Today's Job Market: Only 20% Need Apply jumped out at me this morning. Actually, what
really jumped out at me was the reply, about a third of the way down, saying that back-office white-collar jobs were being offshored.
Maybe that thread needs to be amended. To reflect the current job market in all its, um, glory... the personality tests, the "nice" rejections, the psychological lead weight one feels when anticipating the background check... "Will Catholic hospitals pass on me because I once worked as a field organizer for NARAL, never mind that I'll just be a lab monkey?"... this, of course, being what goes through my head as I contemplate applying for a summer job campaigning for my pro-choice principles...
Just as some believe the poor have themselves to blame, the career gurus link employment status to personal attitude. One self-help book urges readers to vibrate happy thoughts, leading Ehrenreich to wonder whether the downsized office workers caused "the layoffs that drove them out of their jobs by 'vibrating' at a layoff-related frequency."
--Joy Press, "The Book of (Bad) Jobs", The Village Voice, September 6, 2005
I think people who have been jerked around by the corporate world might want to start talking about corporate governance. Who's making these decisions? Is the practice of constantly getting rid of people really any way to run a business?
--Barbara Ehrenreich, in an interview with Mother Jones
I don't know how many of you read Barbara Ehrenreich's "Bait And Switch", but I don't think you have to have read it to know that employers are being very choosy nowadays.
And all you hear if you don't get picked for a job, is that you were a "poor fit", or "the wrong person".
No one, but no one, could tell me how I could make myself the right person. More importantly, no one could tell me how to be a good fit and keep my own character.
Moreover, I was discouraged, time and again, from trying to find out. I was told to "suck it up and move on". I was told it was out of concern for me and my feelings. I was told to just find some other company.
Well, what these people forgot was, if every company thinks the same way, there's nowhere to move on to.
Ms. Ehrenreich makes the case that no matter the job, employers seem to want only one type of personality: cheerful, agreeable, outgoing, compliant, and singularly focused.
While that's a bit too simple, the fact remains: we're shipping out a lot of jobs that don't require you to make a great, instantaneous first impression. We're keeping the service jobs, the front and center jobs, the ones, in other words, where other people have to like us.
Are we disenfranchising America's introverts and offbeats? Are we removing the place for people who just want to be left alone?
Do we forget that there's only so much we can do to change how others perceive us?
And are we saying there's no more good places for the average-looking either? Study after study shows that the beautiful are paid more, get more leadership opportunities, and are promoted more. And if you're not a cheerleader, apparently, forget about getting one of those good jobs as a pharmaceutical sales rep:
Some industry critics view wholesomely sexy drug representatives as a variation on the seductive inducements like dinners, golf outings and speaking fees that pharmaceutical companies have dangled to sway doctors to their brands. Dr. Thomas Carli of the University of Michigan who has led efforts to limit access to the representatives who once trolled hospital hallways, said the seduction appeared to be a deliberate industry strategy." --"Marketing Drugs by Marketing Sex: Cheerleader Sales Reps", AHRP transcript of "Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales", Stephanie Saul, New York Times, Nov. 28, 2005
(Not to mention, the other end of the coin... like the recent college grad pharma rep who was horrified that her job involved seducing the doctors, as said in a Jane about two years ago... as she put it, "I got a 3.9 GPA for this?!")
This is what nobody ever mentions about the workplace. The fact that it's a job requirement in many cases to engage in destructive, greedy, cowardly, expedient behaviors.
The little indignities suffered every day. The feeling infantilized by a power-tripping younger supervisor who justifies their pettiness by invoking company policy, morals, or social reciprocity. The policing of time and the often-times enforced drudgery, no matter what the class of work. The expectation that your job is to be an enthusiastic cheerleader of the board and the CEO, even if their goals are destructive. The increasing encroachment of workplace expectations on personal life, both literally as in time, and figurative as in attitude.
No one mentions these, or even calls them indignities, because-- quite understandably-- they're afraid of giving the appearance of sour grapes, afraid of coming off as whiners, afraid of looking as if they blame others and don't take responsibility for their own actions. It's very easy to seem immature and lazy when you talk about such things, even if you're trying to choose your words very carefully.
