Bait and Switch (23 page)

53 Outside of college job fairs, organized for graduating seniors, most are organized by companies like JobExpo and advertised on the Internet.

orientation:

urged job applicants to apply in person at the fair in August,
54
and the web site for the fair itself guaranteed that over 100 other Don't forget to wash up before you arrive—you may be nervous, and a little companies would be recruiting there too, some of them, surely, scented soap can mask light perspiration. We recommend avoiding colognes and perfumes, as some people may be allergic. This is probably not the right looking for professionals like me.

forum for maximum personal expression: try to avoid clothes and jewelry that The fair occurs in Maryland at a cheesy-looking suburban are gaudy; covering up tattoos is a good idea, as well.

catering joint, where you enter into a two-story-high atrium In an environment where people have to be reminded to shower featuring a giant chandelier, sprays of pink and white fake in the morning, I may, with my tan suit and a sufficiently confi-flowers, and a couple of neoclassical plaster sculptures of partially dent manner, just stand out as the dynamic professional I still clad boys holding up light fixtures. Beyond the atrium, there's one halfheartedly aspire to become. In fact, there are all kinds of job of those cavernous spaces cut through with rows of booths, the fairs, some aimed more at entry-level workers, some for profes-kind of scene I associate with the annual booksellers'

sionals, some for both, and some narrowly targeted at a particular convention. There are over 100 booths, from ABC Supply industry, like security. And the undeniable advantage of a job Company to Weichert Realtors, including AFLAC, Home fair, compared to an Internet job application, is that you get a Depot, Men's Wearhouse, as well as government agencies like the moment of face time with someone who is actually employed—a Border Patrol, the Air Force Reserve, and the Newport News nanosecond chance to make an impression.

Police Department. Some of the booths display little souvenirs I find one promising job fair listed on the web site for the military of their corporations: ballpoint pens, key chains, baggies of golf contractor CACI International, which I was visiting because tees. Many are staffed by people dressed in company logo-ed the alleged involvement of some of CACI's employees in the polo shirts, which suggests they are pretty low-level functionaries, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib seemed to make the company an ideal though who knows?

candidate for my "crisis communications" approach. Its web site 54 Most of July was spent on Ehrenreich business.

By 10:30 A.M. there must be 500 people crowding the hall, which I confess to having exceeded some time ago. Then off to and some booths—the management-consulting firm Booz Sodexho, a major supplier of campus food services, for a more serious Allen Hamilton in particular—have attracted long lines. I am, practice run. I shake hands with one of the two men in the booth, fashion-wise, at the far corporate end of the spectrum, stand-then hit him, a little too bluntly, with "You could use some help with ing out from the many job seekers in casual clothes, even, in PR." The recipient of my handshake looks taken aback, but I forge some cases, taboo items like tank tops and capris. But class on: "You're aware of the campus campaign against Sodexho?"
55
Now confers no advantage here. The fair, I realize, is the fleshly ana-the other guy raises an eyebrow and admits to having heard of it.

log of the Internet job boards, where, instead of sending our

"I could help you with that," I tell them, offering my crisis resumes to vie for attention, we have come in our actual bod-communications mantra. "You know PR isn't just about lighting fires; ies, to what looks like equally little effect. All "interviews" are it's about putting them out."

conducted standing up; even the people staffing the booths I try the same confrontational approach, only a little more smoothly, lack chairs—the better to speed up the process. I try to have a at CACI. The young woman who is accepting resumes—dressed, I copy of my resume out of my tote bag (I know, it should be a should mention, in a distinctly noncorporate flounced skirt—looks briefcase) and ready to present when I reach the head of the blank at the mention of PR and passes me along to a suited man line, along with an eager, but not desperate, smile. Each en-lurking behind her. The company web site didn't list any PR

counter takes a minute or less, with the conclusion being sig-openings, but that is no barrier to me; the point is to convince them naled by a handshake.

that they need my services whether they realize it or not. I know I For a warm-up I go to the Border Patrol and study the at-have less than sixty seconds to wow this man with my knowledge and tractive posters showing men on horses. "Will I get to ride a horse?" I ask the uniformed man staffing the booth. He in-

