Work Daze

Good Job News for Girlie-Men

2009-07-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

This economic disaster does not play favorites. Pick any person, in any job category, and you will find fear, depression and uncertainty. Even the strongest people, with the best prospects, the most education, and the highest level of job skills live in fear of a sudden reversal that will put them permanently out to pasture.

When it comes to feeling scared and hopeless, this economy -- as they say in employment ads, back when there used to be employment ads – is an equal opportunity employer, male and female.

Or is it? According to personal branding expert Catherine Kaputa, female job searchers have a “feminine advantage: distinct, hardwired advantages over male counterparts and competitors.”

If you’re a woman, Kaputa says, all you have to do is leverage your natural advantages. What a man is supposed to do, Kaputa does not specify. [“Giving up” might be one strategy – putting down your beer, stripping off your football jersey, enjoying one last, loud burp, and walking into the sea.]

In her new book, “The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business,” Kaputa presses her case that “women are naturally wired for success.” Using what her publicity person – a woman, naturally – describes as “the latest brain science,” the author “debunks old and misguided workplace myths – that women must think and act like a man to succeed.”

Unfortunately, in this economy, even thinking and acting like a man is no guarantee for success. That’s why I feel it is absolutely fair for men to use the “feminine advantage” to solve our job problems. For girlie-men like me, this should be relatively simple, but the way I see it, even a he-man like you could benefit from taking on few of these girlish traits.

For example:

1. Tune in Emotionally

Women are especially “intuitive and empathetic,” says Kaputa. It’s a condition she chalks up to a higher level of hormones, such as estrogen and oxytocin. By being more open to others’ feelings, her theory goes, women can form closer bonds to “build strong and healthy work relationships.”

Accepting for a moment that a “healthy work relationship” actually exists, this lack of hormones is a difficult hurdle for mankind. You could ask for extra estrogen on your double cheeseburger, or add an oxytocin chaser to your boilermaker, but the harsh truth is that, in the game of biology, you have to play with the hormones you were dealt. That leaves guys with testosterone, a hormone more connected with caveman violence than with intuition or empathy.

However, now that you know you are competing with a bunch of sensitive, highly hormonal women, you could make an effort. It’s a drag, but try asking your managers to share their feelings – right before you pummel them.

2. Create an attractive package

Kaputa rightly reports that attractive people “are viewed as being smarter and more competent,” but I do believe she errs in suggesting that women have “naturally better instincts, as well as more ‘visual aids’ to work with than men do.” You don’t have to be female to “accentuate your best features,” as you prove every day with a hairpiece that says to management that you are an out-of-the-box thinker. How else could they explain a man wears a squirrel on his head? And don’t be afraid to develop your natural gift for accessorizing. Remember – a Kegerator goes with everything, especially if it comes from Gucci.

3. Be likeable

Kaputa believes that women have a gift for “compassion, empathy and intuition,” which translates into a higher level of likeability, “a key asset in the workplace.” This is clearly wrong. How many hours have you spent watching “The Hills?” Sure, the girls are compassionate, but you don’t really like them, except for Audrina, of course.

Besides, who says likeability is an important element to success? Look at your management team. Is there one iota of likeableness in the entire bunch?

Here is where men have a real advantage. You can stay the uncompassionate, unempathetic, unintuitive jerk you really are, but hide all your natural unlikability behind an image of feminine friendliness and caring and sharing. That way, when you strike, no one will expect it!

Sure, it’s a lot of work to be a girlie-man, but if the price of succeeding in this rotten economy is a touch of blusher and a pair of Manolo Blahniks, I say, pay it.

People Who Love People Who Hate People

2009-06-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

Are you a people person? Do you love people? Or do you hate people who love people? If so, slide right on over. You’re my kind of people.

We have to thank Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon for helping us see that people who hate people are, indeed, the luckiest people in the world. These two gentlemen, who I’ve never met, but who I am totally willing to hate on general principles, are the authors of a new business book called “I Hate People!” Their thesis – being a hater can give you a significant business advantage.

It’s true! According to their book’s subtitle, it is only by cultivating your natural ability to hate that you will be able to “Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job.”

Of course, there’s nothing new about hating your job. What Littman & Hershon have accomplished is to provide us with guidelines for focusing our hate. If you hate to waste your hate, you will love their list of the ten most hateful individuals one finds at work.
Like “The Stop Sign,” a shortsighted person who only knows how to say, “No” even when presented with an excellent idea, like the Kodak executive who nixed the idea of producing a digital camera, or the Decca Records honcho who refused to sign the Beatles, or your own management, who rejected your inspired idea of boosting profits by raising earthworms in your desk drawers.

The authors also hate “Sheeple,” workplace zombies who “think alike, resist alike,” and are “comfortable with the herd mentality.” Personally, I think you should love the vast herds of Sheeple grazing on the workplace landscape. Compared to them, even a cream puff like you looks like a predator.

Unfortunately, it is not enough to simply hate everyone. Once you’ve categorized and pulverized all your co-workers, you must then emerge from your crystallis of hate as the workplace butterfly Littman & Hershon call a “Soloist.” No more group think for you. “The Soloist excels when he or she gets to perform alone, taking the Ensemble to new heights while demonstrating skills and talents that inspire.”

The Soloist, employing “Solocrafting,” doesn’t slow down for “Stop Signs,” and runs roughshod through the “Sheeple” to reach their goal. “A rebel without being a revolutionary,” the Soloist is the modern, workplace version of the classic American hero who shoots first and asks questions later.

Needless to say, the Soloist has absolutely no friends, and is hated by everyone in the company. If this sounds like your boss, you can see why Solocrafting works. On the other hand, if this also sounds like the homeless guy living in an empty refrigerator box under a freeway overpass, you can see why there are some risks involved. My advice is that it’s perfectly fine to hate everyone, but at the same time, make sure that everyone loves you. That way, if you end up standing before the firing squad, someone may lend you a blindfold.

Perhaps my favorite part of “I Hate People” comes at the end of the book, when the authors suggest that a Soloist’s success at work depends on having your own “Personal Cave.” This private space is a “creative cocoon that allows you to do all those things best done without interruption,” like playing Doom or napping!

The authors do not limit the location of your Personal Cave to your assigned cubical, but suggest that when the negative energy of group space starts to get the best of you, take the time to “dig yourself in” at the nearest Starbucks, or the local library. There is much to be said for getting out of the box if you want to produce out of the box thinking, but the authors do neglect to take into consideration the negative effect of being AWOL for hours of time, despite the beautiful solo symphonies emanating from your personal Fortress of Solitude.

That’s why I say – don’t leave the work place. Instead, go ahead and turn your Personal Cube in your Personal Cave. Cover your carpet with peat moss. Block out distracting sunlight by painting all the windows on your floor with black paint. Cover your cube with a tree branches, and light a fire in the file cabinet. It may get a little cold, dark and smoky in there, but you’ll love it, and so will the earthworms.

The Secret Life of a Job Hunter

2009-06-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

You’ve got a secret. You’re looking for a new job. You desperately want out of your present position, but you don’t want your bosses to know. They’re paranoid, vindictive, and just plain nasty. They don’t like your work, but they’ll keep you on as long as they think you are loyal. This isn’t a testament to their good characters. It just takes too long to break the spirit of a new employee.

So how do you actively hunt for a new job without your old job noticing? You follow the rules laid down by Caroline M.L. Potter, a writer with Yahoo! HotJobs. Ms. Potter does not mince words when she limns the perilous state in which stealth job-hunters find themselves: “Your current employer may be in dire straits, or you may simply be seeking new challenges,” she writes, “but in a challenging economy, there are a lot of eager professionals for any position – including your present one. And because most employment is at-will, you may be fired for looking for a new job.”

[You also may be fired for failing to fall to your knees when your supervisor walks past your cubicle, but that’s another story.]

For advice on how to walk the tightrope between broadcasting and stifling your job search, Ms. Potter turns to online networking expert, Liz Ryan.

“Do not use Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter to indicate that you’re job hunting,” counsels Ryan. The same prohibition goes for mass emails. “Someone could reach out, inadvertently, to someone connected to your boss and blow your cover.”

No doubt, this is good advice, but it is frustrating. Since you already spend 90% of your time at work on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter, it would be very easy to slip in a subtle reference to your dissatisfaction. In a Tweet, for example, you could use your 140 characters to paint a word picture of your current employer, like “LMFAO, you can not believe what a stupid, ignorant, jerk my boss is,” and still have 83 characters left to discuss the most recent episode of Gossip Girl.

If you can’t make a digital call for help, networking expert Ryan suggests using your network. “Make sure everyone understands what you do and what kind of opportunities you’re pursuing.”

Good plan. You don’t want your network passing on leads on jobs that are not appropriate, like employment in a place where you’d actually have to work.

“Enroll your job search army,” Ryan goes on. “Meet with them. Talk with them. Ask about their lives. Find out how you can help them. This will get them thinking about you in an up-to-date way.”

This advice is not so good. If you have to expend energy actually caring about your friends and co-workers, you might as well keep the job you have. It’s much easier. I’m also unenthusiastic about getting your network to think of you in an “up-to-date way.” You’ve always been a dissatisfied, grumpy complainer. Why change now?

Consultant Ryan does have one worthwhile idea – if you need to grow your network beyond the delivery guy from Dominos and the daytime bartender at the Kit Kat Klub, do it while you’re still employed. “Employed job seekers have a huge advantage over unemployed people,” says Ryan and she is so right. You know you’re always out-of-time when it comes to seeing your out-of-work friends. They’re depressing. Needy. And who knows – unemployment can be contagious!

But don’t drop your friends completely. “If you let a connection lapse,” cautions Amy Ryan, “you may encounter apathy when you ask for help.” Duh. You’ve been encountering apathy from your associates for years now. Their lack of interest in listening to your tales of woe is totally inexplicable. That’s why it does make sense to use your last few moments of employment to strengthen ties and, most importantly, to borrow lots and lots of money. Let’s see them try to collect when you file for Chapter 11!

Another way to leverage your evil networking empire is with your company’s vendors. Insist on a job or, at least, a recommendation before you award a contract.

You might take a page from The Godfather, who rasps to one his suppliers, a mortician, “if, by chance, an honest man like yourself should make enemies . . . then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.''

It worked for Don Corleone, and hey, those Mafia guys never have trouble finding work.

The 6% Dissolution

2009-06-12T20:29:00.000-07:00

Remember the good old days when your company would match your 401(k) contribution – up to 3,4,5, or 6 %? The reason for this beneficence was to encourage employees to save for their own retirement. It was a good idea, since management sure didn’t give a hoot.

Well, kiddies, the world has changed since those ancient times – maybe 6 months ago. Now, if there’s a percentage in your paycheck it doesn’t represent a perk. The way the math works today is that companies are asking employees to take a pay cut – 3,4,5, or 6%. The only match involved is the match you use to set fire your retirement plans. As for that 401(k), it just might pay for bus fare to your 1-bedroom condo at Boca del Vista, assuming it hasn’t been foreclosed, auctioned off, and converted into a kennel.

