Executive Reading: Bait & Switch The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Community Comments

By Barbara Ehrenreich
Metropolitan Books, September 2005; ISBN: 0805076069

Reviewed by: Margaret Teichert and Oleg Kaganovich

Barbara Ehrenreich has written a number of fascinating books that examine the hardships and inner workings of underrepresented groups. For her previous bestseller “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” the author spent a year working in a series of minimum wage jobs, from waitress to Wal-Mart associate, to reveal how the hardest-working poor often barely make ends meet. Unfortunately, “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream,” lacks both the compassion and empathy of her earlier work and fundamentally misses the point. 
     It’s easy, she claims, for us to believe that blue-collar workers could have gotten better jobs if they had made smarter life choices early on. But what about people who “did everything right,” and still ?nd themselves “unemployed, underemployed or anxiously employed” in the corporate world? What would it be like, she wonders, to try to reenter the white-collar job market in middle age? This, essentially, is the premise for “Bait and Switch.” Ehrenreich decides to pose as a freelance public relations professional seeking full-time employment in corporate America — a world in which she has never worked, and for which she holds a great deal of contempt.
     With little research into what the profession actually entails, she chose PR because it is “the evil twin of journalism;” therefore, landing a $50,000 job in some large company should be no trouble at all. But after about four to ?ve months of “searching,” she got discouraged, and decided instead to tell the story of a fruitless white-collar job hunt. After all, 44 percent of the long-term unemployed are white-collar workers. It’s their story she claims to tell here.
     But ?rst among the many problems in this book is her belief that she has “done everything right” in her job search. Yes, she went to college. Yes, she can write. But apart from that, her resume is essentially a ?ction (a big no-no). She complains that there is far less emphasis on skills and experience than on being “upbeat and likable.” (Really, what employer wouldn’t want a cynical and melancholy PR director?) She goes to “networking” events that have nothing to do with PR, or the industries in which she hopes to work and are more like support groups for the recently downsized.
     Not surprisingly, these events don’t attract any hiring managers. But they attract plenty of shady opportunists, including career coaches who (for about $300/hour) act alternately as personal cheerleaders and drill sergeants and seem to prey on the desperation and low self-esteem of the job seekers.
     True, the “transition industry” has its share of charlatans; however, Ehrenreich manages to ?nd the worst of the lot and portrays them as “typical.” It’s as though she studied a seedy group of ambulance chasers to research the legal profession. 
Continued...

• Share
  • Digg This
  • del.icio.us
  • Newsvine
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Furl It
  • !Y My Web
  • Google
• Email
• Print

Recommend This

Community Comments