Toughening up for employment glory in technological times

SUMMER has been swept away by fall’s torrential rains, leaving the under-employed among us no diversions or excuses. We finally have to cowboy up.

And in hard times, more than ever, trying to get or keep work seems to be a full-time occupation.

With lay-offs rampant, there are expert instructions popping up all over, on everything from clinging like a barnacle to your current job to reinventing yourself for something completely new. And then there are the lists of coping skills for those of us who are forced to apply for work in a brutally competitive market.

Before we board the bus for any longed-for job interview, the authorities tell us what to wear (no hot pants!); what to say (no F-word!); what to drink (nothing out of a personal flask!); and what not to tell everybody on the planet about our private lives.

The latter would have been a no-brainer in the olden days, but modern technology prevails. When you’re searching for work, the Internet can be both a wondrous boon and a leg-hold trap. Sure, it makes sending out resumes and work samples a breeze, but it can also be a welcome mat to our most unguarded revelations.

Case in point: In August, one British woman made worldwide news after she babbled on Facebook, “OMG, I hate my job!! My boss is a total pervy wanker always making me do s--- stuff just to piss me off!!” She obviously hadn’t remembered that her boss was one of her Facebook “friends,” he told her in his response on the social networking site. He added “That ‘s--- stuff’ is called your ‘job,’ you know, what I pay you to do? But the fact that you seem able to f--- up the simplest of tasks might contribute to how you feel about it.” “Pervy wanker” likely didn’t throw in for her farewell card.

Nevertheless, the woman undoubtedly vented her anguish on Facebook immediately afterward. She’ll need to clean up her act before getting a new position. According to the New York Times, a recent study by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com revealed that 45 percent of employers have a gander at a prospective hire’s Facebook page before making their decision. The study involved 2,667 managers and human resource workers, and revealed that 35 percent elected not to offer a job to a candidate because of what they’d discovered on his or her public postings. Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter were all consulted, with bosses turned off by party-hearty lifestyles, raunchy photos, and “poor online communication skills.”

Facebook is responding to this problem with new privacy protectors that further limit accessing our most intimate broadcasts to our nearest and dearest. For most of us, one hopes, that group does not include the person who interviewed us for the first time yesterday.

But using technology to one’s advantage and not one’s detriment gets even more basic than that. One helpful chap at lowendmac.com points out that when you’re offering your e-mail address to a prospective employer, it’s best to provide one that suggests you are vaguely respectable. Among the applicants he came across lately, who supposedly longed for a network administrator job in his organization (he changed their real online addresses to protect the blockheaded), were [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; and the honest, if pathetic, [email protected].

None of these brainiacs was hired by Low End Mac, which sells Macintosh computers. I expect they’ll wind up with careers in the bartending arts.

Of course, misusing technology is not the only way to avoid getting hired. Sheer idiocy is another stellar route. There are many indications that being under-employed for some time rots the brain. (Buy me a drink and I’ll rhyme them off; buy me two and I’ll rhyme them off twice.)

Why else would a blog called Daily Abstraction feel it necessary to advise job applicants that “if you receive a response from the company, and they say they’d like to speak to you any time except for Thursday from noon to 2 p.m., don’t suggest Thursday at noon as being a good time for you.”

Apparently, a little awareness of the fact that they are doing you a favour by speaking to you should factor into your approach.

Daily Abstraction goes further, obviously picturing the jobless as not just momentarily work-free, but innately creepy.

“If they say they’d like to speak to you on the phone, don’t reply asking where you should meet them,” D.A. recommends. “And especially don’t suggest that they meet you near your house.” To which I’d add, “And even more especially, don’t suggest that they meet you near your house, in the nude, behind a fir tree, with several thick ropes.”

I love reading about these gaffes. They reflect the ignorance of goofballs like me, rather than the shiny-shoed winners the professional business writers all imagine us to be. Comb the Globe and Mail and you’ll find tips telling the ambitious to simply schedule networking coffee dates with the CEOS and vice presidents of corporations they admire. Great advice, as long as you’re God’s Gift to Employers -- savvy, stylish, and able to drink a cup of coffee without dribbling an earring into it.

There seem to be fewer and fewer of these blameless wunderkinds out there, though, judging from the unemployment statistics. Maybe even they get fed up from time to time, and blow it. Alison Doyle at About.Com has a little counsel for the surly and disgruntled among us: Put a sock in it.

One employer told her that after he informed an applicant by e-mail that he had not got the job, the applicant responded with a terse, door-slamming “Your loss.” So much for that career as headmaster of charm school.

Another job-seeker Doyle wrote about had an “in” at a workplace and thus was virtually guaranteed an interview. That opportunity vanished after he responded to the suggestion that he ensure his resume was mistake-free. Rather than offering thanks for the tip, the unemployed man delivered a stern rebuke, chiding the person in charge of hiring him for being “critical” and “unprofessional.”

Ah, the heady scent of failure. I think it smells like chicken.