The excuse companies give when asking their employees to whack a percentage off their salaries is truly insidious. You have to lose a little so your co-workers don’t lose everything. Management could fire 100% of 6% of the staff, or 100% of the staff could take a 6% pay cut, thus generating sufficient savings to keep the teenier-tinier paychecks flowing.

Presented this way, how can you say, “No way!”? Could you ever live with yourself if even one of the generous and always helpful IT nerds lost their job because of your need for a 60” plasma TV with Sensurround Sound? And how could you sleep at night – or, more importantly, in the afternoon – knowing that your selfish desire to buy groceries for your family resulted in the decimation of your crackerjack HR department – the empathetic employees who organize those wonderfully informative “sensitivity workshops” that take up endless afternoons and week-ends, teaching you the importance of being sensitive to the emotional needs of the HR department.

Not every company is utilizing the concept of the communal pay cut to save jobs. Another popular sign of the bad times is the forced leave of absence – a mandatory “vacation without pay” that could last a day, a week, or even a month in which you do not work, do not pass go, and do not collect a paycheck.

Frankly, in your case, this cost-cutting move holds a lot more risk that an across-the-board salary reduction. No one will know that you’re living on dented cans and government cheese, but once management sees how well the business runs without your presence, it will only be a matter of not-much-time before your temporary time off becomes permanent.

But let’s not indulge in a pity-party. Here are two productive, pro-active responses you can make to keep your head – and your paycheck – while others are losing theirs.

1. Prove your worth by countering a reduction in pay with an equal reduction in productivity.

As little work as you current do, you could do less. Yes, it will take a lot of ingenuity and effort to work less, but it’s worth it to prove just how essential you really are. So, if it’s your policy to never return phone calls, it’s time to step up your game and stop answering the phone altogether. [This technique is especially effective if you have a job in customer service.]

If you routinely come in late, come in later. If you always leave early, leave earlier. Trust me – if business is bad, this technique will make it badder, proving to management that they can’t monkey with your fundamental right to get 100% of pay for 1% of effort.

1. Use mandatory furloughs to demonstrate your resourcefulness.

Don’t go meekly into vacation mode when forced to stay out of work. If you want to spend hours Twittering with your Facebook friends, do it in the appropriate location – at your desk. Instead of giving in to leisure, spend your forced furlough constructively. Set up a tent in the company parking lot and move in with your family. Think how creative you will appear to management as you and the kids live off the land, skinning squirrels, and barbecuing the lug nuts off the boss’s Jaguar.

Yes, with a little ingenuity you can make management understand that the place for a seriously deranged and totally lazy employee like yourself is in your cubical. And if a few HR dorks or IT dinks have to lose their jobs, so be it. Trust me – there are plenty of Jaguar lug nuts to go around.

The Office Refrigerator of Doom

2009-06-08T20:16:00.001-07:00

If you’re the type of negative person who is positive only bad things can happen at work, here’s the confirmation you’ve been expecting. No longer will you have to fear the topless shenanigans of HR drones gone wild, nor worry that IT nerds will T.P. your cubical because you don’t regularly floss between your laptop keys.

No, friends, the greatest risk to your health and happiness at work is lurking silently in the cozy confines of the company coffee room, masquerading as a refuge for egg salad sandwiches and broccoli-berry Snapple – that demonic, deadly, so-close-to detonation time bomb – the office mini-fridge.

Lest you think I’m off my medications (again,) consider this news article from “The Mercury News” of San Jose, California: “Stench from rotten refrigerator sickens 28; San Jose office evacuated.”

The disaster struck on May 12 at an AT&T call center in North San Jose. When the dust had settled, and the stink had dispersed, 50 firefighters and 18 emergency vehicles had raced to the scene; 325 AT&T employees had been evacuated; and seven people were in ambulances on the way to the hospital. The lucky seven “were vomiting or complaining of nausea.”

For all of us who work in a communal environment, the lurking horror that is the office refrigerator is well known. The problem is not just that people fill the thing with noxious food choices, like liverwurst and onions and anchovy paste and Gorgonzola cheese. That’s just your sandwich. The real trouble starts when people decide to abandon the lunch they brought with them, leaving it to ripen, rot and fester as the days, the weeks and months go on.

[Though no one food group has been indicted, you can almost visualize a television special on refrigerator crime that would combine Law & Order with The Food Network. I can even hear the introduction: “In the culinary justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important chefs: the Rachel Ray, who investigates office refrigerator stench, and Emeril Lagasse, who prosciuttos the offenders. These are their stories.” ]

Of course, we just can’t blame a few thoughtless employees. According to the news report, it was a thoughtful employee who “decided to remove the mess to a conference room and scour the fridge with a cleaning fluid similar to 409 or Lysol.” Personally, I’m surprised that the decaying foods lasted long enough in the conference room to be a problem. With a workplace full of scavengers and mooches, anything even vaguely resembling food is usually snatched up in seconds.

Compounding this science experiment gone wrong, “another employee sprayed a different chemical cleaner into the air, assuming it would temper the scent.”

“And that,” according Captain Barry Stallard of the San Jose Fire Department, “ was when the party started.”

I suppose I could conclude this sermonette by inviting you to join me in pledging to clean out the office refrigerator at least once a decade, but it strikes me that the real story here is how you could turn a Kenmore liability into an Amana asset. For example, why not get some intimidation points by packing your lunch in one of those signature blue bags from Tiffany? Or wave your gourmet flag with a doggy bag from Olive Garden.

If you can’t impress with the container that carries your lunch, leverage the ingredients. Bring in ramekins of foie gras and Scottish salmon to suggest that you’re on the fast track, salarywise. Bring kimchee and natto to show that you are open to a posting in Asia, or, if you’d rather go to Norway, stuff your Elvis lunch box with reindeer jerky before leaving it to metastasize in the company of your co-workers’ tuna fish. Or demonstrate your commitment to fitness by stocking the frig with your steroids, or prove that you are a party person by filling the ice trays with guacamole.

If you should be sufficiently unfortunate to have a health nut for your manager, a container of alfalfa sprouts should be your contribution to the crowded refrigerator. Explain that it goes really well with the organic mushrooms you’re growing in your bottom desk drawer.

Yes, it takes a little work and preparation, but by adjusting your daily deposit in the office refrigerator you can boost your career to a point where you can afford to eat lunch out. And if all else fails, you can always grab a gallon or two of Lysol and evacuate the building.

Carnegie Hell

2009-06-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

Oh, reader – the sacrifices I make for thee. Like the way I put my hand on the sacred wireless mouse and clicked on a check box, swearing that I “would like to receive special offers and promotions from Dale Carnegie Training.”

Yes, reader, I have subjected myself to a lifetime of uplifting spam simply for the sake of downloading a free copy of Dale Carnegie’s Golden Book, “a practical no nonsense step-by-step guide that will improve your ability to communicate with others and manage co-workers, your boss and other business relationships.”

Now that I have my hot little hands on the volume in question, I can not only use my newfound power to cloud the minds of managers and co-workers, but share these arcane secrets with you. So that you, too, can bend bosses to your will, and transform colleagues into mindless slaves, dedicated to obeying your slightest whim.

[No need to thank me. Just deposit a few Benjamins into my Cayman Islands account when your supervisor brings you a latte in the morning, and asks if there’s anything else she can do for you, like rush back to the coffee cart for a buttered scone.]

Unfortunately, the actual content of The Golden Book is somewhat different than the collection of workplace spells and incantations I had expected. Perhaps I am too cynical, but the first golden secret is a suggestion that you “become a friendlier person.”

According to Carnegie you become friendlier by becoming “genuinely interested in other people;” by being a “good listener;” and by making “the other person feel important,” a transformation that you must accomplish “sincerely.”

I suppose this all makes sense and I know you’d be perfectly willing to do it, just as long as you actually didn’t have to listen to the trivial blather your co-workers spew all day long. And I do mean that sincerely.

Listening to Anthrax on your iPod while you pretend to be sincere would be one relatively painless way to perform your listening duties, but it might be noticed, even by your dimwitted colleagues. I suggest you purchase a used hearing aid on eBay and start wearing it to work. You don’t need to turn it on. Your naturally baffled expression will sell the story, especially if you randomly request, “Could you please speak louder. It’s really interesting, sincerely”

The Golden Book contains thirty principles from the seminal “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” and an equal number from “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.” This suggests to me that winning friends and influencing people may not be all that easy, because if you could really do it, why would you be worrying?

If you really do wish to start living, and I’m not convinced it’s all that much better than doing what you are doing now – barely existing in a fetal position while awaiting the next blow of fate – one of the “fundamental principles” authored by Carnegie is to anticipate and prepare for disaster by asking yourself “What is the worst than can possibly happen?”

For example, if you are worried about surviving a weekend HR training session on team building, convince yourself that the real purpose of the off-site is to put you in a situation where your bad attitude will get you fired. You certainly won’t be able to find another cushy position like the one you have now, so you will likely go through your savings and lose your house, and your spouse certainly won’t stand by a loser like you, so you’ll end up alone, living on the streets, eating from dumpsters, catching a rare disease and dying a horrible, painful, unheralded death.

Presto-chango – you’re no longer worried about the HR retreat, and can attend with a positive, can-do attitude. Gee, this Dale dude really knows his stuff.

I hope that you have gained as much from this gloss of the Carnegie method as I have, but just in case you think this entire column has been waste of your precious time, I refer you to “The Golden Book” for one more tidbit of Carnegie wisdom about which I have no doubts – “expect ingratitude.” This is from a section titled “Cultivate a Mental Attitude that Will Bring You Peace and Happiness.” And it’s true! If your attempts at manipulating your co-workers causes pain and makes trouble, remember that there’s nothing that can bring you more peace and happiness than making a beloved colleague miserable.

My Botox Resume

2009-06-08T20:11:00.000-07:00

Oh, the sacrifices that must be made when you lose your job. You may have to give up your company-leased Lexus, or sell the vacation house in Belize that you have been writing off as a branch office. Without a job or an expense account, you may have to downgrade from a suite at the Ritz-Carleton to something more modest, like an empty refrigerator box under the freeway.

Go without a job long enough, and the sacrifices get even more painful. You may have to give up private school and send your kid for home schooling, assuming you can find a home that will take him. Your country club membership will go immediately, though you may be able to get a job as a caddy. You also won’t be able to keep up your gym membership and could revert back to your natural flabby state, but don’t sweat it. There’s no better diet plan than being unable to buy food.

No matter what indigent indignities await you in your new state of unemployment, rest assured that there is one life essential that you will never give up. It’s a drive that is stronger than hunger, or sex, or even the innate, genetic need to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

You can fire me, you can humble me, but believe me – you will never take away my Botox.

It’s true! According to an article in “The Wall Street Journal” by Rhonda L. Rundle “vanity appears to be trumping frugality in a looks-conscious society.”

Ms. Rundle goes on: “Despite the dismal economic climate, most women – and men – who undergo appearance-enhancing treatments such as Botox injections are spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year to maintain the regimen.”