You know that a common psychological manipulation of the right-wingers is to plant the thought in your head that you're not taking enough personal responsbility. Well, then, you can see, quite vividly, where 40 years of getting their message out has been successful, if ordinary Americans always blame themselves, never societal failure, for patterns of misfortune in their lives.
You have to wonder: how many jobless are that way because:
--they didn't want to keep their shirt tucked in?
--they didn't want to get their teeth whitened?
--they didn't want to join a certain church?
--they didn't want to give money to a cause they felt no affinity to?
--they refused to get makeovers or, God forbid, plastic surgery on the advice of their supervisors? (that's for you entertainment and fashion people)
--they refused to spend money they didn't have on "enhancements" because oh, you know, they'd rather spend the money on paying off their debts?
--they had political or social beliefs that were different from those of the CEO or the management?
--they just said the wrong thing at the wrong time and the miscommunication ball just got picked up and run with?
--they just had personality conflicts in general?
Yes. I mention political affiliation. In looking at the gap in general between what people say and what they do, I have to believe that discrimination in practice happens all the time, no matter what anyone says about merit.
And that political discrimination probably happens all the time. Obviously it's happening in the government and the CIA under the Bush administration. Just how are the employees of the National Parks Service doing now? Has the NPS been purged of all its heathen tree-hugging evolution-supporters yet?
What about corporations in general? You know that their philosophies tend to mirror the CEO's personal beliefs. Exxon-Mobil, obviously, is not a company I ever plan to work for; but what about other companies whose chief executives just happen to support Bush? Do I say goodbye to a future at those companies too, because I voted for Kerry? Or maybe, just maybe, will the CEO be magnanimous enough to believe that a good fellow executive doesn't have to be a carbon copy?
I have to wonder: what are the political affiliations of those who rise to the top of the corporate ladder? Are they disproportionately Republican and right-wing? Is that what "pro-business", in practice, means? Corporatism and blind obedience are perfect fits for this party.
Let me tell you something. I grew up middle class, and am now working poor, primarily because of that "fit" stuff.
Hearing I was a poor fit, over and over again, with no enlightenment or recourse against it, was devastating. It destroyed my self-confidence. It destroyed my faith in my own abilities. It cut a swath through my career path, and made me wonder if my earning power is stunted for life.
Most of all, it made me wonder if the entire way I'd led my life, my entire life path, my family and choice of friends, my role models, my very values were worthless.
Because how do you become the right person? It, literally, takes a lifetime. Think about your beloved. You would not be here with that person if you had not had precisely the right sequence of experiences that you had. If those experiences, those moments, had not made you the kind of person your beloved could see spending the rest of his/her life with.
You can never get life back once you've lived it. And that's why human potential is such a big part of my liberal philosophy. Because it's a crime to treat human beings as disposable... not only from an altruistic standpoint, but from a selfish one as well. In another part of the world, after all, "disposable" human beings become people who fly planes into skyscrapers.
All this is why a government must never be run like a corporation. Not just the putting of money over people. Denver career coach John Hecker, in a Denver Business Journal a few weeks ago, leveled with the readers: He says that the importance of not stepping on the CEO's turf outweighs even the importance of maximizing profits.
Therefore, corporations by definition demand fealty to a single powerful leader, or a group of leaders. Our "CEO President" is being exactly that when he fires and demotes people who disagree with him.
It's not illegal behavior. It's widely accepted. It's even, in many cases, required to keep the job or be considered for the promotion. Any time an oil company rep goes on record as saying their company is committed to protecting the environment, you can pretty well bet that they've been advised, "talk only happy talk, or find another job." Remember what Arken said in his own job search.
We cannot have any more "CEO Presidents." For that job, I emphatically say, only STATESMEN need apply.
(The Denver Business Journal article by John Hecker is no longer available online. Its title was similar to "How to win at office politics." I cannot recall the date of the publication, but I think it was April 17, 2006.)