The Company Men: The Star-Studded Downsizing Film You'll Want To Watch With Your Unemployed Friends

Despite it's star-studded cast - Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Chris Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones, Maria Bello, Craig T. Nelson  - the most honest film I've ever seen about the resetting of America's job market, was a box office flop - perhaps because its natural market (unemployed people) can no longer afford to see movies. That's too bad, because The Company Men deserves to be seen by every right-sized, downsized, unemployed and underemployed American so I hope my unemployed and underemployed readers will rent it as I did last week.

The Company Men's main character, Ben Affleck, is a $150k per year account executive at a ship-building company until he is fired along with thousands of his co-workers by CEO (Craig T. Nelson) and the HR director (Maria Bello). The Company Men realistically follows Affleck as he goes to company-paid "outplacement", sells his upscale house, sells his Porsche, moves back in with his parents, deals unsuccessfully with headhunters, loses job opening after job opening to younger MBAs willing to work for less than half what he used to make, lets his wife go back to work (she's a nurse so she can work any time she wants)  and eventually takes a manual labor job carrying building supplies to the skilled laborers at his brother-in-law's (Kevin Costner) construction firm.

My regular readers will understand why I especially liked the advice Affleck got from the outplacement firm: they told him and his fellow outplaced workers to make a list of everybody they know - friends, relatives, former co-workers, former bosses, former clients - anybody who might help them find their next job.

The Company Men is honest about ageism. One of Affleck's co-workers (Chris Cooper) commits suicide when he discovers that no matter how much he amends his resume and dyes his hair, he's just too damn old to get a job. When Affleck's old company loses a major account and starts a second round of firings, workers over age 50 are fired in disproportionately high numbers but company attorneys insist they can get away with it.

The Company Men is honest about what I call the "low percentage game" of sending resumes and going to interviews. If you've sent thousands of resumes and gone to dozens of interviews that didn't lead to job offers, you may be tempted to think there's something wrong with your resume or your interview skills - and there are plenty of people who are more than willing to take advantage of your insecurities and charge you hundreds of dollars to write you a killer resume or thousands of dollars to coach you how to interview. My readers know that the truth: its not better resumes or better interview skills but better relationships that will get you the job. The candidate with a great resume is no match for the candidate who is introduced to the hiring manager by a mutual friend. I call this mutual friend the "social co-signer". (Read more in my Feb 28 thru March 5 posts).

The Company Men is honest about where your next job is likely to come from: somebody you already know. Affleck finally escapes manual labor with his brother-in-law and gets back into a "more suitable" job when one of his fellow fired executives (Tommy Lee Jones) uses the profits from his stock options to start his own company and hire a few of the down-sized workers.

Kudos to John Wells for writing and directing the most honest film I've ever seen on job search in modern America. Kudos to The Weinstein Group for getting this realistic, almost instructional film out on DVD. Rent it today. Watch it with a few of your job seeking friends.
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Higginbotham At Large is not affiliated with anonymously or pseudonymously published websites - even sites that quote from or link to my blog. See my March 12 & 13 2011 posts for details.

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Age Discrimination Revisited

My previous two posts have generated a lot of questions about age discrimination. Despite the fact that I recently served on a task force whose aim was to identify employers who are eager to hire so-called "older workers" and despite the fact that I have written on this topic many times before both in this blog and in publications like Business Lexington and Living Well 50 Plus, a few of my readers seem to think I don't believe bias against older workers is real. They misunderstood my last two posts and completely missed my point that issues like your age and your unexplained employment gaps only matter if you are wasting your time playing what I call the "low percentage game" of sending resumes to strangers, assuming that the hiring process is meritocratic and fair. You shouldn't, it isn't.

The hiring game is not a fair fight. The people who get the jobs are the people who have an unfair advantage over the competition. The people who get the jobs are the people who have a relationship the other candidates don't have. If you have such a relationship, your age and your employment gaps won't matter because you and the hiring manager have a mutual, trusted colleague or friend who is "co-signing" for you, assuring the hiring manager that you are the person for the job. 

My point is not that age bias and employment gaps won't hurt you in a fair fight against younger candidates with better resumes: my point is that you shouldn't be in a fair fight because it's not the people who fight fair who get the jobs. Let me invoke John Steinbeck who said "If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck."

Employers work very hard at obscuring the fact that you aren't in a fair fight. They post jobs that are already filled. They make candidates interview for the job 4, 5, 10 times as if this is a meritocratic process.

What they don't tell you is that a better-connected candidate - employment gaps, age spots and all - can skip the line at any time and win the job over younger, more qualified candidates.

Instead of spending 8 hours a day filling out online applications, uploading resumes to strangers and taking online tests only to end up at the end of the week with no callbacks and no interviews, do what I told you to do in yesterday's post: get out the legal  pad, make the list I told you how to make and start contacting people you already know. One of them knows your next boss and will lead you past the   long line where people who think job search is fair are waiting obediently in line and introduce you to the boss. This is how 90% of professional jobs are really filled. 

If you still don't understand my point that I want you to stop playing the low percentage game and start playing the high percentage game, let me ask you how you choose a plumber if you don't already know one or how you choose a CPA if you don't already know one. Chances are, you are paralyzed with indecision until a colleague or friend or vendor or customer recommends a CPA or a plumber. The same thing is true of hiring. Hiring managers can comb through stacks of great resumes and interview dozens of highly qualified people and still fail to make a hiring decision then one day someone's professional co-signer cuts the line and ushers his friend into the hiring manager's heart and mind.

That is the correct order, by the way - first heart and then mind. Even though we humans have these big brains the way we make important decisions is really embarrassing. We "decide" with our hearts and then we "alibi" or "rationalize" with our big brains.

There is no heart in filling out online applications. There is no emotional element in the filling out of online applications and the taking of online tests. These bottlenecks exist to perpetuate the myth that hiring is dispassionate and fair and meritocratic but the reality is that when your old pal from Excess Capacity Corp. hand delivers your resume to his friend over at Meritocracy Corp. that hiring manager feels the cockles of his heart strangely warmed and the job  is now yours to lose even if you never applied for it.

Everybody else waits in line for the call that will never come.

Oh, the guy who hires you has a big brain and, if anybody asks, he will use that big brain to rationalize his decision to hire you.

Your gray hair won't matter.

Your employment gaps won't matter.

HR won't matter.

Stop playing the low percentage game of spending all your time sending resumes to strangers. Don't be a stranger. Find the connection between you and your next boss.

Re-read my previous 2 posts and then do what I said. This is how 90% of professional jobs are really filled. 

But if you still want to play the low percentage game and you just can't let the subject of ageism go  see my 2 May 2010 post called "Institutional Ageism" :: http://higginbothamatlarge.blogspot.com/2010/05/institutional-ageism.html

After you've read it, abandon your time-wasting, low-percentage game of sending resumes to strangers and start networking your way to a new job. Someone you already know knows your next boss.

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