Though you and I are natural beauties whose striking good looks require no artificial enhancements, I do understand the decision to keep the Botox flowing. The need to look youthful is a critical career skill in a highly competitive job market. In the face of an economic melt-down, you don’t want your face to melt-down, too. Or, as Kathleen Hudson, a 57-year old marketing consultant puts it, “If you’re in the business world and you want to be competitive with the younger people, you need to stay on top of your game.”

[Let me pause here for those readers who do not understand what miracles can be wrought by a substance like Botox or Juvéderm or Restylane. Delivered by injection into a repository of wrinkles, the magic elixir fills, lifts and smoothes. If you’ve ever restored a 1956 Chevy, you might think of it as Bondo for your face. ]

Though there are some drawbacks to injecting facial putty, like the inability to smile or show any emotion, like horror when you get the doctor’s bill. Still, even the most negative side effects can become positives in the workplace. Consider the advantage of not being able to smile. If we’re going to reward the blunders of a chucklehead as CEO with a bushel of taxpayer cash, we want him to look serious. In the same spirit, a manager who shows emotion can be seen as weak, loopy or female. Getting a face freeze is definitely a plus in any workplace situation, especially when confronted with the thousands of employees you will have to lay off.

Of course, Botox treatments can be expensive. Even with special, two-for-one offers, the average cost per visit can range from $500 to $2000 dollars. No wonder the children of marginally employed and unemployed workers are forced to give up visits to the pediatrician to finance Mommy and Daddy’s trips to the plastic surgeon. Until Wal-Mart gets into the game, we all will have to make sacrifices.

On the other hand, one can look at serial Botoxers as thrifty shoppers. As the Journal article points out, “Patients like the idea that with aesthetic treatments they can pay as they go,” says Dr. Malcolm Z. Roth, a New York City plastic surgeon. Botoxing is also a whole lot cheaper than a facelift to make you look young, or a tummy tuck to make you look thin.

Personally, I think if you truly care about your appearance, you really don’t want to skimp. Get that face lift! Charge that eye job! Hey, it cost me a fortune for a plastic surgeon to make me look smart by crafting these Spock ears, but on me, I think they look good.

Cover Story

2009-05-17T07:47:00.000-07:00

Could they make it any harder? These days, the job market is so competitive, you not only need experience, and skills, and a positive attitude, you also must have a cover letter.

That’s right! A made-up resume and bogus references are no longer sufficient. According to “The New York Times’” Career Couch columnist, Phyllis Korkki, a successful job applicant will also provide a cover letter.

Even if you are applying by email? Yes! “Cover letters are still necessary,” writes Ms. Korkki, “and in a competitive market they can give you a serious edge if they are written and presented effectively.”

Katy Piotrowski, a career counselor, is anxious to pile on. “Cover letters are a graceful way to introduce yourself, to convey your personality and to impress a hiring manager with your experience and your writing skills.”

This all may be true, though in your case, do remember that the success of any job search depends on covering up your personality.

One of the first questions to resolve is how to address the recipient you are so anxious to impress. This can be a problem when answering a blind ad, since you may not create the right tone of personal warmth by beginning your cover letter, “Dear Post Office Box 113A.” The traditional “Dear Sir or Madam” certainly won’t work in these gender-confused times, though you would demonstrate your open mind by using “Dear Sir or Madam or Transgender Individual in the Process of Going from Sir to Madam or Madam to Sir or any combination thereof.”

Piotrowski does not endorse cover letters that start with no salutation, and she unequivocally does not consider “Hey there” as a strong start. Personally, I prefer a more granular approach. If you are applying for a job in the financial services industry, you might start your cover letter with “Dear Greedy Bloated Immoral Doofus,” while an application to a US automobile company could use a salutation, a simple “Dear Loser.”

Of course, you’ll never go wrong with a spirited “Hey Dude.”

According to Debra Wheatman, a career expert at Vault, a jobs web site, your cover letter should be short – no more than three or four paragraphs. The subject for that critical first paragraph, adds Wendy S. Enelow, author of “Cover Letter Magic,” is to explain why you are writing. [Though I haven’t read “Cover Letter Magic” – I’m waiting for the movie – I think we can safely assume that the purpose of the second paragraph is to explain why you wrote the first paragraph.]

Use the first paragraph to explain how you came upon the job opening – you saw a want ad in the newspaper you use as a blanket when sleeping in your favorite alley, or you found a business card in the wallet you pick-pocketed on a cross-town bus. You should also use this introductory paragraph to demonstrate that you have done your homework. Don’t be afraid to show off. Anybody with a laptop can learn the company’s manufacturing and marketing strengths, but you show real initiative when you also reveal that the name of the downtown hotel the hiring manager uses to carry on their illicit affair with the boss’s schnauzer.

Use the middle paragraphs, Enelow continues, to “convey a clear story about your career, and highlight past accomplishments. This can either be done as a narrative or in bullet points.” In your case, I would suggest the narrative approach, since the bullet format may prove a little skimpy:

• I was born.
• I was hired.
• I was fired.
• I was fired again.
• I quit.
• Actually, I was fired.
• I really could use an egg-salad sandwich.

“Finish up your letter by indicating that you will follow up in the future,” writes reporter Korkki, “and make good on that promise.” I suggest you either use the traditional farewell verbiage, “I’ll never forget you, you and all the others like you, who have made my life a living hell,” or the more personal, “I’ll get even with you for this. Believe me, you haven’t heard the last of [your name here.]”

A final warning is to not provide too much information. “Hiring managers are looking for way to exclude you,” says cover-letter maven Enelow. “Do not give them that ammunition.” I suggest you don’t write a cover letter, or send a resume, or even answer the ad. Being a depressed, bitter, unemployed individual is something you do really well. Why wreck it?

Home, Not Alone

2009-04-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

If you think life at your workplace is miserable, here’s a concept that will fill you with dread. Imagine that instead of your lovely office, where management has slaved to make sure every amenity has been provided for you, and where every aspect of décor has been designed for your personal delight, you are forced to work in a truly unsavory and depressing environment – your home.

And it gets worse. Instead of your ever-cheery, well-informed, and always-lovable officemates, the person with whom you spend every working hour is your spouse. That’s right, the same person whose grouchy behavior motivates you to leave for work every morning, now stays with you all day, messing up your life as well as your bathroom.

This truly revolting situation – two people who love each other forced to work and live together 24/7 – is one of the little-known areas of devastation caused by our current economic tsunami. The way it usually goes down, according to an article by Regan McMahon, a reporter for “The San Francisco Chronicle,” is that one-half of a couple loses their job and is forced to stay in the nest with their work-from-home partner. It’s difficult for the person who lost their job, but it’s even worse for the person who loses their sanctuary.

“It’s like suddenly being told you have to share your cubicle with someone,” says Mary Orfali, an IBM database manager whose work-at-home life was shattered by the arrival of her laid-off spouse. “He’d be trying to get work and talking really loud on the phone. I finally suggested he take his laptop and work in the bedroom downstairs. It was like another blow to his ego, after he’d already had the blow of being laid off.”

We can leave the resolution of the geo-domestic battlefield that is the home of the Orfalis to Dr. Phil, but let us not be too quick to judge. Few of us are immune to the introduction of a snake in the grass in our own personal Garden of Eden. According to therapist Cris Walker Roskelley, “the work-at-home spouse has developed a routine, one that the unemployed spouse usually throws off by being home.”

You can see the problem. Your work-at-home routine demands a rigorous, highly-choreographed schedule, calling for you to go back to bed the moment your spouse leaves for work, and not getting up until it’s time for “America’s Next Top Model.” The last thing you need is some charged-up, work-obsessed partner pounding the computer keys, looking for a job.

On the positive side, reporter McMahon points out that the newly unemployed half of the relationship can “help out with household chores and child care.” While this does sound like cruel and unusual treatment for a battered and shattered ex-employee, the years we’ve all spent satisfying the whims of baby bosses makes the prospect of wrangling a colicky kid sound like a vacation with pay.

Of course, the real strain that occurs when both partners are stuck home, not alone, is from the expanded opportunities for blame and vituperation. Therapist Sheila Rubin has seen couples turn on one another. “Grumbled phrases slip out, such as, ‘Maybe you weren’t working hard enough, so you got laid off’ or ‘You should have changed jobs years ago.’”

Since you probably won’t be able to afford therapy on one salary, let me suggest that contentious couples learn to co-exist in peace and harmony. Realize that none of us are in control of our working lives, and that bad jobs happen to good people. As part of the healing process, you should use your next unemployment check to buy two Super Soakers and turn your house from a den of grumbled innuendos into a real battlefield. The loser sleeps in the garage.

Reporter McMahon suggests that the work-at-home partner “be flexible. If you usually hold your conference calls in the kitchen, talk with your spouse about whether this would be inconvenient and find a solution that works for both of you.” Perhaps, when you’re not using the kitchen for work, she or he can use it to recreate the scene in the office coffee room, bringing in the office hotties to recreate a workplace session of gossiping and flirting over the coffee urn.

Remember – the coping skills you learn in this brief period of co-existence will come in handy on the happy day when you both retire, and have to live together 24/7 – for forever.

Don't Ask. Don't Hire.

2009-04-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

It’s tough enough getting a job interview in this nasty economy. If you’re lucky enough to nab a spot on a hiring manager’s DayTimer®. You don’t want to ruin your chances by asking the wrong questions, right?

According to Liz Ryan, who apparently did well enough at her interview for Yahoo ® Hotjobs® to nab a writing gig, has now come up with the “Ten Questions Never to Ask in Job Interviews.” It’s a good topic, but I’m afraid Ms. Ryan comes to some rather bogus conclusions, including the assumption that you actually want the job.

Granted you may be tired of living on government cheese, there really is no reason to accept a position that will make you miserable, and keep you from watching the Tyra Banks Show.

See if you don’t agree – don’t ask the questions you’re not supposed to ask, and you could end up with a fate worse than unemployment; you could get actually get a job!

Take Non-question #1 – “What does your company do?” Ryan suggests that in the Internet Era, applicants should “show up for a job interview knowing what the employer does, who its competitors are and which of its accomplishments (or challenges) have made the news lately.”

But face facts – doing research takes effort, and if you really wanted to work, you’d probably still have your last job. Moreover, learning what your new employer does before you start takes all the surprise out of your first day on the job! Imagine the fun and pride when you show up for work to learn that you’re an apprentice embalmer, well on your way to a profitable career in small animal taxidermy.

Questions #2, “Are you going to do a background check?” is a no-no because it can give the potential employer the wrong impression about you. To me, this question should be the first few words out of your mouth, right after “Do you have a bathroom?” “Is this going to take a long time?” and the classic, “Do you validate?”

For Ryan, Question #2 makes you “look like a person with something to hide.” Well, you do have to something to hide – specifically, your past performance at all your previous positions. Asking about a background check makes the interviewer think that your biggest negatives lie in an area outside of your workplace skills. That’s why I say – ask away, and, just to be sure, add “And does your background check include misdemeanors as well as felonies?”

