Bait and Switch (18 page)

"Oh, no problem." He smiles beatifically. "They didn't At last, a meaningful tip; maybe enough to redeem this long, need so many people then, and now they do."

strange morning of bowdlerized Christianity leavened with So this is the new ideal Christianized, "just in time," white-down-home homophobia.

collar employee—disposable when temporarily unneeded and My taxi driver back to the Atlanta airport is an immigrant always willing to return with a smile, no matter what hardships from India who hopes to become a Pentecostal preacher.

have been endured in the off periods.
43
Maybe one of the func-When I admit to not being a Christian, he squints back skeptitions of the evangelical revival sweeping America is to reconcile cally at me in the rearview mirror, as if he might have missed some people to an increasingly unreliable work world: you take what telltale facial flaw.

you can get, and praise the Lord for sending it along.

"It's too hard to be a Christian," I explain. "Jesus said that as As we are all milling toward the door, I am approached by an soon as you get any money, you have to sell all you have and give intense-looking man of about forty-five. "You're looking for to the poor."

something in PR?" he asks. I nod eagerly. "You should join the

"Where does it say that?" he asks, genuinely curious.

Georgia state branch of the Public Relations Society of Amer-

43 The laid-off IBM employees studied by Sennett tended to withdraw from civic engagement and, at the same time, become more involved in their churches.

One of them told Sennett, "When I was born again in Christ, I became more accepting, less striving"
(The Corrosion of Character,
p. 130). In recent self-help literature, Christians are encouraged to see the workplace as a site for

"witnessing," proselytizing, and otherwise advancing their religious goals. Kim Hackney's book,
Thank God It's Monday: Celebrating Your Purpose at Work
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003), for example, is advertised on www.praize.com as offering advice on "living out your God-given purpose at work" and "transform[ing] attitudes about the 'daily grind' and find[ing] satisfaction and joy in your job."

six

Aiming Higher

Home again, I sit down to confront the fact that my resume, which has been posted on Monster.com and HotJobs for over two months now, has netted not a single legitimate inquiry. Oh, I get plenty of e-mail, most of it from "executive job search"

firms professing to see great promise in my résumé and offering to guide me toward a job in exchange for several thousand dollars.

But the health and biomedical companies I have pelted with applications maintain their supercilious silence. I am a fairly compulsive person, at least when it comes to deadlines, and can't help but feel anxious that the one I set for finding a job is bearing down on me with merciless speed.

An ordinary job seeker might despair, but I have a unique replace it, I expand on my imaginary PR experience, which now advantage: I can simply upgrade my resume. The key to the blooms into some full-time jobs, rather than mere consulting. All upgrade is the knowledge, gained from chatting with other of these fake jobs are, lamentably, within the nonprofit sector, and seekers, that many in the PR field are failed journalists—no although I humiliate myself (my real self that is) by trying to find shame in that, since most newspapers pay shockingly low wages someone to lie for me within one of the actual for-profit PR firms and hardly anyone manages to support him- or herself as a I've had dealings with over the years, I am stuck with a shady freelancer these days. What this means is that I can draw on nonprofit past.

more of my actual life as a skeleton for Barbara Alexander's. I Still, it seems to me, the new résumé is impressive. There are cannot cite articles I have written, of course, because someone no Gaps to cover over with ingenious stories, only a life of solid might ask to see them, but I can truly claim to have taught at the toil in the service of press relations and image management. I University of California, Berkeley, in the Graduate School of retain my recent history as an independent consultant, but gone is Journalism, where I have a faculty friend willing to confirm, if the last trace of Barbara the dabbler and displaced homemaker, anyone asks, that Barbara Alexander taught a course called replaced by a highly focused, if not workaholic, professional. I post

"Writing to Persuade" that was wildly popular with students.

the new résumé on Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilders, guru.com, Furthermore, the event planning has to go. I thought that workinpr.com, prweek.com, a few job boards in my own state, and having two "skill sets" would double my attractiveness to employers, the Public Relations Society of America web site—warning but it may have the unfortunate effect of making me look myself not to rush to my e-mail the next morning expecting a

