From the Bookshelf This is a fortnightly review of bestsellers for business executives Reality bites for the white-collar worker by Robert Baird For many companies, loyalty has become an outmoded virtue A few of the less scrupulous stores in the glitzy tourist areas are known to be experts in the practice of bait and switch. They demonstrate all the features of, say, the latest digital camera or laptop, and then, after diverting the attention of the unsuspecting buyer, package up an out-of-date model and don't include all the accessories. In Bait and Switch, author Barbara Ehrenreich uses this dubious retail practice as an analogy for what has happened in recent years in the US employment market. She points out the countless professionals with college degrees, marketable skills and impressive resumes have done everything expected of them in pursuit of the American Dream, yet have ended up unemployed and disillusioned. Instead of achieving what they thought was the promise of upward mobility and financial security, they feel they have been "tricked" by the system. As members of a generation of newly disposable workers, they have found themselves with limited social support, scaled-down ambitions and no guarantees for the future. They are the victims of economic cruelty in a country where it might be least expected. Ehrenreich's previous book, Nickel and Dimed, investigated the plight of low-paid workers. However, in about 2002, she noticed the increasing number of reports of economic hardship suffered by people of previously good standing, who had once held white-collar jobs with reputable organisations. One correspondent then challenged her to investigate why so many people who stayed out of trouble, achieved consistently good grades, and worked hard for what they had, were living under a mountain of debt which seemed inescapable. "Today, white-collar job insecurity is no longer a function of the business cycle — rising as the stock market falls and declining again when the numbers improve," writes Ehrenreich (p.4). In fact, since the mid-1990s, the winnowing of talented and successful people, as well as the mediocre, has become the norm and been effected under euphemisms like right-sizing and de-layering. Outsourcing can be added to the list as more functions are transferred to cheaper overseas locations. One consequence was that, by 2003, about 20 per cent or roughly 1.6 million of the unemployed in the US, were white-collar professionals. To conduct her research, Ehrenreich took on the role of a job seeker. Inevitably, this involved some deception, but she soon found it was a normal part of any job hunt. One of her first discoveries was that a whole new industry had sprung up to help job seekers. Within this, political correctness, including basic dishonesty, is well entrenched. For example, people are always in transition — never unemployed. There were also about 10,000 so-called career coaches, whose websites variously offered to discover a true occupational passion, re-tool a resume, or offer help every step of the way. Some had some formal training; most were self-appointed. Of the three coaches Ehrenreich approached, the first two failed to impress with their "psycho-babble" and jargon. The third picked up as a sellable skill, the speech-writing experience mentioned in her resume and advised checking the websites of target professions to get familiar with the latest industry buzzwords and topics. She was prepared to forgive the use of baseless personality tests, since they seem to enjoy wide credibility among corporate decision-makers. However, she describes Enneagram tests as "nothing more than a pastiche of wispy New Age yearnings" (p.33) and quotes Annie Murphy Paul's book, The Cult of Personality, on the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator as possessing "not a shred of scientific respectability". The reality of networking sessions was not the imagined "freewheeling exercise in human sociability, possibly involving white wine", but involved hard work, discipline and perseverance. The idea was to have a 30 to 45-second self-advertisement or "elevator speech" to deliver when appropriate. However, at the first networking event, no other participant seemed to have a speech ready or wanted to listen to hers. After seven months, despite all the advice and expense, Ehrenreich had received just two job offers. Both were non-salaried, commission-only direct sales positions. "What sets the white-collar corporate worker apart and leaves them so vulnerable is the requirement that they identify, absolutely and unreservedly with their employers. Unfortunately... this loyalty is not reliably reciprocated" (p. 234). Ehrenreich has identified and analysed a problem now affecting potentially millions of people. They are quickly finding that the world of work is not at all as it used to be and, if the author is to be believed, should be wary about putting their futures in the hands of a career coach. Content highlights: Many of today's well-educated professional class cannot find their place in the new economy A new "industry" of coaches and advisers has developed to help the jobseekers The author questions the validity of the methods used and casts serious doubt on their effectiveness About the authors Barbara Ehrenreich has written 13 books, including the New York Times bestseller, Nickel and Dimed. She is a frequent contributor to Harper's and The Nation and has been a columnist at The New York Times and Time magazine. "Bait and Switch is a worthy companion to Nickel and Dimed, her engaging and infuriating 2001 expose of the hard lives of working-class Americans. The new book provides a victim's-eye view of the world of unemployed white-collar workers — people struggling, mostly in vain, to recoup the high wages and prestige they lost after being dismissed from the not-so-secure confines of corporate America." — Marcellus Andrews in The Washington Post. Taken from Career Times 10 March 2006 Your comments are welcome at [email protected]