In the same vein, you definitely want to ask #8, “Is my [medical condition] covered under your insurance?” and hope that the answer is no. Unless you want to spend twelve hours a day working, the last thing you need is for some hotshot Dr. House curing your narcolepsy, your panic attacks and your kleptomania.

Ryan suggests that Question #9, “Do you do a drug test?” may be interpreted as “I’d fail a drug test.” This is true, but she misses an important point – drug-testing procedures are costly, and your prospective employer may appreciate the fact that you could save them this expense. That’s why I suggest that along with your resume, you bring your bong. I’m not promoting drug use, but encouraging the hiring manager to take a few hits may make the interview go a lot smoother.

Non-Question #3, “When will I be eligible for a raise?” is considered risky because it suggests that you are not satisfied with your starting salary, even before you start. I think it’s OK because it suggests you will be an aggressive over-achiever. Just be sure to follow it up with a few more questions, like “Now?” and “How about now?” and “Is now too soon?”

“Questions #4 and #5, “Do you have any other jobs available?” and “How soon can I transfer to another position?” doom you to a speedy rejection, writes Ryan, because “almost every employer will want to keep you in your seat for at least one year before approving an internal transfer, so a job-search bait-and-switch probably won’t work out the way you hoped.”

I disagree. If you actually want the job, playing “hard to get” by demonstrating your total lack of interest in the position is catnip to hiring managers, especially HR types who are so downtrodden and unhappy that they’ll leap at the opportunity to hire you.

Misery loves company, they say, but take it from me – companies also love misery.

Pryoritize

2009-04-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

OK, workplace pro – here’s a question for you. What do you do when your desk is always piled high with complex projects, and your phone is constantly ringing, and your email box is ever overflowing with increasingly urgent messages about looming deadlines?

What do you do? You take the day off and go to a Fred Pryor seminar!

Like “Managing Multiple Priorities, Projects & Deadlines,” a one-day classroom event where you learn how to “prioritize crucial projects, manage conflicting demands, and master multiple tasks with confidence.”

Hey, even if it doesn’t work, it gets you away from your desk, and who knows, while you’re gone, you could get lucky and your company could go out of business.

Chances are, your desk will still waiting for you at the end of the seminar, but you will have learned a number of theoretically useful tools to help you manage the disaster area that is your job. Or, as the Fred Pryor copywriter breathlessly puts it, “24 Power Pointers That Will Boost Your Productivity NOW!”

If you’re hoping that one of these pointers includes learning the skill of invisibility, tough luck. That is apparently the subject of another seminar. Instead, what you get are helpful hints like Power Pointer #6 – “3 decisive steps that prevent others from imposing their priorities on you.”

The Pryor people do not reveal these steps, but I think I have a pretty good idea of how to block a management imposter imposing a priority on your puny shoulders. Step #1, don’t listen. Buy yourself a hearing aid on eBay and tap it frantically when orders are being given. Step #2, if you do take on a priority job, mess it up, big-time. Chances are, you won’t be asked again. Step #3, throw a fit. Start shaking and shouting and, as you well know, a little drooling never hurts. Insist on lining your cubical with aluminum foil to ward off listening devices planted by your competitors. Trust me, no one will imposing another priority on you any time soon.

“Master the highly effective divide and conquer method for big projects and long-range goals” is Power Pointer #13. Now this is an approach I endorse. All major assignments should be divided into jobs you will ignore completely, jobs you will foist off on someone else, and jobs you will tackle during the summer, when there are no more new episodes of Gossip Girl.

An organizational classic comes into play in Power Pointer #23, in which you are encouraged to “utilize ‘to-do’ lists to keep you on track and guide you through today, this week, and this year.” The trouble with to-do lists is that what you do most is add and edit your to-do’s. This chore becomes even more onerous if you are one of those folks who is a slave to their electronic devices, and must spend endless hours making sure the to-do list on your cell phone is synchronized to your desktop, your lap-top, your notebook, and your Dick Tracey two-way wrist radio. I say – save yourself and your typing fingers a lot of hard work and heartbreak. Tell your to-do lists toodle-loo.

Utilizing a machine gun barrage of bullet points in your documents must be another Power Pointer, since the seminar brochure is riddled with them. Just reading the marketing material makes me feel like I’m under siege. Yet, I must admit I’m not sure I want to live unless I can to know the “5 warning signs of danger-point procrastination.”

Heck, I had always thought that there was only one danger – that you’d eventually give up procrastinating and actually do something.

Another irresistible lesson to be learned is how to deal with ‘desk-cloggers.’” The only desk-cloggers I know are your telephone and your computer. And come to think of it, when you get rid of these, you pretty much get rid of all the other time-wasters, like telephone calls and emails.

Having successfully unclogged my desk, I suppose this is the last time I’ll be hearing from the folks at Fred Pryor, unless they also happen to promote their seminars using well-organized carrier pigeons. So, I guess I’ll never know “an effective 5-step formula” for getting control of “the most complex, mind-boggling problems.”

If you’re wasting time trying to solve the complex, mind-boggling problem of why in the world were you hired in the first place, here’s an effective 1-step formula that provides an answer to every business question. Just say “I have no idea; you really should ask Fred Pryor.”

Reference This.

2009-04-15T19:26:00.001-07:00

What’s the scariest part of any job search – providing references. Not only
can references put any chances of employment at risk by telling lies about
you, they can totally sink your career by doing something truly mean and
sinister – they could tell the truth.

“Bulletproofing Your References In the Hunt for a New Job” is the subject of
a recent “All Street Journal” article by “The Wall Street Journal” columnist
Joann S. Lublin, and let me say right at the outset, that Ms. Lublin is a
hard-working, well-respected reporter who would an excellent addition to any
newsroom. [I don’t expect anything in return for this reference, but if
Joann S. is interested, the password for my Swiss bank account is Yoddler3.
And tell Hans I said hello.]

Of course, the entire concept of asking for workplace references is flawed.
Why would an employer expect you to provide any reference who wasn’t a major
fan of your work? And why would even a dim bulb like you offer up contact
information for all the managers, supervisors and co-workers who think
you’re a jerk?

Despite the lack of logic built into the process, references will be
continued to be required and supplied, providing cover for the hiring
manager, and anxiety for the applicant. This brings us to the subject of
“bulletproofing.”

Lublin’s first tip in this area comes from Andy Levine, the president of an
economic marketing-development firm in New York. After finding his name
continually being given as a reference from a former employee who had been
dismissed within three months of being hired, Levine suggests that you “seek
references from someone besides the boss who fired you.”

On the surface, this seems to be sensible advice, but it may raise problems
for you, since the only bosses who didn’t fire you were unable to do so
because you quit before they had the chance.

Even with a paucity of management fans in your employment history, there are
still techniques for creating a list of bulletproof references. For
example, Lublin suggests you “negotiate a balanced response from a bad boss
and other risky references.” Specifically, you might negotiate a deal in
which your bad boss does not mention the six missing Aeron chairs the
morning you stopped coming to work, in return for which could offer to
delete your cell-phone photos of your boss dancing the meringue in his
tighty whities at the office Christmas party.

“Going the extra mile with references may enhance your chances of landing a
job,” suggests Randy Street, a partner in a management-assessment firm.
“That means caring enough to do more than just asking for permission.”

One example of going the extra mile, Lublin submits is to “draft talking
points and recommendation letters for busy references – subject to their
final approval.” Those talking points might highlight your outstanding work
ethic, your irresistible sales techniques, your charming personality, and
your role as a role-model for the entire staff. Of course, your former
manager may hesitate to utilize your talking points, but that attitude will
quickly change when you inform him that upon being offered the new job you
will return, unharmed, his golf clubs, his BMW, and his schnauzer.

If you don’t consider kidnapping and blackmail as examples of “caring
enough,” the least you can do is inform your references about improvements
in your workplace skills. “You might say, ‘back then I wasn’t as organized
as I am now,’” suggests Mr. Street. Or, say I, you could inform your
reference that “back then, I wasn’t in constant communication with Martians
as I am now, and therefore, was unable to successfully travel backwards in
the time-space continuum to re-arrange the molecular structure of our
competitors.”

The way I see it, the only person who wouldn’t melt at that explanation has
to be a Venusian.

“Contact references after they’ve spoken on your behalf, and use innovative
methods to stay in touch a few times a year,” is another bulletproofing
technique. Traditional cornball techniques, like sending holiday cards, can
now be technologically upgraded using “Google Alerts” to track the names of
your references through cyberspace. But why stop there? Why not place a
GPS-transmitter in your reference’s car, and use your free, unemployed hours
to track your reference in person! After three Jason Bourne movies you
should know how to follow someone successfully. What better way to prove
your commitment to a potential reference, and, hopefully, to get
photographic proof of their involvement in an illicit love-nest with the
schnauzer.

The Brand New Brand You

2009-03-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

Life is so unfair. In today’s economy, you actually have work to look for work, taking valuable couch time to counterfeit diplomas, or invent accomplishments, like winning the Nobel Prize for Barbecue.

These days, it’s just not enough to be a conniver and a kiss-up. These days, you also have to be a brand.

Branding – that’s the buzzword in employment circles these days. Potential employers want to be able to pluck you out of the great morass of generic job seekers simply because they instantly recognize in you something unique and memorable, like Kleenex, or Coca-Cola, or X-Lax.

According to reporter Alina Tugend of “The New York Times,” branding professionals can teach you how to wrap your scared, feeble, inadequate self in a bright and bold new label, complete with unforgettable name and button-cute graphics.

Like Dan Schawbel, the author of “Me 2.0: Building a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success,” who suggests that the key to building your brand is finding your niche. You may think you have already found your niche – it’s under your desk – but for Schawbel the secret for creating your brand is to “discover your passion” and “put it together with your experience.”

For example, your passion for thrift could be put together with your experience stealing other people’s lunches from the coffee room refrigerator to create a kind of Robin Hood brand. You steal from hungry and give to the rich, mainly yourself. Gee, I see a lot of Wall Street firms typed up offer letters already.

Whether you brand yourself as proven and reliable, like Metamucil, or calm in the face of stress, like Zanex, or wild and sexy, like Desenex, establishing your brand is only the first step in the branding process. That’s right, Mr. and Ms. Brand X, you also have to market yourself.

The favored place to let your branding flag fly is the Internet. “It’s about building a community,” says Veronica Fielding, the president of Digital Brand Expressions. Makes sense. You certainly don’t want to meet anyone face to face, which means the logical place to expose the brand new Brand You is one of the popular anti-social networking sites, like Facebook, or Linked-In. Start with your online profile. Instead of putting down prosaic, expected information, like your blood type, or the name of your favorite Jonas Brother, use graphics to make your online persona to match your brand.

Let’s imagine that your brand identity is designed to show your aggressive approach to business problems. You will want to upload photos of bloody battle scenes of carnage and slaughter, the better to demonstrate what you will do to the company’s competition, or any co-worker who uses your pencil.

