There have been rumors around that, in an effort to reduce the bourbon and bon-bon budget, my contract may not be renewed at Banker & Tradesman.
Fat chance. The powers-that-be would rather rename the paper “Banker,” to save enough money on the ink required for Tradesman and Stuff, to keep me on the job. The Cohen tenure, known affectionately as the Golden Age of Business Commentary, will go on much as before.
In a concession to tough times, I’ll be working here this summer as a “seasonal employee” – part of the same budget that pays the guys who rake the leaves outside the newspaper’s skyscraper on Warren Boulevard.
This is an old accounting trick. Seasonal employees and consultants are plopped in a mysterious part of most companies’ budgets where expenses don’t seem to actually count – sort of like when Massachusetts issues $47 trillion worth of bonds and claims to have “balanced the budget.” Many former employees come back as “consultants” to the companies that dumped them, because their new compensation comes from a duffel bag hidden in the back yard, labeled “not payroll.”
The market for seasonal employees is very competitive right now. Lots of folks need the work and lots of companies like the sound of “seasonal,” as opposed to full time with health insurance and bottles of bourbon.
SnagAJob.com recently conducted a survey of hiring mangers to see what they were looking for in seasonal employees, and once they got past saying something like, “You mean, besides Cohen?” the managers offered up four criteria that should be met by the non-Cohens among you.
As you can imagine, Cohen the Columnist had no trouble getting in the door as a seasonal employee. What he brought to the table may be instructive for those of you in search of summertime gigs, to supplement the fortunes to be made in Boston metro commercial real estate.
At the top of the list for appealing seasonal-employee attributes was “positive attitude and eagerness.” That was a snap for me. I promised to be at work every morning by 11 a.m., long before the editor gets there; and I have devoted most of my adult life to assuring the prosperity of bankers and tradesmen – and what better way to continue God’s work than to give them advice through a newspaper column?
Next on the list was “ability to work the schedule required.” I am Mr. Flexibility. I’ve already told my elderly parents that if they ever bother me at work with some concern about pills or pain or something, I will put them out on an ice floe so far from land that their cell phones won’t work. And I do my best writing at 3 a.m. in my pajamas, so even if I’m distracted during the day by authoritarian editors checking for accuracy or something equally silly, I’ll still put out the product.
Financially Astute
Third was “previous experience.” Ever since I was a little boy, I would line up all my piggy banks based on marketing message and reserves – and then loan money to my little sister at 31 percent interest, payable in candy bars or fast food. On the side, I would trade baseball cards with my sucker friends, who never remembered that Billy Goodman had some of his best years with the White Sox, not the Red Sox. I reeked of banking and trading.
Finally, the hiring managers want to be comfortable with your “commitment to the entire season.” My track record is pretty clear. I’ve been writing this column for so long that I remember when Fidelity’s Magellan Fund actually made money. I’m not going anywhere.
To be sure, I’m a flexible, risk-taking, happy-go-lucky kind of guy. I don’t mind seasonal employment or day-labor or the publisher asking me to stop over on weekends to wash his car. The key to any successful job search is determination.
Don’t listen to the president of Harvard, who last year fretted that business school students might be blinded to the “fundamental interconnectedness of humankind, of societies and of economies.”
I never worried about connecting to humankind. I was negotiating with editors and publishers and Human Resources officers. Humans had no place at the table.