55 Sodexho was first targeted by student activists in the late nineties for its informs me that the maximum age for BP agents is thirty-seven, vestments in private, profit-making prisons. In 2003, students at a number of colleges relaunched the "Drop Sodexho" campaign in the wake of a bias suit alleging racist management practices.

skills, so I cut to the chase.

me right out. I hasten toward the coffee table, now thoroughly

"You might want to rethink your PR approach," I suggest to him plundered of refreshments, where, in a rare moment of moral lucidity, as gently as possible, citing CACI's PR director Jody Brown's I face the fact that my professional flexibility does not extend to responses to the allegations of torture in the
New York Times,
which defending torture allegations. Jody will be getting no resume from me.

I had studied in advance.

The CACI interaction, I soon see, was exceptional for its depth and

"What did she say?" asks the suit.

duration. What I am realizing is that most of the company

"It's a matter of language," I tell him. "She called the alle gations representatives here are not empowered to deal with professionals;

'irresponsible and malicious.
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In other words, she brushed them they are indeed fishing for frontline, entry-level personnel. At off. You need gravitas, dealing with these things—like 'We take Blackwater, which provides security staff to American companies and these charges very seriously and are doing a full investigation, et civilian personnel in Iraq, two women in Blackwater polo shirts look cetera.' “

utterly blank at the term
PR
and quickly resume their trick of chewing He looks actually interested; at least the eye contact lingers, so I gum in unison. At NAID, a provider of "management services in IT,"

rush on. "See, a response like hers can be like pouring gasoline on a I am told that there might be an opening in its Baghdad oper-fire. One of the functions of skillful PR is to put the fires out."

ation, but that this is not the place to apply for it. I wait in line By now we have gone well past my allotted minute. He takes my after line, leaving résumés at Beta Analytics, Bowhead Support resume and urges me to FedEx, not e-mail, my resume to Jody Services, Camber Corporation, Custer Battles ("an international Brown.

business risk consultancy"), EDO Corporation, EG&G

"Don't tell her what I said, OK?" I ask with a smile as I leave, Technical Services, Independence Air, Inova Health System, and when I glance back, he is still following me with his eyes, which SRA International, Telos Corporation, Unisys, and Lockheed should be a good sign but, given the nature of his business, creeps Martin. Everywhere the response is the same: PR is a "corporate function" for which I should apply on the company web site.

56 Kate Zernike, "The Reach of War: Contractors,"
New York Times,
June 10, 2004.

Most of my attempts to strike up conversations with other job in terms of real, salaried jobs, would put me somewhere down seekers in line fall flat; we are, after all, competing for the same near the clerical level. So I swallow my executive pride and start limited number of opportunities. In the EDO line,

thinking of more realistic possibilities. Since I type slowly and though, I find myself next to a stoop-shouldered man of about lack the software skills now required of secretaries, I apply for a fifty, whose suit and tie suggest he's a fellow professional. Yes, he couple of receptionist jobs—again, to no effect. I even pursue a is a manager, a systems manager in fact, and has been searching job wanding air travelers with the Transportation Safety for four months. "Do you think this is worthwhile?" I ask.

Administration, until I note that the penalties for dissimulating

"Well, they just send you to their web site. So I apply on the to the federal government make that one unworthy of the risk. I web site and call a week later, and they have no idea who I am."

resolve to go to another job fair, in a humbler frame of mind, this

"So there's no point to these job fairs?"

time—open to anything.

"I go to them anyway." He shrugs. "It makes me feel like The next job fair, announced on Jobexpo.com, again with no I'm doing something."

clue as to what sorts of jobs may be offered, turns out to be even more

"a complete waste of time," in the words of a young south Indian IT

job seeker, than the one in Maryland. Held in the ballroom of a THE FAILURE OF the Maryland job fair to net a single positive Holiday Inn in Edison, New Jersey, it resembles a high school response to my follow-up applications at the company web prom gone horribly wrong: there are only seven companies sites, combined with the perpetual desolation of my in-box, represented—at tables around the wall rather than booths—and a points to the sorry conclusion that I have been aiming too maximum of thirty job seekers drifting around at any one time.

high. I blame Kimberly, of course, for encouraging me to imag-Does the small number of job seekers mean the economy is ine myself as a VP of public relations or similarly titled execu-improving, or does the paucity of potential employers mean that tive. The truth is, I seem to be more like AFLAC material, which, it's worsening? But the configuration of the ballroom, with the employers up against the wall, has a strangely empowering effect on accepts my resume.

me. They are the wallflowers; I am in the center of the dance floor.