Important as it is to establish your brand’s unique and scary presence, it is only the beginning of your online networking efforts. “You want to find groups,” Fielding suggests, “alumni, former employees of your last jobs, trade groups.” The idea here is to join the group and then wait in hiding – a cyberspace stalker – for opportunities to “establish yourself as someone insightful” by “chiming in with your opinion.”

Unfortunately, your opinions are usually quite lame, which is probably why you are looking for a job in the first place. But don’t let that stop you from promoting Brand You. Demonstrate you are a team player by butting into online conversations with supportive messages, like “you guys are big doo-doo heads.” Demonstrate your abilities as a “people person” by adding a smiley-face emotogram to every email, even the emails that include threats and promises of retribution.

Now that’s the way to build a brand.

The experts also suggest that you promote your brand in the offline world. Don’t go out in sweats and old T-shirts; you never know who you might run into. In the same spirit, be sure to sleep in your best Armani interview outfit. You never know when a fire will break out, and you’ll find yourself on the sidewalk with a prospective employer.

Another piece of good brand advice is from author Sherry Beck Paprocki, who cautions that you shouldn’t hover over the free buffet at a networking meeting, since she “would hate to have three meatballs in my mouth and try to explain what I want to do.”

This wouldn’t be a problem for you, of course. As anyone who knows you knows, having three meatballs in your mouth is what your brand is all about.

The Clown in Your Cubicle

2009-03-30T19:34:00.000-07:00

If you’ve been wondering who to blame for your puny paycheck, the paucity of your promotions, and the total meltdown of your career, here’s good news. It’s not you who is to blame; it’s your family.

No, I’m not talking about that maladjusted bunch of malcontents who sponge off you in your overleveraged bungalow in Foreclosure Farms. I’m talking about the folks who raised you up from a pup: Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, and don’t forget Uncle Wally who lived in the basement.

It’s true! Your toxic reaction to your nuclear family as a kid is informing and influencing your relations with bosses and co-workers today. Or so suggests Sylvia Lafair, an “expert in leadership, workplace behavior and relationships,” in her new book, “Don’t Bring It To Work, Breaking the Family Patterns that Limit Success.”

Lafair’s gift is in helping executives “discover the correlation between their own family history and their present day responses to behaviors at work.” This version of workplace therapy, honed in leadership retreats in New Mexico, can result in “Ah-ha moments” and “career changing breakthroughs,” starting, no doubt, when the executive steps out from the sweat lodge, strips naked, picks up a tribal drum, and acknowledges in ancient Sumerian, a language they previously didn’t know they could speak, “their engagement in one or more of these unconscious behaviors and their destructive affect on their career and family.”

[In full disclosure, I may be slightly embroidering a very sober and serious process that is probably conducted in a Holiday Inn meeting room with no drums, no sweat, and the participants wearing J. Crew, but a fellow can dream.]

After serving a life sentence in corporate America, you will have to excuse my innate skepticism of any workplace self-improvement program – a reflex due, Dr. Lafair might suggest, to my own childhood experience of learning that it was Uncle Wally and not the tooth fairy who celebrated every new tooth by emptying my piggy bank. But I must admit that I do find at least a smidgen of truth in this theory of family influence.

Who among us has not been the victim of a steely CEO-type erupt in a stinging string of invectives and epithets simply because we have made a tiny, inconsequential mistake, like forgetting to fill the company jet with canapés, or fuel. And who among us, while assaulted with threats and recriminations, has not said to ourselves, “Gee, here’s a guy who didn’t get a G.I. Joe for Christmas.”

No doubt our family history influences our behavior in the workplace family! My quarrel with Dr. Lafair is not that such dynamics exist; I object to her suggestion that it is to your benefit to recognize and resolve these character flaws. In my experience, it is exactly these destructive psychological imbalances that are essential for success in business today.

For example, consider three of the 13 “common behavior patterns” that Lafair describes as personality types that can impact workplaces negatively:

The Pleaser “cannot handle truth,” says Lafair, choosing instead to “say ‘yes’ to everything, and rarely offering an opinion.” The genesis of the “chameleon-like stance” of the pleaser can easily been seen in the efforts of a needy child to please their parents. Sad, perhaps, even tragic, but hardly a drawback for workplace success. No one rises higher, or faster, up the org chart than the mindless sycophant who does nothing but agree with their boss. Look around you. Truth is a very nice commodity, but wouldn’t you rather have a corner office and a leased Jaguar?

The Persecutor is “a bully who loves to control; sees others as weak and sentimental; needs to feel important; gives and withholds information as a means of exercising power.” In other words – a highly effective and well-compensated manager. Sure, you could cure this individual, turning a persecutor into a pussycat, but then the entire organization could crumble. Persecutors can “cause depression, sleep disorders, ulcers, high-blood pressure, lowered self-confidence and a sense of inadequacy and isolation.” LaFair thinks this is a negative. To most of our managers, it’s a job well done.

Finally, there is The Clown, time-wasting “bozos, jokers, smart-asses and motor mouths” who “know every detail about trivial issues and give their own two cents just to get a rise out of their colleagues.” You may reject Dr. Lafair’s description of these “pubescent employees who are not high-potential candidates.”

Personally, I’m impressed she knows you so well.

Lay on the Layoffs

2009-03-16T06:47:00.001-07:00

Really, I don’t see why you’re so paranoid about layoffs. You’re a hard worker. You’re highly capable. You’re well liked. You’re invaluable to the company.

You’re not?

Oh, in that case, maybe you should be paranoid. Maybe you should be really paranoid.

How to avoid prevent a layoff is beyond me, but I can provide some very good advice on what to do after the career guillotine comes down, and you find yourself headless and jobless. Thanks to Karen Blumenthal, the Family Money columnist for “The Wall Street Journal,” I now know the “Five Key Steps After a Layoff.”

I can’t say I agree with all five steps, but it nice to know what to do after the crying stops and before the drinking begins. By the numbers, then:

1. Stay covered.

Unexpected medical costs can take all the fun out of unemployment. There’s nothing worse than having to give a doctor all the money you received in your severance package – money that you could have spent buying a pack of Wrigley’s.

Thanks to the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act, or COBRA, workers separated from their job can retain their health insurance, though the cost may make you sick.

COBRA costs are usually 102% of the premium, which means you have to pay your 50%, and your employer’s 50%, as well as contribute another 2%, which the government uses to finance fact-finding trips to Maui for politicians too busy being wined and dined by lobbyists to get sufficient rest.

[Can’t afford COBRA? The new stimulus package could pay for 65% of your premium for the first nine months, or maybe it’s nine percent of your premium for the first 65 months. If you’re not covered, write your congressman. The new law specifies that every citizen will receive a box of Luden’s cough drops and a Band-Aid, which should more than tide you over until the economy recovers.]

2. Figure out your minimum expenses.

Losing your job is not really a problem. The real problem is losing your paycheck. The experts suggest you go over your expenses to figure out areas where you can cut back. I suggest you start with food. Feeding your family can be very expensive, and there’s no reason to give up scarce dollars to some fat-cat supermarket chain, when you can get your children involved in family finances by sending them house-to-house, begging for casseroles.

While you do want to cut back, don’t cut foolishly. For example, you’ll certainly want to keep all your premium cable channels, so you can alleviate your feeling of worthlessness, by spending your period of worklessness watching first-run sports and high-definition porn.

3. Count your cash.

For many terminated employees, taking control of cash management during a period of unemployment is a challenge. For you, it will be a snap. Just empty your pockets. Put the change in an FDIC-insured jelly jar, and take the lint to the recycling center. Pocket lint can fetch as much as 75-cents a pound, more if you comb, dye and bail it for shipment to a bankrupt, third-world country, like California.

4. Look for other income.

A consulting gig or a temporary job could “expand your skills and keep your resume fresh,” says Blumenthal. The trick is determining your personal area of expertise. For example, if you are good at avoiding work, making bad decisions, shifting blame onto others, goofing off on company time, and lavishly rewarding yourself, you could get part-time work as the CEO of a major bank.

5. Manage your 401k.

Remember all the money you’ve been putting aside every week in that tax-deferred retirement account? You should only access this money as a last resort. The bad news is that if you take it out now, you’ll pay all those taxes you previously avoided, plus you could also pay a penalty. The good news is that the stock market is such a disaster area that you probably don’t have very much left in your 401k account anyway.

Clearly, recovering your equilibrium after a lay-off will not be easy. Perhaps the best idea of all is to forget even trying to get a new job, and just start your retirement now. Burn your resume. Flop on the couch. Click on the cable. And relax. In this topsy-turvy world, chances are you won’t be able to succeed at retirement, either, and you’ll soon be back to work, complaining and miserable again. And won’t that be wonderful!

Fireproof You!

2009-03-07T16:29:00.000-08:00

Hey, I know a foolproof way to keep your job. You can be inefficient, incompetent and irritating – and from what I hear, you are – and no one will ever fire you. How do you do it? It’s simple. Just make sure you’re working for your father.

And what if your father is too smart to hire a lazy, loser like you? Bad news, bucko. I’m afraid that if you want to keep that job, you’re going to have to work at it.

Don’t despair. You won’t have to work at your actual job; that’s a major time sink, and a total dummy move. The work you need to do is aimed at convincing a management that’s increasingly ready, aiming, and about to fire that they need to spare lovable, absolutely essential y-o-u.

Fireproofing your job is the name of the game, and in a recent issue of “Money,” reporter Donna Rosato offers six “smart, field-tested strategies” to keep you from become one of the 1.4 million professionals currently out of work. [That number represents a 41% increase in the unemployment rate of college-educated workers. So, I guess that $23.99 you spent on an MBA from the Fredonia School of Business won’t really save you.]

“Stand out and step up” is strategy #1. “The invisible guy is the first to go,” warns executive recruiter Stephan Viscusi, as quoted by Rosato, and though Viscusi doesn’t mention it, I assume the invisible gal is second. Unfortunately, being invisible is the one job skill you have mastered. Like Lamont Cranston, AKA The Shadow, you have the power to cloud the minds of managers, and make them believe that you are actually doing productive work when, in fact, you are snoozing the day away.

That will all have to change if you are to follow Rosato’s advice to raise your profile by arriving before 10, leaving after 4 and, in the meantime, “making cogent points in meetings.” Let’s face it, the last cogent point you made in a meeting was in 2006 when you accused your team of taking all the jelly donuts and leaving you nothing but maple bars.

“Be a money-maker” is strategy #2. Imagine how job confident you could be if you were seen as a profit center, rather than a drain on the budget. Unfortunately, you are a drain. “Share ideas to generate revenue even if that’s not part of your responsibilities” is the general idea, and it wouldn’t be difficult. Simply prepare a list of your dearest, closest co-workers and submit their names to the boss as candidates for immediate firing.

Strategy #3 is to “increase your value” by learning new skills. Perhaps you could learn a new language, like English, or develop familiarity with a “cutting-edge technology.” It’s too late to become a blog-master, or a Twitterer, but you could become the office expert in using pencil and paper. I hear it’s the next big thing.

