Are Coaches the Answer to White-Collar Unemployment?

Ed. Note: The following is an excerpt from Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Bait and Switch (Metropolitan Books; September 2005).

Where to begin? My first foray into the world of job searching, undertaken at my computer on a gloomy December afternoon, is distinctly intimidating. These days, I have gathered from a quick tour of relevant web sites, you don't just pore over the help-wanted ads, send off some résumés, and wait for the calls. Job searching has become, if not a science, a technology so complex that no mere job seeker can expect to master it alone.

The Internet offers a bewildering variety of sites where you can post a résumé in the hope that a potential employer will notice it. Alternatively, you can use the net to apply directly to thousands of companies. But is the résumé eye-catching enough? Or would it be better to attempt face-to-face encounters at the proliferating number of "networking events" that hold out the promise of meaningful contacts?

Fortunately, there are about 10,000 people eager to assist me -- "career coaches" -- who, according to the coaching web sites, can help you discover your true occupational "passion," retool your résumé, and hold your hand at every step along the way. The coaches, whose numbers have been doubling every three years, are the core of the "transition industry" that has grown up just since the mid-nineties, in a perhaps inevitable response to white-collar unemployment.

Unlike blue-collar people, the white-collar unemployed are likely to have some assets to invest in their job search; they are, in addition, often lonely and depressed -- a perfect market, in other words, for any service promising prosperity and renewed self-esteem. Some coaches have formal training through programs like the Career Coach Academy's fifteen-week course; others are entirely self-anointed. You can declare yourself a coach without any credentials, nor are there any regulatory agencies looking over your shoulder -- which means that, for the job seeker, it's the luck of the draw.

I find Morton on the web, listed as a local career coach, although -- as I will soon learn -- most coaching is done by phone so there is no need for geographic proximity. Morton has been there, is my thought. The background material that he sends me shows a history of what appear to be high-level, defense-related jobs, including, somewhat datedly, "Senior Intelligence Analyst and Branch Chief Responsible for Analyzing Soviet Military Research." He has given seminars at Carnegie Mellon University and spoken frequently at Kiwanis and Rotary clubs. Surely he can guide my transformation into the marketable middle-level professional I aspire to be. Besides, he assures me, I will not have to pay for our first, trial session.

I have no trouble recognizing him at Starbucks in Charlottesville's Barracks Road Mall; he's the one wearing the JMU baseball cap, as promised, a description that encouraged me to come in rumpled gray slacks and sneakers. The top is better, though -- black turtleneck, tweed blazer, and pearl earrings -- which I am hoping will pass as "business casual." Flustered by being five minutes late because my normal route to the mall was blocked by construction, I stumble over my new name in the handshake phase. He appears not to notice. In fact, he doesn't seem to be much into the noticing business or perhaps already regards me as a disappointment.

After exchanging some observations on the pre-Christmas parking situation at the mall, I lay out my situation for him: I do public relations and event planning, I tell him, but I've been doing it on a freelance basis and am now seeking a stable corporate position with regular benefits, location flexible. How to present myself? Where to begin?