"unfocused." Besides, I've been coming to see event planning blizzard of responses. But I must be a glutton for disappointment, as a somewhat sketchy profession, too closely related to catering, because of course that's just what I do.

and my networking has led to the impression that few companies Next on the agenda is follow-up. I have a stack of business cards maintain an in-house event-planning capability anyway. To from my various trips, and now I e-mail every one of these contacts, inquiring as to how their searches are going, and his workshop was and how much I appreciated his straightforward asking if they have come across any leads for me. Not approach, as opposed to the mushy, semitherapeutic offerings of your everyone answers, and no one has a tip. Billy, the guy I had typical career coach, and I remind him of his promised contact for clashed with at Patrick's boot camp over Clinton's homicide me. This summons forth a gracious enough response, ending with a record, invites me to the new job seekers' group he has estab-request to refresh his memory re my situation and skill set. I lished. Leah, the marketing person I met at the Roasted Garlic, is should send him a résumé, but which one? I had taken the old growing increasingly desperate. Another boot-camp veteran, one to the ExecuNet session and don't dare send him the new Richard, the realtor with the permanent wince, surprises me by one, in case he compares it to the first one and notices how writing that he has been trying to reach me by phone, because much my experience has expanded in just a few weeks.

he "just really wanted to talk." He hasn't gotten through be-So the old résumé goes out to him, along with a renewed re-cause he's been trying my cell phone, which I tend to ignore minder about the contact, and when this gets no response, I when I'm at home. Could he take me out to dinner next time write again, asking if he can spare just twenty minutes of his I'm in Atlanta? I let his ardor cool for a few days before replying time for a chat. That was one of his own recommendations: that, yes, dinner would be delightful, but by the time I get back anyone can be imposed on for twenty minutes of face time. An eto him he has relocated to Chicago and found a job, the nature mail comes back listing several openings in his schedule on the day of which I cannot elicit, something makeshift, he says, meaning a I plan to be in Washington, including some noonish possibilities, little bit shameful and hopefully temporary.

so I brazenly offer to take him to lunch, and, improbably enough, he accepts.

The obvious site for the rendezvous is the restaurant in the hotel MY NEXT, and far more intimidating, follow-up target is Ron of where I'm staying on Ehrenreich business, which I scout out at ExecuNet and, before that, the Republican National Commit-breakfast time and determine to be, if not a reliable food source, at tee. I write him a sucky but fairly honest e-mail about how edifying least a soothingly pseudo-upscale environment. I prepare father, who worked for Gillette for over twenty years and identified so meticulously in my room: tan suit, black pullover, gold earrings. My deeply with the firm that no competing products were allowed in the face gets the full Prescott treatment: foundation, blush, eyeliner, house. Now, however, people seem to be churned out of their lip-liner, mascara. I force myself to slow down and make small, companies every three years or so. Ron confirms my impression; fretful movements with the various pencils and brushes, since, an executive today can count on having eight to nine jobs in a for some unknown anthropological reason, bold, broad-stroked lifetime. "You always think the next job will be the last one, but it face paint has the undesirable effect of suggesting savagery or never is."

sports mania. Examining myself in the full-length mirror, I When it comes time to order, I make the mistake of being conclude that I rock, and that, with the addition of a gold necklace friendly to the waiter. The correct, Ron-like stance toward the and lapel pin, I might, in Prescott's judgment, even pass for a waitstaff, I see, is one of indifference, laced with hostility. He Republican. "Clear mind, skillful driver," I recite to myself complains, for example, that his water glass is
too full,
and, al-from Morton's little koan. "Sound spirit, strong horse."

though it would be no big trick to sip off the offending excess, he Ron, too, is looking far more "accessible" than he had been—tie-has the waiter bring him a new, less generously filled, glass of less, with the top button of his button-down pale blue shirt water. No apology for this shameless fussiness, no "please," not undone. As soon as we are seated, I launch into a summary of even a moment's eye contact, accompanies the request, leaving my job-search findings, keeping things at the sociological, rather me to give the waiter a covert roll of the eyes, a sort of "See what I than personal, level, to indicate a lack of desperation. "I get the have to put up with?"