“Go beyond your job description” is strategy #4. “Look for trouble spots you can help fix, ” like one Jeremy Hinton who “even brought a drill from home so he could replace the worn hinges on an office door instead of calling in a carpenter.” Nice effort, Jeremy. Of course, the carpenter is now out of work, and his children are on welfare, and his home is foreclosed, and the entire family is living under a freeway overpass. But boy, those shiny new hinges sure look nice.

“Make a sacrifice” is Strategy #5. Translation – volunteer to take a cut in pay. This assumes that your salary is large enough to be divided. You could also “forgo a bonus” if you got a bonus, which represents a real opportunity to show your loyalty. To have something to forgo in the future, demand a giganto bonus now.

The sixth and final strategy is the most problematical of all – “Don’t be a Debbie Downer.” “When talk turns toxic, change the subject and walk away,” is the advice Rosato has to the people she calls “negative Nellies.” In other words, transform yourself into a positive, “can-do” person who likes everyone and never gossips or complains. You’re also advised to “make an effort to associate with the people the boss respects most.” Yuck!

I’m not saying it won’t work, but I don’t think people like us could ever pull it off. If we can’t gossip and complain, and have to abandon the Negative Nellies to hang with the Positive Paulines, we’d rather be unemployed.

Wasted!

2009-02-25T20:35:00.000-08:00

Listen – if you have work to do, don’t read this column. In this seriously scary economy, when our bitten-down fingernails are holding on to our jobs by rapidly fraying threads, you don’t want to waste time at work.

Or maybe you do. According to a recent survey from salary.com, a “record number of people” are spending time “on activities that aren’t necessarily work-related.”

This is the fourth annual “Wasting Time at Work” survey from the website, so you know they aren’t wasting time. They’re busy 24/7/365, snooping around the workplaces of 2500 employees “at all job levels.”

If you’re a productivity person, the results are chilling. A full 73% of the survey participants cop to wasting a part of their day, and 22% admit to wasting up to two hours per day. Since no one with a brain, as well as a paycheck, likes to admit that they are any degree less than totally essential, I would multiply these responses by a factor of, at least, three, meaning that 66% of all workers are wasting up to six hours a day, and that doesn’t count the two hours a day we spend complaining about how overworked we are.

Interestingly, the biggest time wasters are workers who have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Makes sense to me. What’s the point of getting an MBA from Harvard if you can’t spend eight hours a day playing Scrabilicious?

Employees over 50 claim to waste the least amount of time – 49% report a half-hour or less. Apparently, they don’t consider the six trips to the bathroom per hour demanded by their weak bladders as a time sink. Or calculate the time it takes their addled brains to find their way back to their desks when they’re done.

The survey also delves into the question of what you do when you don’t do nothing. The #1 time wasting activity at 48% is our friend, the Internet, but I’m not sure it’s that simple. After all, who among us can really focus on making sales calls when we have no recent, up-to-the-nanosecond information on Jessica Simpson’s weight-loss issues? Besides, if they bought us better computers, we wouldn’t need to waste so much time hacking through the security firewall to download porn to the company server.

Other top time-wasters include socializing with co-workers (33%), conducting personal business (30%), personal phone calls (9%,) and long lunches or breaks (15%.) This seems arbitrary to me, and unfair. You need a long lunch to conduct your personal business with your co-workers, and if you can’t get it done over lunch, of course, you’ll need a follow-up phone call. That’s only common sense.

In the survey conducted in the halcyon days of 2007, boredom was the reason most workers gave for their time-wasting efforts. In 2008, the number one reason is job dissatisfaction (46%.) A full 24% blame their time-wasting tendencies on a lack of deadlines and incentives. The workplace experts at salary.com suggest “employees who don’t feel invested in the work they do are less motivated and more likely to waste time.”

This is surprising, and I’m sure it will change in the 2009 survey – assuming the web site will be able to find 2,500 people who are employed. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, our managers are going out of their way to involve us, and we really should thank them for the mass firings, plant closings and rabid off-shoring efforts. Sure, you feel paranoid, angry and helpless. But, my heavens, you’re involved!

Demonstrating the totally admirable refusal to accept responsibility that we’ve come to expect from our managers and politicians, many workers blamed their time wasting on distractions from other employees. “Fixing someone else’s work” was the top-rated excuse at 54%, nosing out the activity that the naïve suggest is the greatest time-waster of them all – office politics (47%.)

It is clear that today’s savvy workers realize that time spent campaigning in office politics is not a workplace waste, but a job survival essential. If you think the time you spend buttering up your boss is not a critical part of your job description, don’t plan on having that description, or that job, for long.

Trust me – the way things are going, you need to spend every possible hour at work boss-buttering, job-hunting, and resume writing. Look at it that way, bub, and the biggest time waster at your work could be your work.

Revenge 101

2009-02-19T18:12:00.001-08:00

Revenge is a dish best served cold, or so the philosophers say. If you ask
me, revenge is also pretty darn tasty when served hot, warm, frozen, or
stuffed into the microwave and nuked.

Let’s face it – when you’re mad as hell at work, and you’re not going to
take it any more, there are only a few options open to you. You can stifle
yourself, or you can complain to management, or you can right the wrong by
doing something intelligent and heroic, like pouring a can of Campbell’s
Chicken Mushroom Soup into your manager’s computer.

If you thought you were the only person who spends their days plotting
elegant, elaborate fantasies of revenge, think again. Workplace revenge is
so common that two professors, Thomas M. Tripp and Robert J. Bies, have
written a book on the subject – “Getting Even. The Truth about Workplace
Revenge – and How to Stop It.”

Don’t buy this book if you think it’s a good source of really devilish and
totally untraceable ways to get the revenge you so totally deserve.
Strangely, the authors seem intent in decreasing the amount of revenge that
gets expressed in our daily work lives. Managers, too, will learn how nip
workplace revenge in the bud, though it seems unlikely that many will take
Tripp and Bies’ advice. If our bosses were even slightly capable of being
sensitive and fair-minded they never would have been promoted.

Still, “Getting Even” does have some interesting information to impart. Like
the fascinating fact that the idea of workplace revenge even exists in the
highest levels of government service. Or have you forgotten that when the
Clintons left office in 2001, administrative staffers removed the “W” keys
from computer keyboards so that incoming staffers could not type the
nickname, “W?”

Too bad they didn’t leave the computer keys, and simply remove the new
President.

The more popular forms of revenge are less poetic, and include such classics
as bad-mouthing the boss, spreading rumors, instigating law suits, and
sabotaging performance.

While most examples of workplace revenge are destructive in nature, the
authors do site employees who are so enraged about managers who unfairly
berate them for poor performance that they “vow to work harder and longer
hours to ‘get even’ by proving the boss wrong.” Somehow, this seems to
defeat the whole idea of getting even, and could actually result in the
offending manager being promoted. Still, it could be the only option open to
you since you will definitely have to forget about the adopting the classic
“slow down” as a form of workplace revenge. If you worked any slower, you’d
be dead.

For anyone who believes that the desire for revenge is the product of a
twisted mind, it is illuminating to discover that the real motivation being
expressed in your overpowering urge to fill your boss’s Gucci briefcase with
peanut butter is “righteous anger, a set of emotions that have a moral
foundation, reflecting a sense of violation.” If true, this means that
rather than being ashamed of your obsessive desire to wreak havoc on your
boss’s leather accessories you should embrace your truly admirable desire to
readdress a moral order that is plainly out of whack.

Of course, the form of revenge you choose does reflect your own individual –
and, may I say, quite charming – character disorders. If you have a strong
self-image, for example, you could choose the “Private Confrontation,” in
which you go toe-to-toe with the offender, expressing your feelings honestly
and openly. This may be psychologically healthy, but it tends to create a
culture of candor and truthfulness, and that could lead to mass firings.
Better to take to the high road, utilizing your industrial-strength
insincerity to pretend to really like the people you loathe, and spread
spurious rumors about them when their backs are turned. Now that’s maturity.

For workers who do not wish to carry grudges or nurse revenge fantasies, the
book provides a checklist of “Ten Fateful Questions for the Would-Be
Avenger.” I never got past #1, “Are you sure the offender deserves the
retaliation?” The authors’ point is that what you perceive as a brilliant
plot cleverly crafted to humiliate and antagonize may simply be stupidity.
It’s hard to argue with this reasoning, but I don’t embrace it. If we didn’t
wreak revenge on the stupid, management would get a free pass.

Besides, you already know the best revenge on any company dumb enough to
hire you – just keep working there.

Don’t Hire Me Now. I’m Networking.

2009-02-11T08:26:00.001-08:00

If you’re not working, you should be networking. In a period when the economy is in critical condition, spending your spare time working your network is critical.

But how can you follow the 11th Commandment, Thou Shalt Network, when you are a cranky, anti-social, shy guy or gal who can’t blow their own horn without sounding off-key, and who views any trip outside their personal space with fear, dread, and projectile vomiting?

The answer to this and other networking questions, were the subject of Phyllis Korkki’s “Career Couch” column in a recent issue of “The New York Times.” As usual, the information Ms. Korkki gathers from her own network of career advisors is well meaning, but very unrealistic given the reluctance of people like you to wear your heart on your sleeve, and your resume on your forehead.

What’s important to understand here is that networking is not simply a desperate game of “Meet Me. Like Me. Hire Me.” “Networking is a matter of teaching and learning rather than trying to put something over on someone,” says Anne Baber, co-founder of Contacts Count. “Instead of thinking ‘What can I get out of this?’ Think ‘what can I give to this?’”

But what if you have nothing to give, except a wet-fish handshake and a hard-luck story? I say: fortify that limp handshake with cash! “I’ll give you $100 if you’ll be my best friend forever,” is an excellent, if expensive, way of making new connections. Yes, it may seem a trifle juvenile to troll for BFFs, but let’s face facts – anyone who going to hire you has to be a victim of some seriously arrested development. And if the price of nabbing a new job is selling your entire Beanie Baby collection, I say, pay it.

If the effort of dragging yourself to a job these last few years has eaten into your networking efforts – good news! According to expert Liz Ryan, it’s never too late to work your network, “raggedy and uncultivated” as it may be.

The idea here is to use your newly found spare time between 9 and 5 to make a list of every human being who has ever crossed your path in the tragic parade to futility that is your career. No, you can’t include me, but you can list angry ex-spouses and parole officers.

Given your personal history and abundant character flaws, I strongly suggest you focus your networking activities on people who have no idea who you are. It would also make sense to ask these victims of your networking activities for referrals before they learn anything about you. (You could, however, look for former kindergarten classmates to serve as referrals. Back then, everyone thought you had potential.)

If you find yourself overly depressed and under motivated when it comes to attending networking events, remember that even if you do not come back with a job offer in your pocket, these crowded, hectic events do provide an excellent opportunity to fill that empty pocket with paper napkins, silverware, tablecloths, and drapes, all of which you can sell on eBay. (Those attractive, “Hi, My Name is” badges are useful when you show up at the food bank, looking for government cheese. The social workers will be so afraid of you, no one will ask for your credentials.)

