Ofer Sharone, Preliminary Draft, ILPT Conference 2010

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Self-Subjectification and Self-Blame

The Hazardous Emotional Labor of American Job Searching

Ofer Sharone

MIT Sloan School of Management

PAPER FOR PRESENTATION AT ILPT CONFERENCE MARCH 2010

Over the past thirty years American white-collar employment relations have become increasingly insecure, contingent and “precarious” (Kalleberg 2009; Farber 2008; Cappelli 2008; Osterman 1999). Since the 1970s, the job loss rate has increased more steeply for college-educated white-collar workers than for blue-collar workers and workers with lower levels of education (Jacobs and Newman 2008; Farber 2005; Rodrigues and Zavodny 2003). Once unemployed, white-collar workers are more likely to become long-term unemployed than their blue-collar or non-college educated counterparts (Mishel et al. 2007; Stettner & Allegreto 2005). A vast literature shows that long-term unemployment is associated with a deterioration of psychological and physical well-being (e.g., Broman, Hamilton & Hoffman 2001; Cottle 2001; Dooley, Fielding & Lennart 1996; Thomas, Benzeval & Stansfeld 2005).

Despite these trends, only a few qualitative studies explore the experience of white-collar unemployment. These studies identify self-blame—the tendency to interpret labor market difficulties as reflecting individual short-comings—as among the most salient elements of the unemployment experience (Smith 2001; Newman 1999; Uchitelle 2006). The implications of self-blame are profound. It exacerbates the emotional toll of unemployment because in addition to the loss of income, self-blame entails a personal crisis of perceiving a “flawed” or “defective” self. Self-blame also has significant practical consequences in aggravating job search discouragement (Cottle 2001; Kaufman 1982).

While self-blame is an important consequence of white-collar unemployment in the U.S., this consequence is not universal. Unemployed white-collar job seekers in Israel, as this paper will show, typically understand their labor market difficulties as reflecting a flawed system, not a flawed self. Why do Americans blame themselves while Israelis blame the system? Why would job seekers looking for work in two apparently comparable high-tech global hubs, the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. and the Tel Aviv area in Israel[1], exhibit such a sharp divergence in their subjective responses to unemployment? This first qualitative cross-national comparison exploring the mechanisms underlying subjective responses to unemploymentsuggests that understanding such responses requires analyzing the effects of particular job search practices and the labor market institutions that structure them. Specifically, this paper focuses on the distinct emotional labors (Hochschild 1983) required by different labor market institutions, which in turn give rise to patterns of experiences and subjective responses to unemployment. Israeli institutions give rise to the “specs” game, wherein job seekers focus on matching the precise objective skills required by the position. In the American case, by contrast, institutions generate the “chemistry” game, wherein job seekers focus on displaying interpersonal fit with potential employers.

The most important qualitative study of self-blame among unemployed American white-collar workers is Katherine Newman’s (1999) path-breaking ethnography, which documents the pervasive and pernicious effects of self-blame. In explaining this self-blame, Newman points to the American culture of “meritocratic individualism,” which “provides a system of meaning through which individual experience is understood and evaluated.” (1999:79). Because meritocratic individualism’s central tenant is that individuals are in control of their destinies, this culture “has the power to reach inside displaced managers and devastate their sense of self-worth.” (1999:80).

This paper finds support for Newman’s (1999) finding of self-blame but argues that it is better understood as arising from the practices of job searching, and particularly the emotional labor necessitated in the white-collar institutional context, than from the effects of culture. Meritocratic individualism is surely an important part of American culture, but the American cultural tool kit (Swidler 1986) contains both individual and structural narratives that can be used to understand career difficulties. Newman (1999) points to the prevalent use of individualist discourses in the business press, but American media are also awash with discussions of structural factors affecting careers, such as outsourcing, off-shoring, downsizing and corporate reorganizations. In fact, qualitative studies, including Newman (1999), reveal that unemployed American white-collar workers draw from both individual and structural narratives in discussing their labor market difficulties. Going further, Smith (2001) shows that there is a pattern to the selection of narratives, with job seekers typically discussing their job loss as determined by structuralfactors such as corporate restructuring, but their inability to find new work in “purely individualistic terms” (2001:125). Culture in itself does not explain this pattern in the selection of narratives. Given the availability of various cultural narratives, explaining which narrative is used in a given context requires examining structural or institutionalforces that drive the selection of one narrative over another (Ewick & Silbey 2003; Swidler 2001).