impression that the whole executive life cycle has changed a lot Now to my real problem. I lay out for him one possible in the last few decades," I tell him, "and that a lot of people just strategy, with ample credit to the ExecuNet session for helping me aren't prepared, emotionally or any other way." Hoping to to think "strategically": I will continue to zone in on the establish my hereditary membership in the executive class, I cite my pharmaceutical companies but with a letter pointing out their current PR problems—due to high prices and numerous cases of appetite with tiny, meticulously executed bites.

deceptive and fraudulent behavior—and suggest that I can help.

"But remember," Ron is telling me, "nothing replaces networking.

He likes this. "It's good to focus on something like the How are you going to network with the pharmas?" I should, he pharmas. And whoever you're applying to, it's good to refer to suggests, start showing up at events and meetings of the PR

the 'pain points' "—meaning what they're doing wrong that professional association, mingling, and, in the process, learning where you could fix. "But you've got to give them a solution."

the likely jobs are. Another strategy would be to buy a share of

"I understand the consumer anger," I say, "but I don't think stock in the company I'm interested in and show up at the annual the pharmas have ever tried to mobilize the goodwill that's out meeting, where anyone can hobnob with the top people "unless there for them. Among women, for example: You have the you're a troublemaker."

birth control pill; you have Tamoxifen. They've changed our

"Mmm." I have to own a bit of a company to work at it? I lives. They've
saved
our lives." Naturally, I'm leaving out the decide to ask a question that's been on my mind for months: harm they've done: the high-estrogen birth control pill, hor-Why, when job searching could be totally rationalized by the Internet mone replacement therapy, the Dalkon shield, et cetera.

through a simple matching of job seekers' skills to company

"Good," he says, "so you can suggest a
community
ap-needs, does everything seem to depend on this old-fashioned, face-proach."

to-face networking? After all, there's going to be an interview Ah, that's the word. Now our food arrives, and I am anyway, right?

alarmed to see that the chicken piccata comes with a marinara

"It's about trust," Ron answers opaquely, not to mention sauce, which is a sufficient danger to the job hunter that Jeffrey J.

"likability " "The higher up you get in the executive ranks, the Fox's book even includes a chapter titled "Don't Order Lin-more things depend on being likable. You've got to fit in."

guini with Marinara Sauce." One false move with the fork I catch my right hand advancing toward Ron's untouched could be death to the tan suit, so I am condemned to tease my French fries and quickly revise the gesture into a reach for the salt.

It's distracting to think that our major economic enterprises, those values could be.

on which the livelihoods and well-being of millions depend, rest so heavily on the thin goo of "likability "

SURE ENOUGH, my freebie arrives by e-mail the next day—a When we hit the coffee phase, I remind him again of the contact at a D.C.-based PR firm called Qorvis.
44
I have applied to promised contact. OK, he says, he can give me one "freebie."

only a few PR firms until now, both because I have seen few job But now comes the serious pitch: if I would like to be intro-openings at them and because I would prefer to be embedded in a duced to members of his "support group" of actually em-corporation with some larger, non-PR mission. I fire off a résumé ployed executives, I will have to pay 4 percent of my last year's with a cover letter mentioning Ron in the first line. That done, I salary up front, then 4 percent of whatever salary I land. I realize begin to draft a new cover letter for pharmaceutical companies, I can't pretend to earn a low enough figure to make Ron's 4

advertising my "community approach" to their unfortunate image percent affordable because I had already claimed to be making problems, which I blame of course on overly zealous regulators and $100,000 a year in order to qualify for the ExecuNet session, so reporters.

we're talking at least $4,000. This would buy me endless in-There is one last suggestion from Ron to explore: that I become terview coaching, résumé rewriting, and a chance to eat breakfast active in the public relations professional society and use it as a every other week with the bigwigs.