After hunting for leftovers, if you do have any time leftover for networking, Liz Ryan suggests you dial down the desperation. If asked about your job, Ms. Ryan opines, casually mention that you are looking, but don’t make a big deal of it.

I agree. People today don’t want to be seen having a chinwag with a loser like you. That’s why you have to put on your confident, cheerful, fully-employed face when you network. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to occasionally break into bitter sobbing, punctuating by heroic sniffs and sniveling as you demonstrate your personal fortitude in the face of adversity. You could even ask your new networking friends for hugs as you pull yourself together.

Follow this advice and you’re sure to leave the event with business cards from people you can start calling three or five or ten times a day. Believe me, once your new best friends forever see you could be a pest forever when you have no work to do, they’ll move heaven and earth to get you a job. And isn’t that what networking is all about?

The Year in Review

2009-01-31T18:33:00.000-08:00

Back in the good old days, when a manager didn’t think an employee was performing up to corporate expectations, there was a simple way to handle the matter. The manager simply hired another employee to take up the slacker’s slack.

These days, ineffective workers do not get the backup staff they deserve. Sad to relate, due to the worldwide economic meltdown, and a lack of government cash after executive bonuses are paid, workers who can’t do their jobs inevitably become workers who don’t have a job.

Of course, the firing doesn’t happen immediately. That requires a manager to make a decision, and that could lead to lawsuits. [Since when did making your direct report spend their afternoons detailing your Bentley become an “unfair labor practice?” We pay these people salaries, don’t we? They are our slaves, aren’t they?)

Besides, firing someone is too quick and easy. Much better to slowly drive them crazy with a series of toxic performance reviews.

The performance review has become the iron maiden of the 21st Century. No medieval torture instrument can inflict the pain possible in a loosely-worded, legally-vetted document that outlines your sins and omissions over the previous twelve months.

Of course, a more naïve individual – some dewy-eyed naïf, fresh from Harvard Business School – might actually view a bad review as a template to help an employee improve their performance. We experienced soldiers of corporate fortune know better. A bad review is merely the first step on a steep and slippery slope that leads directly to the portals of the unemployment office.

This undeniable fact of business life makes one wonder why Matt Villano, a writer for “The New York Times’” Career Couch column, would waste words providing expert opinions on how to respond to a negative performance review.

“It’s important to see bad reviews as wonderful gifts,” is the view of Wendy Kaufman, chief executive officer of Balancing Life’s Issues, and my personal candidate for Miss Goody Two-Shoes of 2008. “At the very least, they are going to make you stronger and give you a road map of strategies to do your job better down the road.”

As the recipient of so many “wonderful gifts,” I’m thinking that thee and me should be feeling pretty darn lucky to have a string of really rotten reviews in our past. And I now realize that we should have responded to these gifts with childlike glee, instead of breaking down in uncontrollable sobbing, punctuated by cries for mercy.

But get this – even this most natural response to a bad review apparently represents inappropriate workplace behavior. According to Paul Shrivastava, professor of management at Bucknell University, employees should take 24 hours to “digest the feedback they received in a negative review.”

“Generally when we get bad news, we need some time alone to marinate in it and let the gravity of the feedback sink in,” Professor Shrivastava teaches. “It’s probably a good idea to give yourself time to process the review before you react, just so you don’t do something you might regret.”

In other words, even our response to a bad review gets a bad review.

I am all for marinating, and have a most excellent recipe for a marinade. The ingredients are gin, vermouth and an olive, chilled to the temperature of a HR person’s heart. Still, I believe that nothing can save your job, or demonstrate your willingness to change, better than a good, wrenching cry, especially when delivered on your knees, your face buried in the hem of your manager’s dress, with your gasping promises to do better – to be better! – echoing up and down the halls of Mahogany Row.

This technique, in fact, is so effective that many experienced survivors of bad reviews suggest breaking into inconsolable weeping the moment your manager enters the room.

Perhaps the most surprising fact which columnist Villano exposes is the existence of individuals so clueless that they wonder if it is advisable to question one’s manager’s conclusions. In case you harbor any such feelings, let me be the first to tell you --- the person who signs your paycheck is always right. Perhaps if you had remembered that simple fact of workplace life, you wouldn’t be getting a bad review in the first place.

That’s why I say – turn on the waterworks and hope for the best. And if an emotional breakdown doesn’t work, all you can do is hope that your boss needs someone to detail his Bentley.

‘Tis the Season to Be Hungry

2009-01-31T18:31:00.000-08:00

Let’s face it – in almost every aspect of business life, there is someone in your company who will work harder, think smarter, kiss-up sweeter and grovel deeper. As result, that devilish someone is likely to grab that promotion, nab that bonus, and be awarded that above-guidelines raise.

You might as well not even try. If money and titles are given to the people who most deserve them, you don’t stand a chance.

Of course, we know that workplace prizes and perks rarely go to the people who deserve them, as a glimpse of your own management team will immediately remind you. The trick is to leverage whatever slim abilities you possess in a way that the bubbleheads who make decisions ignore the best candidates and lavish all the rewards on you, Mr. or Ms. Wrong.

If we are agreed on the fundamental premise here, then it only remains for us to discover exactly what abilities you do possess. Frankly, from where I sit, that cupboard is fairly bare, except for one truly stellar and truly impressive talent.

You can eat.

Yes, indeed, you really can pack it away. As anyone who has ever observed you attacking a plate of pre-meeting pastries will attest, when it comes to two-fisted face-stuffing, you are Olympic material.

The Michael Phelps of the buffet table, that’s you in a forkful.

Now, most times of the year, the ability to consume enormous amounts of calories is not connected with business success, but this is the holiday season, when the very best way to plump up your paycheck is to simply plump up. This basic business truth struck me when I came across an insightful article by Caroline M.L. Potter of Yahoo! Hotjobs!

“5 Ways to Avoid Overeating at Work” is the title of Ms. Potter’s thesis, and she does indeed provide a handful of sound ideas to avoid excess avoirdupois at the office during holiday season. What she does not realize is that while everyone else in the company is trying to bow and scrape their way out of indulging in cookies, candies and cake, your gift for stuffing your face can make you stand out from the crowd. And not just because your belly is shaking like a bowl full of jelly.

Here’s an example: Potter writes that “holidays can put people in a partying mood all the time. Invitations to lunches and dinners become more frequent. If you know you cannot control your eating during these casual outings, avoid them by bringing your breakfast, lunch and snacks with you to the office.” What a dumb idea! What a great opportunity for a noshaholic like you.

While the cholesterol-obsessed scaredy cats in your company huddle in their cubicles munching celery sticks, you go and party hardy with managers and clients. And don’t think the decision makers with whom you chug-a-lug eggnog won’t notice what a bold and fun individual you are to have around; the perfect jolly good fellow to share foie gras and Jell-O shots at board meetings.

Sure, your self-righteous workmates may be able to bend over and tie their shoes when holiday season is over, but even that ability will work in your favor. They’ll be in the perfect position for that chubby little elf, you, to kick them out the door.

What to do with the constant stream of homemade holiday treats piling up outside your cubical door is another subject Potter addresses. A promoter of workplace anorexia, she blithely suggests “it may be best to take just a small bite to avoid hurt feelings…also, don’t be afraid to ask what ingredients any dish contains. Many people suffer from nut, dairy and wheat allergies. Do not jeopardize your health in the name of goodwill.

Friend, if there was ever a recipe for career implosion, you’ve just heard it. Who wants to promote a workplace wimp who is afraid of a cashew? Who wouldn’t exchange a big, fat promotion for a trifling case of hives, or a V.P. title for a trip to the hospital to unwind a little case of anaphylactic shock?

Of course, there’s no reason to risk life and limb on the homemade confections of some minor league corporate player. The key is to make sure that the homemade treat you stuff down your throat comes from your manager’s kitchen. And when the paramedics haul you off to the emergency room, be sure to call out, “Merry Christmas to all, and to me, a big fat raise.”

The Last Honest Resume

2009-01-30T18:50:00.000-08:00

I don’t want to be a Negative Norbert, but it is entirely possible that before 2009 is over, you will need to dust off your resume. Hopefully, you will be requiring a retread of your Curriculum Vitae because a major, super-lucrative executive position is being offered to you, but even if your new dream career is to become an assistant greeter at Wal-Mart, your resume will definitely influence your chance of slipping on that handsome red jacket.

Which is why, I suppose, that so many otherwise honest people turn their resumes into tissues of fibs, half-truths and downright dirty lies.

As you can imagine, I didn’t need a spectacular resume to get my current job. My brilliance, insight, and the simple fact that my mother owns this newspaper, were all the qualifications I needed. Still, that didn’t stop me from including an MBA degree from Harvard, a PhD in paleontology from the Sorbonne, and a two-year stint as the United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

I didn’t augment my resume because I needed to. I just wanted to keep in practice should this exalted position go bye-bye.

Unfortunately, you who are about to enter the job-hunting maelstrom of 2009 will have to face strong, economic headwinds. With job losses at historic highs, there are more candidates out there – some of them far more qualified than you. [OK, let’s be honest. All of them more qualified than you.] According to the experts, a tight job market tends to inspire job applicants to exaggerate their accomplishments. This can backfire. I mean, how many candidates can claim to have pitched no-hitters in the World Series, except, of course, for you and me.

Employers, for their part, are tightening up when it comes to checking resumes, according to a chilling article in “The Wall Street Journal.” In this increasingly hostile business environment, about 90% now perform background checks on potential employees, though the intensity of the vetting process does vary. Some companies hire corporate detective agencies to sift through the minutiae of their candidate’s qualifications. Others flip a coin. Based on the caliber of your company’s recent executive hires, I’d say you’re definitely working for a bunch of coin flippers.

The most common areas for resume finagling include lying about the reasons for leaving your last job, your results and accomplishments in your previous job, and your past job responsibilities.

I can clearly see why you would want to lie about the reasons you left your last position. Being caught with your hand in the petty cash box is not a confidence builder, even if it is clear that you had been drugged by a toxic substance in the tuna sandwich you had stolen from the coffee room refrigerator.

On the other hand, I do censure employers for being too picky about this matter of “previous responsibilities.” If your job was to carry your boss’s briefcase from the corporate jet to the company limo, then who is to say that calling yourself “Director of Information Services” is not an appropriate job description. Similarly, your ability to have at hand your manager’s favorite chewing gum certainly qualifies you for a position of “Strategic Supply Chain Director.”

[Special warning: fibbing about your previous salary can be dangerous. A hiring manager can ask to see proof, and it is a little embarrassing to have to claim that the dog ate your pay stubs.]

Exaggerated academic accomplishments came up as the fifth most popular resume lie, according to a study by executive recruiter, Korn/Ferry International. You would think that even the most deranged executives would have learned this lesson by now, but the need to drape oneself with mock college degrees seems irresistible to the managerial class. And, in fact, 2008 saw the president of Herbalife, Ltd. lose his position when it was discovered that his corporate biography included a fake master’s degree. Similar discoveries of forged or inflated academic degrees also struck executives at Tetra Tech, Inc. and Cabot Microelectronics.

