Down and out in the new economy

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 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.