03.15.10
Don’t do this, don’t do that, try not to squirm
Part of one new business strategy for making money from nothing is career advice.
At any one moment it’s easy to get the impression that half the on-line revenue in advertising now comes from either offering courses for retraining or the sale of job-hunting advice.
Nowhere is this more obvious than at my hosting provider.
Yahoo relentlessly bombards browsers with ads, columns and stories on getting a job.
For instance, the daily ‘apply for a training grant and go deep into debt to get a 2-year degree or you’ll never get a job’ pitch.
This weekend the New York Times finally latched onto the idea that it’s the latest variation on an American business Ponzi scheme.
Call it working over another subprime crowd of suckers, a lure that promises reward, never to be adequately delivered, if only you’ll go deep into debt to get some kind of vocational training certificate at whatver for-profit little school is offering them in your area.
Or, there is the ‘The 10 best-paying jobs are … post.
And then the always favorite variation on what not to do during a job interview.
Typical advice, condensed: Scrupulously avoid being human and capable of error.
All of these work off the guilt-trip assumption that high unemployment in this country — more specifically, the reader’s lack of it — is the result of character and skill set faults in the job-seeker.
It’s hard to imagine a worse article or one more demoralizing than the link I’m going to post. How not to f— up an interview in 50 — that’s fifty — easily digestible bon mots.
Why only 50 Why not 100? Why not 200?
Doubtless fifty was probably thought to have the best chance at getting linkbacks and ‘most e-mailed’ status among the busy bees scavenging for jobs.
Remember, these advices and articles only work by leveraging desperation. Their ubiquity now guarantees they provide no service or common sense advice that people haven’t already considered.
They work for an industry that needs everyone to believe that American economic calamity is the fault of an inferior US worker.
DD has done the theme up previously here, here and here.
Don’t smell like a cigarette, it advises. Don’t fail to demonstrate the proper qualities of a lickspittle. Don’t smell like this or that. Don’t ask too many questions or talk too much but don’t appear mum. Don’t sit down wrong. Look at the boss but don’t look at the boss.
It’s here — furnished by someone named Karen Burns who knows how to make a job out of leveraging the joblessness of others.