Fortunately, no one is going to question your PhD from Munsingwear University, or the Phi Beta Kappa key that came with it. Hey, you paid for that degree fair and square. Best $99 you ever spent!

The lesson here is to be very careful when compiling your resume. You only want to include the best-crafted lies and the most inspired exaggerations. You may be dinged for doing a bad job, but no one will ever be able to say that you lacked imagination.

Say Uncle

2009-01-30T18:40:00.000-08:00

When it comes to looking for jobs, it pays to have a family connection. That’s good news for you, because you’ve got a rich uncle. His name is Sam and he is hiring.

Be honest now – you’ve always harbored a certain skepticism about people who turn their backs on the exciting, competitive world of private enterprise to secure a sinecure in the ranks of the civil service. But now that the exciting, competitive world seems headed for the dumpster, those dull, boring, permanent jobs complete with pensions and health benefits sound pretty darn good.

Though I have always found government employees to be – with the possible exception of Dick Cheney – helpful and pleasant, I never did consider joining the ranks until I heard an interview with Dennis V. Damp, the author of “The Book of US Government Jobs.”

Damp, who also runs www.federaljobs.net, is a wealth of information on how to put yourself on Uncle Sam’s payroll. And a hefty payroll it is, with over 2,700,000 workers in full-time government jobs, the average salary for which exceeds $67,000. Throw in fringe benefits and the average federal worker’s compensation is over $105,000!

Add a snappy uniform and the possibility of a lifetime supply of high quality government ballpoints, and you’ve got an opportunity that may be worthy of consideration. Let’s take a closer look and see if Uncle Sam wants you, and vice versa.

Right off the bat, it seems clear that not every government job is as good as it sounds. On my first visit to federaljobs.net, I immediately clicked on “Overseas Positions.” Fresh from my third viewing of “Quantum of Solace,” I could definitely picture myself strolling the Champs-Élysées, a pouch full of diplomatic mail on my shoulder, and a dinner date with a willowy international diplomat in my future.

Unfortunately, such posh postings may not be easy to acquire. “Individuals wanting to work overseas must meet certain stringent requirements,” the web site explains. “You must be able to physically adapt to the conditions at various locations that may not have adequate health care facilities.”

In other words, forget Paris. Your best chance for an overseas gig will probably be in a laundry facility in Afghanistan – perhaps the one place on earth more demeaning and dangerous than your present position in the corporate cube farm.

If you are the kind of person who enjoys meeting new people and snooping into their private lives, you will be delighted to learn that the “Census Bureau will hire about 1.4 million part time census takers and support personnel through 2010. The average hourly salary is in the high teens to low twenties depending on the area you live in and the jobs typically last 5 to 10 weeks.”

It’s not a lot of money, so you might want to consider your census gig as a sideline to your current position. Tell your manager you have an appointment with your aroma therapist, cover twenty or fifty homes in your area, and be back in time for lunch. Best of all, the census this year is going digital. You will “ record information on a small, hand held computing device, which will transmit the data via wireless communications.” I’m not sure what qualifications are required, but if you can master World of Goo on your Wii, they’ll probably take you.

Other hot jobs are with the FBI, who is looking for linguists. The languages listed include Dari, Farsi, Gujarati, Kazakh and Pashto. I’m not sure your mastery of Pig Latin will qualify, but it couldn’t hurt to utpay inway ouryay applicationway. The Federal Aviation Administration is also hiring, but if you’re the type who likes to keep your feet on the ground, then your career choice may be with the Transportation Security Administration. It’s difficult work, but if you weren’t very popular in high school and want to get back at all the people who gave you a hard time in gym, making successful business travelers take off their shoes could be highly rewarding.

Of course, the very best government jobs are those to which you are elected, so if your resume is weak and your experience is nil, consider joining the US Government job force in a management position. The pay is terrific, the perks are awesome, and the work schedule is a breeze.

Best of all, these jobs regularly turn over, as Mr. Cheney will cheerfully testify, so it definitely pays to get your application in now.

Got Stress?

2008-12-11T20:41:00.001-08:00

Hate to break it to you, Bucky, but the economy is slip sliding away.

As we merrily roll downhill, many of the familiar features of our working lives are going away – like our jobs. I have blocked out the details of the most recent no-jobs report, but it seems like everyone in America is either already fired or about to be fired, except, of course, the person who has the job of counting how many people have lost their jobs.

Now that’s a no-stress position, and it ain’t going away!

At the risk of ruining my reputation as a harbinger of glee, I have to say that while this job situation is not good for anyone, it’s super-bad for Baby Boomers who are suddenly seeing their cushy retirement dreams go up in smoke.

With their 401(k) accounts shrinking almost as fast as their waistlines are enlarging, the idea of retiring before 65 has vanished. Now the dream is to retire at 65, and the few Boomers who still believe they can accomplish such an amazing feat are now dressing for success in a straight jacket.

But how is a 65-plus Boomer going to put Spam on the table? Career expert Laurence Shatkin has the answer. Shatkin’s new book, “150 Best Low-Stress Jobs” is the perfect resource for Boomers. As Shatkin says, “Many of these occupations have a high concentration of older workers because their low level of stress permits them to avoid burnout and postpone retirement. Some of these jobs might be good choices for Baby Boomers planning a career change late in life, perhaps in retirement.”

To make his list, the author “identified the best occupations for people age 55 and older, according to a combined score based on each job’s annual earnings, percent growth and annual openings.”

Apparently, author Shatkin didn’t eliminate high-quality, low-stress jobs just because some namby-pamby, wet blanket, so-called “professional credentials” are required.

For example, you may not have a fancy degree, but I don’t have a doubt in the world that you would make an excellent civil engineer, and if that position doesn’t light your fire, I can say with equal conviction that you would make an terrific “construction and building inspector.” Please forgive me in advance, however, if I decide not to enter or even stand particularly close to any building you design, construct and inspect. Translation: these may be delightfully low-stress jobs for you, but giving you that kind of power gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Unfortunately, almost all of the Zanax-free positions seem to require some kind of training. I don’t know what an “industrial machinery mechanic” does, but I doubt that even with 23,361 annual openings, they’re going to sign on someone whose idea of a power tool is a Cuisinart. The same caveat goes for the 11,037 annual openings for “mobile heavy equipment mechanics,” though I was relieved to note that author Shatkin excepts those grease monkeys who work on “engines.”

The thought that of some stress-free, experience-free Boomer boob repairing the engines on my 747 is enough to give me a major panic attack. Face it –some positions demand a stressed-out, Type-A worrywart.

I’m much more sanguine about burnt-out Boomers taking on positions as “water and liquid waste treatment plant and system operators.” The job has an annual growth rate of 13.8 percent and pays $36,070. Just remember – you have to provide your own nose clips.

There are two jobs on the stress-free list that you would expect: curator and librarian. Curators earn $46,300 a year, which should be enough to keep you in Geritol and Rogaine. There are 1,416 annual openings. I’m surprised it’s not more when I think about the dangers that plague that famous curator of shiny objects, Indiana Jones. But Indy always survives, and I’m sure you will, too. Just don’t even think about the giant boulder poised over the doorway to your office.

Librarians also make the list, and with a pay scale that almost hits 50K, I think it could be the low-stress job with the highest demand. How wonderful to make big bucks, stamping books and dozing the afternoon away in the sun-kissed quiet of the reading room.

In fact, I can only think of one job that has less stress – writer of a weekly workplace humor column. You don’t enjoy the prestige of being a librarian, or the groupies that flock around a waste-treatment plant operator, but the lack of compensation more than makes up for it.

A Word to the Y’s

2008-12-11T20:38:00.000-08:00

Well, here’s a shocker! Tattoos can hurt your career. Call it “body art,” or call it the result of too many Jell-O shots, but you risk more than ridicule when you show off that inked-in image of Taylor Hicks on your bicep, or the Chinese symbols for “I have no idea what this means” on your neck, or the map of upper Lower Uzbekistan on your ankle.

Managers tend to view your designs as signs the company can get along just fine without you. Or so I learned from Dr. Mitchell Chasin, the medical director of Reflections Center for Skin & Body.

“The number of people opting to have tattoos removed is at an all-time high,” Dr. Chasin reports. “People most commonly request that I remove names of their exes, cartoon characters that were inked on during a night out drinking, or the popular Chinese symbols that were inked on incorrectly.”

Cynic that I am, it is difficult for me to believe that an artistic rendering of Goofy could cause a problem at work. So many of our managers are cartoon figures themselves that one would expect them to be flattered. And perhaps they would be more positive if instead of inking the name of your exes on your arm you instead chose to tattoo the names of your execs. Talk about showing loyalty! The worker who tattoos the org chart on their back will surely have an easier time climbing it, at least, until the re-org.

While I have chosen to keep the temple of my body free from graffiti, the subject did make me think that the problem here is not only esthetic, but generational. According to the New Reflections web site, more than 20 million Americans have at least one tattoo, including up to 36% of all individuals 18-30 years of age.

That’s right. We’re talking about Generation Y.

For the elderly individuals from the previous generation, Generation X, as well as those true antiques, the Baby Boomers, tattoos are the least of the Gen Y proclivities that have attracted our attention or raised our ire.

This inter-generational conflict has spawned many workplace battles and at least one book – “Not Everyone Gets A Trophy, How To Manage Generation Y” by Bruce Tulgan.

Tulgan’s thesis is that Gen Y workers expect instant rewards. That’s because they were raised in the child-centric 80’s, the “decade of the child,” in which “making children feel great about themselves and building up their self-esteem became the dominant theme in parenting, teaching and counseling.”

Having been brought up with a silver spoon in their psyche, Gen Y employees expect to be handed everything on a silver platter. Money, titles, and responsibility are not things a Gen Y expects to earn; it’s their right by virtue of being wonderful – just like Mommy and Daddy always told them.

So, if you have to work with or, heaven forbid, supervise a Gen Y person, expect to spend most of your time lavishing praise on the little rotters. Anything less than non-stop adulation is considered to be an insult. [Of course, should you share a fanciful tale about your mutual manager failing to appreciate the wonderfulness of your Gen Y co-worker, don’t be surprised if she or he picks up their iPod and their iPhone and iQuits on the spot. Pity about that.]

Not only do the Gen Y’s demand constant acclaim, their parents also participate in the process. Tulgan reports the story of an executive who received a call from the mother of a Gen Y employee. Mom complained that her darling son was not receiving a salary commensurate with his genius.

I have to admit – that’s a brilliant move. I’d have my mother call my boss and demand that I get a raise, but ever since I foreclosed on her house, she seems to lack any real enthusiasm for my abilities. So, I guess I’ll just have to settle for having my wife make the call. She will certainly bond with my boss. They both think I’m a doofus.

But I’m not worried about my job security. I may be lazy and inefficient, but I’m easy to manage. Just throw a couple of raw, grass-fed steaks in my cube every week or so, and I’m content. My supervisor has his hands full stroking the egos of the Gen Y’ers. And if that’s not bad enough, look who’s coming next – Generation Z.