Smith’s (2001) seminal study of the job searching practices of unemployed white-collar workers provides an important starting point for analyzing the institutional and economic context of job searching in the American “new economy.” Given the rise of contingent and insecure employment relations, Smith (2001) shows how employability requires job seekers to focus on demonstrating their flexibility and desire for change. This paper develops Smith’s analysis two ways. First, through a cross-national comparison of two “new economy” sites, this paper demonstrates the unique emotional laborrequired by the American job search “chemistry” game, which will become apparent through the comparison to the very different kind of emotional labor required by the Israeli “specs” game. Second, this paper reveals the causal links between specific kinds of job search emotional labors and subjective responses to unemployment.

While much of the literature on emotional labor focuses on work performed within organizations, research of unemployed job seekers in the United States and Israel shows how emotional labor can be compelled by labor market institutions that transcend any individual firm. The emotional labor performed by job seekers is their generation of the attitudes and demeanors demanded by the dominant labor market institutions that filter job seekers. Job searching has been compared to sales work, demanding the kind of “positive mental attitude” (PMA) that Leidner (1993) describes in the context of insurance sales (Smith 2001, Ehrenreich 2009). Like sales-persons, job seekers do face a stream of rejections and nonetheless must produce a PMA to have a chance at succeeding in their search.

While PMA is undoubtedly important, this paper argues that the focus on PMA misses the core element of the emotional labor required of American white-collar job seekers. As this paper will describe, getting hired in the U.S. is widely understood to require that job seekers create an interpersonal connection or “chemistry” with prospective employers. This in turn requires the emotional work that I callself-subjectification: constructing and projecting the self as a fitting subject possessing the requisite internal attributes for chemistry. Self-subjectification is not the universally required emotional labor of white-collar job searching, but is an outcome of the specific institutional structures that undergird white-collar job searching in the U.S., particularly the self-help industry. In Israel, by contrast, the focus is not on chemistry but on possessing objective skills and credentials and being able to enact the professional role. Thisemployment regime demands far less emotional labor, and whatever emotional labor is performed takes the form of self-objectification: projecting the self as an object with the requisite “specs.”

METHODS

To compare the practices and experiences of American and Israeli job seekers, I primarily utilize in-depth interviews. I conducted initial interviews with fifty-seven American job seekers in 2005, and forty-eight Israeli job seekers in 2006. Each interview lasted approximately two hours. I then followed the interview subjects over time with multiple shorter follow-up interviews. The number of follow-ups varied depending on the length of unemployment. The interviews used open-ended questions probing, among other things, the practices and strategies of job seekers in looking for work, the day-to-day experience of job searching, and job seekers’ understandings and responses to difficulties in finding work. The interviews were transcribed and coded.[2]

I recruited interview subjects that met the sample criteria using a variety of means. Approximately half the sample was recruited at support groups for white-collar job seekers, which I will describe below. Another forty percent of the sample was recruited by randomly approaching individuals at government unemployment offices and job fairs. Finally, ten percent were recruited by snowballing. The samples are not random, but comparable. Due to my recruiting of subjects at support group, both samples over-represent job seekers who attend such groups. I utilized this recruiting strategy because of the significant advantage of being able to observe the job seekers that I studied in action. Through participant-observations at support groups I was able to supplement my primary interview data with observations of job seekers strategizing about their search with colleagues, and in the process voicing the assumptions behind these strategies. This rendered job search strategizing, an activity that is typically solitary and internal, into something external and observable. In addition, I observed various “experts” and counselors advise job seekers on job search strategies. The bulk of my observations were at a support group for white-collar job seekers in the San Francisco Bay Area, which I will refer to as “AmeriSupport,” and at a group in the Tel Aviv Area, which I will refer to as “IsraSupport.”[3] The practices of AmeriSupport comport with descriptions of similar support groups around the U.S. as reported in other studies (Smith 2001; Newman 1999; Ehrenreich 2005; Garret-Peter 2009).

SELF-BLAME VERSUS SYSTEM-BLAME

My cross-national comparison reveals that Israeli job seekers consistently attribute their difficulties to external factors, and most commonly, to the “system.” Job seekers experience is that they are not evaluated on their true merits but screened-out through the use of arbitrary proxies or “buzzwords.” The job market is compared to a “meat market.” Over time Israeli job seekers report feeling like they are “invisible” and “at a loss” vis-à-vis the blind practices of “the system.” By contrast, difficulties in finding work typically lead American white-collar job seekers to feel that there is something wrong with them. Variations among American job seekers cluster around what aspect of the self is to blame. Difficulties at the start of the search are commonly attributed to: “lack of self-confidence,” “low self esteem,” an absence of “self-discipline,” not being “good at interviews,” or being a “bad networker.” Over time, the nature of the self-blame tends to become less focused on one’s job searching capacities and more focused on one’s inner self. After several months of job searching, job seekers often report fearing that they are not finding work because they are somehow “flawed” or “defective.” Becky, a thirty six year old translator, expressed it thus: “I feel more like an orphan. No one wants me, and I don’t want to impose myself on anyone.”

