservation at the cheapest downtown hotel I can would be that he does in fact hire me, and I exit the realm of find, for an amazingly low $59 a night, secure a rental car, and pack the jobless just like that. In the second-best outcome, he will be every vaguely "professional" item of clothing I possess, which sufficiently impressed to invite me to join his inner sanctum, the fortunately requires no more than a single small suitcase, even ExecuTable, in which he brings together the most promising of with the laptop thrown in. Just to be extra prepared, I spend one of his job seekers with local business leaders. Or of course he could my last nights at home watching Patrick's video, which I purchased simply laugh me out of his office, but at least I would have gotten at the boot camp, on how to find one's "career sweet spot." It is some valuable practice in "selling myself." So the Winter-Spring shockingly bad, so bad it begins to fill me with a zany self-Plan of Attack now has the necessary troika of elements, which I confidence. Patrick is shown addressing a classroom in which list as Network, Change Self (that's the image enhancement part), and Sell Self. I cannot be sure, though, that the last two packed with about thirty people seated around long tables facing items are really separate and freestanding, since to "sell the inevitable PowerPoint screen—a motley crowd, ranging in age myself" I will need to transform myself into someone very from thirties to late fifties, mostly in studied business casual, and different, psychologically speaking, from whatever I have been featuring a few black faces.

in my life up till now.

No networking occurs, however, except furtively and on the MY FIRST NETWORKING session in Atlanta is a major disappointment.

margins. Instead we are subjected to two hours of lectures acI check into my hotel, noting that it is cheap for a reason—dingy companied by PowerPoint slides, and in case these fail to get the and with the only available food being some Stouffers frozen message across, we also are each given notebooks titled "Mastering dinners in a freezer next to the registration desk. But at least I Executive Job Change" and containing the same PowerPoint slides in have a fridge and microwave, a TV, and a desk, plus there is a paper form. Look up and you see

computer attached to a printer that guests can use in the lobby.

I. Managing Career Transition and Change Strategy

It's still light when I drive out to the networking event venue, the A. Understanding Your Current Emotional Needs

Roasted Garlic restaurant in a northern suburb. This event, which B. Gain Control

came to me via the Atlanta Job Search Network, is sponsored by the congenially titled Layoff Lounge and aimed at the executive job Look down and you see the very same thing, unless, of course, you seeker. Between the garlic and the lounging, I expect a convivial have been flipping ahead. But it's probably just as well that our eyes scene and possibly something decent to eat.

are so fully engaged, since this is a sad, tacky place that we have The Roasted Garlic occupies a site in a drab shopping center come to, unenriched by even a whiff of the eponymous vegetable.

at which most of the stores are already closed for the night. It's Fake ivy on trellises lines the wall behind me, and I am facing a one of those dark, suburban Italianate places, where most of the needlepoint rendition of a seaside town, possibly Italian, heavy action centers on the bar. I am directed upstairs to a room on the burgundy and browns. Only a curtain keeps us from looking down on the bar scene on the main floor, but the fling sounds from the audience.
31
On health insurance, he says, curtain does nothing to dampen the familiar bar sounds of

"COBRA: It's not a snake, but it's going to seem like one when you mumblings and the occasional squeal or hoot.

see the quotes." The bright side, though, is that some trace of class The content of the presentation attests to a major erosion of privilege survives into the jobless condition. As executives, he middle-class life: "Job change"—or, more accurately, job reassures us, "instead of being laid off or out of work, we're 'in loss—has become inevitable, the speaker tells us, several times in transition.' " This residual superiority can be deployed while a lifetime, and it is always accompanied by drastically straitened asking the mortgage company for a few months' grace period.

circumstances. How to manage? Much useful, but ex-

"You're executives here," the Baldwin lookalike declares, so you hausting, information follows on preserving one's 401(k) plan, can go to the mortgage company without "your tail hanging health insurance, and credit rating when the income ceases to between your legs."

flow, as well as a host of small tips: Raise some cash by holding a We are given a break in which we are encouraged to order yard sale, and use the occasion to network with your neigh-some food, despite the prohibition on eating out. This Roasted bors. Cut the kids' allowances. Don't eat out and, when net-Garlic, the speaker tells us, is "the best-kept secret in Dun-working, arrange to meet for breakfast, not lunch, or better yet woody." Having sampled a meal of tough chicken breast strips for coffee at Starbucks. "Every twenty dollars you can save,"

residing in a Campbell's soup–flavored sauce, I can report that it is our speaker, a financial manager who resembles Alec Baldwin only a secret I can be counted on to keep. I chat with Leah Gray, without the sexual edge, tells us, "is a plank in the lifeboat you are 31 Pensions are becoming a thing of the past. In 1979, more than 80 percent of U.S.

building for yourself."

workers retired with a defined-benefit pension; by 2001, only a little over 40

percent did so. (Eduardo Porter and Mary Williams Walsh, "Retirement Turns There are moments of bitter humor. On the subject of pen-into a Rest Stop as Pensions and Benefits Dwindle,"
New York Times,
February 9, 2005.) As for health insurance, the health provisions of the Consolidated Omnibus sions, he asks, "You've heard of those?" to some slight snuf-Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 (COBRA) allow laid-off workers from eligible firms to continue with their company's health insurance for eighteen months, if they pay 102 percent of the premiums. Because of these high costs, only about one in five unemployed workers utilizes the COBRA program (www.familiesusa.org.).

the blond, thirtysomething woman sitting at my right, who changed and looks prepared to offer me a free meal and a shares my disappointment that this has not turned out to be a place to sleep. I rush back to the hotel and do a Mapquest networking opportunity at all. No discussion has been built search for Congregation Beth Shalom, where the "Career into the agenda, nor any time for the informal sharing of stories Mavens" are said to be meeting, but I wouldn't get there till and tips.

eight and the event ends at eight thirty. The next morning I'm up Leah hands me a card that seems to be imprinted with a before six for the forty-five-minute drive out to a Golden Corral tiny resume, in which most of the entries are undecipherable on the far west side, but the place isn't even open and a guy who's codes, like LINUX and SAP, and tells me she's been looking mopping the floor inside has no clue as to where the meeting for another IT-related marketing job for six months now, going to might have migrated to.

events like this almost every weekday night. When I ask her what Even with these gaps in the schedule, my home life, such as it is, seem to be the most helpful events, she says there are a lot of things is busy enough. Clothes have to be maintained in presentable to go to, but that many of them are "very religious" and not condition. Food has to be procured, which turns out to be more of particularly useful for contacts. At one networking event, she a challenge than you might expect at a "downtown" location.

was challenged by one of the organizers to reveal where she is Within a two-block radius of the hotel, I can get a burger at

"churched," and walked out indignantly. She hastens to assure Checkers or a larger one, with salad, at a sports-oriented pub.

me there's nothing wrong with networking events being A great deal of time goes into planning my next outings with the

"religious"; it's just not what she goes to them for.

help of Mapquest and two maps I have purchased, one small and Not all of the scheduled networking events pan out. The laminated, one vast and impossible to read in the dim light of my night after the Roasted Garlic gathering, I head out for a net-room. I know I should be networking with every human form that working meeting at a downtown Episcopal church, where a presents itself—the wan Eurotourists in the hotel, who may have kindly female pastor informs me that the meeting time was confused Atlanta with Atlantis or some other more seductive destination, the happy-hour clientele at the pub. But when the