Cooks who spoil the broth
This topic came up a couple of days ago in a networking group I visit regularly. (OK, I brought it up.) A thread in a certain social networking group highlighted one of the problems that has surfaced when one blends 50-year-old job-hunting practices with a culture of privilege and entitlement.
The first "networking" was more or less learning to use and love the old-boy (or good-ol-boy) network. It seems to have worked very well in those days gone by when most people looking for a job already had one. It has steadily eroded over the past 40 years as the so-called social compact between the employers and employed has eroded. Now, most people looking for a job don't have one. Many haven't had one for some time. Although the era of the social compact and lifetime employment was dying or was dead before many of these people entered the work force, most of them still believe they have a right to—not just a job, but to all the money and perquisites they had enjoyed before the HR person with the empty box arrived at their cubicle.
When earnest employment pundits trot out their Haldane-era advice, especially about networking, that advice gets as garbled as the kids' game of gossip. What comes out is not the idea that you will actually try to meet a friend of a friend, in a place or field of interest, and make them your friend. Oh no: the output is too often that you will get the name of that someone, whether you have mutual connections or not, and demand that they give you an interview (i.e., give you a job). When that someone, very understandably, either ignores you or tells you to sod off, you then throw a tantrum. This has happened more and more often over the last 15 years or so, to the point where the artificial networking structure built on the old-boy example is pretty much dead.
And yet, the job search experts still bang on this drum all day.
Entitlement shows itself in unusual ways, even amongst the formerly entitled. The 1950s were a wonderful, gilded age in the USA: if you happened to be a white Protestant male. It was solid gold if you were a rich, white, Protestant male.It seems that a great deal of the loud social angst of the present is coming from people who resent the social changes of the last 40 years or so, which amount to a message to please share. They did not want to and they do not want to: a characteristic reaction of the terminally spoilt.
As I've been poking around the topic of age bigotry, I've had the unsettling experience of discovering just how many of these spoilt brats still remain in the corporate world and in the ranks of the unemployed. Many—but not all—of them are over 50. Many are obstinate in their refusal to start their job search with a look in the psychological mirror*. To them, their loss of privilege must always be someone else's fault. People who actually have done nothing more to employers than have the gall to get older may very well be collateral damage in a conflict between the fools who did the sacking and the fools who got sacked. Possibly bigotry enters into the business only because bigotry of any sort is a symptom of stupidity.
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*A look in an actual mirror is irrelevant. Any job search pundit who advocates a physical makeover as a solution to unemployment has never taken a look at online background checks, in which age is the first data point. Perhaps dispensing online job search advice is the one field available today in which stupidity is a positive virtue.
The first "networking" was more or less learning to use and love the old-boy (or good-ol-boy) network. It seems to have worked very well in those days gone by when most people looking for a job already had one. It has steadily eroded over the past 40 years as the so-called social compact between the employers and employed has eroded. Now, most people looking for a job don't have one. Many haven't had one for some time. Although the era of the social compact and lifetime employment was dying or was dead before many of these people entered the work force, most of them still believe they have a right to—not just a job, but to all the money and perquisites they had enjoyed before the HR person with the empty box arrived at their cubicle.
When earnest employment pundits trot out their Haldane-era advice, especially about networking, that advice gets as garbled as the kids' game of gossip. What comes out is not the idea that you will actually try to meet a friend of a friend, in a place or field of interest, and make them your friend. Oh no: the output is too often that you will get the name of that someone, whether you have mutual connections or not, and demand that they give you an interview (i.e., give you a job). When that someone, very understandably, either ignores you or tells you to sod off, you then throw a tantrum. This has happened more and more often over the last 15 years or so, to the point where the artificial networking structure built on the old-boy example is pretty much dead.
And yet, the job search experts still bang on this drum all day.
Entitlement shows itself in unusual ways, even amongst the formerly entitled. The 1950s were a wonderful, gilded age in the USA: if you happened to be a white Protestant male. It was solid gold if you were a rich, white, Protestant male.It seems that a great deal of the loud social angst of the present is coming from people who resent the social changes of the last 40 years or so, which amount to a message to please share. They did not want to and they do not want to: a characteristic reaction of the terminally spoilt.
As I've been poking around the topic of age bigotry, I've had the unsettling experience of discovering just how many of these spoilt brats still remain in the corporate world and in the ranks of the unemployed. Many—but not all—of them are over 50. Many are obstinate in their refusal to start their job search with a look in the psychological mirror*. To them, their loss of privilege must always be someone else's fault. People who actually have done nothing more to employers than have the gall to get older may very well be collateral damage in a conflict between the fools who did the sacking and the fools who got sacked. Possibly bigotry enters into the business only because bigotry of any sort is a symptom of stupidity.
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*A look in an actual mirror is irrelevant. Any job search pundit who advocates a physical makeover as a solution to unemployment has never taken a look at online background checks, in which age is the first data point. Perhaps dispensing online job search advice is the one field available today in which stupidity is a positive virtue.
Labels: age bias, age bigotry, job searches, social networking
posted by Uncle | 00:55
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