Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today
by Ilana Gershon
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Finding a job used to be simple. You'd show up at an office and ask for an application. A friend would mention a job in their department. Or you'd see an ad in a newspaper and send in your cover letter. Maybe you'd call the company a week later to check in, but the basic approach was easy. And once you got a job, you would stay often for decades. Now ...well, it's complicated. If you want to have a shot at a good job, you need to have a robust profile on LinkedIn. And an enticing personal show more brand. Or something like that - contemporary how-to books tend to offer contradictory advice. But they agree on one thing: in today's economy, you can't just be an employee looking to get hired - you have to market yourself as a business, one that can help another business achieve its goals. That's a radical transformation in how we think about work and employment, says Ilana Gershon. She digs deep into that change and what it means, not just for job seekers, but for businesses and our very culture. In telling her story, Gershon covers all parts of the employment spectrum: she interviews hiring managers about how they assess candidates; attends personal branding seminars; talks with managers at companies around the United States to suss out regional differences like how Silicon Valley firms look askance at the lengthier employment tenures of applicants from the Midwest. And she finds that not everything has changed: though the technological trappings may be glitzier, in a lot of cases, who you know remains more important than what you know. show lessTags
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Rather than giving advice, this narrative is about the advice given; it looks, from an anthropologist’s point of view, at employment in the workplace of America’s corporate world.
If resumes and interviews don’t provide the information needed to make well-informed hiring decisions, what options are available to the job seeker? Are all prospective employees equal players in the employment game? What happens when the advice benefits the company more than the job applicant?
What skills do you need? Should you specialize or become a jack-of-all-trades? Or should you focus on what services you can offer to the company? Do you think of yourself as a business?
Being hired seems to be a complicated process, one with no singular right or show more wrong way in the approach. Everyone may complete the same standardized form, but everyone must also find a way within the confines of that standardization to show their own distinctiveness.
With the Internet advertising available positions and the ease of online applications, job seekers should be aware that the hiring manager might not ever see their applications. So how do those seeking employment make certain the right people in the company notice their applications? Is networking truly the most reliable tool for being hired? Should job seekers consider such options as developing their own personal brand in order to sell themselves to their prospective employers? And just what constitutes a good employer/employee relationship?
Explore the benefits and handicaps of tools such as LinkedIn; consider endorsements and recommendations. Examine second-order information, how you present yourself on Facebook, and whether or not your profile picture represents you in the best light possible.
In today’s world where hiring practices often mean more than just the application form and interview, job seekers must also consider social media, personal qualities, what happens when they get the job, when a job is simply a stepping-stone, and how leaving a company may have become the new normal in today’s job market.
At a time when so many people are finding themselves unemployed, there’s much to consider in this informative and timely review of hiring trends and practices.
Chapter notes and an extensive bibliography are included following the narrative. show less
If resumes and interviews don’t provide the information needed to make well-informed hiring decisions, what options are available to the job seeker? Are all prospective employees equal players in the employment game? What happens when the advice benefits the company more than the job applicant?
What skills do you need? Should you specialize or become a jack-of-all-trades? Or should you focus on what services you can offer to the company? Do you think of yourself as a business?
Being hired seems to be a complicated process, one with no singular right or show more wrong way in the approach. Everyone may complete the same standardized form, but everyone must also find a way within the confines of that standardization to show their own distinctiveness.
With the Internet advertising available positions and the ease of online applications, job seekers should be aware that the hiring manager might not ever see their applications. So how do those seeking employment make certain the right people in the company notice their applications? Is networking truly the most reliable tool for being hired? Should job seekers consider such options as developing their own personal brand in order to sell themselves to their prospective employers? And just what constitutes a good employer/employee relationship?
Explore the benefits and handicaps of tools such as LinkedIn; consider endorsements and recommendations. Examine second-order information, how you present yourself on Facebook, and whether or not your profile picture represents you in the best light possible.
In today’s world where hiring practices often mean more than just the application form and interview, job seekers must also consider social media, personal qualities, what happens when they get the job, when a job is simply a stepping-stone, and how leaving a company may have become the new normal in today’s job market.
At a time when so many people are finding themselves unemployed, there’s much to consider in this informative and timely review of hiring trends and practices.
Chapter notes and an extensive bibliography are included following the narrative. show less
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Books in the Bibliography of Digital Lethargy by Tung-Hui Hu
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6 Works 96 Members
Ilana Gershon is Associate Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University.
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- Business, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Economics, General Nonfiction, Technology
- DDC/MDS
- 650.140973 — Technology Management & public relations Management and auxiliary services Personal success in business Success in obtaining jobs and promotions
- LCC
- HF5382.75 .U6 .G465 — Social sciences Commerce Commerce Business Vocational guidance. Career devlopment
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- Paper, Ebook
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