My findings of self-blame among American white-collar workers are consistent with the findings of other recent studies (Smith 2000; Newman 1999;Uchitelle 2006). The focus of this paper is not on the previously established prevalence of self-blame but on what explains American self-blame and more broadly cross-national differences in subjective responses to difficulties in finding work. In the remainder of this paper I will explain these cross-national differences in three steps. In section A, I will describe and compare the institutions that give rise to the “chemistry” game in the U.S. and the “specs” game in Israel. In section B, I will compare the concrete job search emotional labors required in the context of these different games. In section C, I will show how the engagement in these different emotional labors account for the diverging subjective responses to unemployment.

A. JOB SEARCH GAMES: “CHEMISTRY” VERSUS “SPECS”

At first glance the process of white-collar job searching in Israel and the U.S. appears similar. In both sites employers post openings on various Internet websites and job seekers spend time browsing and responding to relevant ads. Moreover, in both sites personal networks play an important role in the hiring process (e.g., Granovetter 1974; Fernandez and Weinberg 1997; Fernandez, Castilla and Moore 2000; Danet, 1989). Yet, beneath these surface similarities, the emotional labors associated with concrete job search practices and strategies—from constructing resumes and cover letters to the use of networks and one’s self-presentation at interviews—are strikingly different. The Israeli job search game focuses on matching employers’ desired “specs,” while the American game focuses on establishing interpersonal “chemistry.”

This difference in focus can be readily seen by comparing the advice typically provided to job seekers at each site. In Israel the consistent message of job search counselors, and in government booklets for the unemployed, is that finding a job requires successfully competing in a marketplace operating on the basis of supply and demand of objective skills. Finding a job is a process of identifying an employer that happens to need your precise package of specs. The dominant American advice discourse is markedly different. American job seekers are advised that, above all, getting a job requires establishing your “fit” with a particular employer. Skills are important as a threshold matter to get your foot in the door, but skills are rarely determinative. Ultimately what matters most are intangible inner qualities that come through in one’s presentation-of-self. The focus is on the person behind the skills.

The American discourse can be found in countless best-selling self-help advice books. For example, What Color is Your Parachute, considered by many the “bible” of American job seekers, claims that getting hired is “like the ‘dating game.’ Both of you have to like each other before you can even discuss the question of ‘going steady,’ i.e., a job” (Bolles 2004:248). As the Director AmeriSupport often repeated: “The personal touch is what gets people hired. People hire people that they like.” He continued:

Create chemistry and connection…People make decisions based on emotion. If all decisions were made by brains we would only buy Toyota Corollas not Jaguars. Employers are the same thing. You need to create chemistry.

While Israeli employers are portrayed as cautious consumers of a product who might consult Consumer Report to compare the “specs,” American employers are portrayed as potential lovers on a first date seeking subjective connection and “chemistry.” These different discursive foci correspond to institutional differences, which render certain determinants in the hiring process more salient than others. The “specs” discourse focuses on the initial filtering of the applicant pool, while the “chemistry” discourse focuses on the interview with a hiring manager, where ultimate decisions are made.

The difference in the salience of these elements of the hiring process is rooted in the distinct labor market institutions dominant in each site. The hiring processes of employers in both sites deploy some mixture of objective specs filters and subjective interpersonal filters, but the different way in which hiring is mediated by labor market institutions make the specs filter more salient to Israeli job seekers and the chemistry filter more salient to American job seekers.

In Israel, the resonance of the specs discourse is rooted in the practices of the two labor market institutions that Israeli job seekers most frequently and directly encounter: private employment agencies and employment testing institutes. Since the 1980s a rapidly growing number of Israeli employers use private employment agencies to post their ads, receive and filter the stacks of résumés, and conduct initial screening interviews (Ram 2008; Nadiv 2005). These agencies filter résumés by reference to a checklist of credentials, skills and experiences specified by the client-employer, and then conduct short screening interviews that aim to check the credibility of job seekers’ claims of meeting these criteria. The screening process is necessarily rigid because the extent of screeners’ knowledge of the employers’ needs and preferences are limited to the employer’s stated parameters. Moreover, screeners are low paid workers with little training, most often women in their early twenties, looking for temporary workto fill the time between military service and college. Given the limited employer-specific information at their disposal, and their limited experience more generally, screeners are not in a position to be persuaded that a unique skill that the job seeker possesses is more important than a skill that is on the employer’s checklist.