I float from table to table, meeting Mike from Ciber, with In line with my reduced expectations, I have dropped the whom I chat about crab cakes (he spent his vacation sailing in the difficult "PR" designation and broadened my capabilities to Chesapeake Bay), and, once again, some folks from the Border communications"—or, as I now put it, "anything involving Patrol, who have a lot to say about wines. (Napa gets all the words"—including "speech writing, speech coaching, internal attention, but the Southern California ones are right up there communications, press relations." My first stop is AIL, an in-too.) Finally, exhausting my supply of benevolence as well as of surance company which turns out to be looking for sales reps, tables to approach, I wander into the corridor, where an older and, agreeably enough, the man behind the table invites me to a African-American woman and light-skinned young man are

"group interview" next Wednesday. "10:15 Wen," he writes on sitting on one of the backless couches. Neither has bothered a card, proving that this firm could indeed use some help with with corporate dress; in fact the man daringly sports fringed words or at least abbreviations. At AT&T Wireless, they are pants and a rhinestone earring. "Any luck?" I ask them, to also looking for sales reps, though here too a word person rueful looks and exasperated hand waving. "All they want here is might find adequate challenges. The company's blurb in the salespeople," the guy, who introduces himself as Mark, says. "And job fair program reads:

I hate sales."

They invite me to sit down between them—"Come on, Are you a Natural? Are you ready to put your skills to work. Like the dear, give those feet a rest"—which is a tight squeeze, bonding way you're a quick study. How you're good at finding solutions. And how you're able to relate to people in a professional way.

me to the older woman at the hip. Mark describes himself as an administrative assistant, but he seems to have done a little of When I give the AT&T guy my line about how I do "anything everything: producing promotional videos, fielding com-with words," he responds, "So you're a people person," and plaints from prescription drug users, not to mention Power-

Point and Excel. "I don't want to change the world," he says local job fairs provided by the state employment agency, and that airily. "Let the CEOs do that. Just give me a job, and I'll get it his female companion is the bus driver. It occurs to me that in done." All of his work appears to have come his way via temp almost a year of searching, this is the first time I have shared a agencies. "I guess that's what they want us all to be," I specu-real laugh with a fellow job seeker, and he was far below my late, "temps."

imagined "executive" status.

"Right," says the woman, "so they don't have to pay for Maybe I should have asked if I could go along with them. But they your insurance."

mentioned another job fair at the Marriott "right down the Mark insists that temping is a good way "to get a foothold"

street," and I decide to set out for it on foot. The trouble is, there in a company but then contradicts this with a story about how are no sidewalks, this being a kind of diffuse industrial park area, and he completed in two months a project that his employer had the slight heels on my shoes keep getting caught in the squishy grass, thought would take six. "They called me in and said `bye-bye.'

giving me a tipsy gait. No one walks here except for a few Hispanic I'd worked my way out of the job."

men—day laborers, I suppose—and none of them remembers

"So maybe you need to slow down a little?" I venture.

seeing a Marriott around. A light rain develops out of the dirty late-

"Yeah," adds the woman. "Drag it out a little."

summer sky, speckling my tan suit, and I am about to turn back They both break out laughing. I laugh too, and for some when a Marriott suddenly emerges on the left. But it's only a reason we can't stop laughing, pressed thigh-to-thigh there on Marriott Courtyard, and the front-desk people tell me that any job the invisible outer border of corporate America. Even the fair would likely be back at the full-service Marriott in the other di-anxious-looking Asian-American man on the next couch, who rection. So I stumble back past the Holiday Inn to the real has been poring over the list of companies at the fair, joins in Marriott, passing a few more pedestrian representatives of the class with a guilty smile. I am sorry when .they have to leave—it that requires muscle instead of resumes. If the corporate world is a emerges that Mark is one of several job seekers on a bus tour of fortress, I have been reduced to circling it on foot.