Free Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich Page A

unemployed, is that there are no public spaces in which to congregate, have a coffee, and maybe strike
    [an] experienced and highly motivated Director of Communications. Duties include branding organization throughout up a conversation. The only options are home, workplace, or mall; local corporate community, creating general community and if you have no source of income, the mall is not recommended.
    awareness, media outreach and creation of promotional ma-But the boot camp is to be held in the thriving northeastern terials.
    suburbs, where life apparently goes on.
    Or perhaps:
    I arrive in Atlanta with something less than a winning attitude. It's already February, and I have precious little to show
    [a] skilled writer with solid professional editing and communications for my time. I've been laboring steadily away on my resume strategy skills (health care communicatins exp. is a big plus). You will with Joanne, which has become a project on the scale of a have at least 2 yrs of exp. (w/sample portfolio) that includes working w/media. Must possess a BA degree.
    graduate thesis, and—after endless tweakings and arguments over how best to highlight my strong points—she has proA couple of companies send me automatic acknowledgments by nounced me "almost there," maybe just because I've let her e-mail, and one—Wyeth—goes so far as to send me an actual know I'm not willing to pay for another month of her services. I postcard. That's it, though; for the most part, corporate have furthermore posted this nearly finished product on America seems willing to soldier on without my help.
    Monster and HotJobs.com and sent it off to a dozen major In my declining frame of mind, even boot camp has begun to pharmaceutical companies—from Abbot to Wyeth—that are loom as a test I may very likely fail. Do I have the mental looking for PR people and allow you to apply right on the stamina for the boot-camp experience? What if it's conducted in company web sites. Confident, at this point, that my resume incomprehensible corporate jargon? Is there a chance that, in the intensity of the day's interactions, I'll be exposed as a fraud?
    protuberant eyes and a distinctly uncorporate paunch, he begins on We sit, about fifteen of us, around a horseshoe-shaped table an oddly therapeutic note:
    facing our leader, Patrick Knowles. Based on the number of times the word executive came up in the web description of the I'm going to make eye contact with you. You need to trust and see where this experience will take you. It's based on experiential boot camp and in one brief phone conversation with Patrick, learning, which has three parts: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.
    during which he requested a resume as a condition for atten-There are four major questions: What do you want your life to dance, I pictured something a bit more imposing than a win-look like a year from now? What challenges do you face to make that happen? What commitments do you need to make to face dowless meeting room in the ultraminimalist Hampton Inn.
    those challenges? What is the price you're going to pay if you There aren't even any water glasses at our places or free pads to don't make those commitments?
    write on. I am hoping we will go around the table and introduce ourselves, though there are only a few exceptions to the usual Three parts and four questions—except for the eye contact blank corporate look. I cannot help but wonder about James part, it all sounds dismayingly Morton-like. The difference is (identified by the name card in front of him), for example, if that, despite his appearance, Patrick has charisma; the more he only because of his crazy overgrown crew cut, or Billy, a handsome talks, the more energy he absorbs, apparently from the vibra-man in his forties who seems a little too tightly wound for tions of his own voice in the room, since there is not the slightest the occasion, almost straining to contain his excitement. And stirring of response from the