Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.

In the last week new opportunities appeared on the scene, I continued with a series of odd jobs in one hour to half-day increments and I sold my right arm to science for a chicken Caesar salad.  The work week – or dare I say lack of work week – began promisingly with a call from a headhunter regarding a resume I sent in response to a listing on a professional association website, and included another more career boosting offer of part-time virtual office work from an academic institution.  The headhunter told me that I was overqualified for the job and that my previous two salaries were considerably above what the position would pay, but was ultimately sufficiently impressed with my experience and willingness to accept both a salary and title cut that she scheduled an interview with the client.  Should I be concerned that I keep getting told that I am overqualified for every professional job I apply for, and yet am somehow perfectly well suited for every temporary job a college or bright high school student can handle?  Here is a snapshot of what I did in the days leading up to my next big interview.

Sunday

I volunteered to help my new friend, the casting Goddess, with her latest project on Sunday.  She’s working on a reality show wherein young female shopaholics and overspenders undergo a financial makeover with the assistance of a professional debt counselor and their parents.  This experience taught me that despite the tabloid coverage and fame given to such performers, surprisingly few people want to appear on the average reality show, and significantly fewer want to get their parents involved in the experience.

The assignment initially seemed simple enough, and I believed that my recent experience asking random strangers whether they were registered Democrats and a drama minor were more than adequate preparation for the job.  I signed up to spend Sunday afternoon through early evening giving out flyers about the show and gathering the names, background details and contact information of willing women. I selected Park Slope from a list of neighborhoods the three temporary casting workers could choose, but resolved to cover a variety of potentially interesting other locales both before and after my formal shift.

On Saturday afternoon I began my pre-work by visiting Rockefeller Center to seek out the casting line for “The Biggest Loser.” Perhaps there isn’t a direct correlation between obesity and debt – unless one has spent all of his or her money on Ring Dings and Twinkies – but I reasoned that people who want to be on a reality show would be willing to try different types of shows, or would know others who were eager to share their challenges with the general viewing public.  Unfortunately, when I got to Rockefeller Center, the line that I had seen on a morning television show and heard would last until 5:00pm, was nowhere to be found.  It seemed unlikely that a contingent of people with more than one hundred pounds to lose could be easily overlooked, and I despaired and gave up.

On Sunday I woke up early to flyer the NYU and Columbia campuses, all the while looking for flyers for part-time jobs and experiment volunteers that I could use myself.  I then began my formal hawking outside of Top Shop, thinking that its customers would be young fashionistas whose efforts to look like Kate Moss could have landed them in debt.  I waited for those leaving the store with multiple bags to pounce, and then accosted them brightly with “We’re looking for women who love to shop for a new reality television show!” A large number of women walked by without acknowledging that a human being had spoken to them, and the majority of those who stopped turned out to be tourists with only a few days left in the country.  After about an hour of getting rebuffed by those entering the store, leaving the store, and just passing by, a manager came out and asked – in a none too friendly manner - whether she could help me. She seemed primed to chase me away. “I’m helping to cast a reality show about women who love to shop, and I thought your customers would be an ideal group,” I said enthusiastically.  She actually seemed to approve of this, especially when coupled with the name of the prestigious British broadcasting company sponsoring the show, and agreed to take a handful of flyers for her staff and select customers.  It was then that I realized that storeowners and workers would have a good idea of the identities of shopaholics, and might themselves be employed in retail because of their own love of the merchandise.

On the way to the subway to Brooklyn I flyered a good swath of Soho, and then set off to both enlist the help of shopkeepers and find potential participants in Prospect Park. On Seventh Avenue I went into every shoe and clothing store from Flatbush Avenue to 15^th Street to describe my mission and solicit assistance in outreach, and was shocked that a worker at a store I’d never ventured into recognized me from my asking him whether he was a registered Democrat in Manhattan a few days before. Going up to strangers stretched out in states of undress is not particularly easy, I discovered, and almost every group in Prospect Park seemed to include a baby or two being bounced around by financially solvent looking parents.  I worked my shpiel as best I could, abetted by a clipboard which I thought somehow made me appear more like a professional casting person, but rather than trying to extract names I pushed the email address on the flyer and urged interested candidates to send in their details.  After tiring from covering huge expanses of hilly land in the park, I set off for Williamsburg in search of colorful and impoverished hipsters.

As usual, the streets surrounding the Bedford Avenue L train looked like an artsy college town populated by recent graduates mixed with a few confused middle-aged Polish people, and almost everyone I saw seemed like they had just come from painting or was on their way to get a tattoo.  I have never been there at a time when the garbage cans weren’t overflowing, and the scene didn’t look like the morning after a massive fraternity party or the abandoned grounds of a rave.  Although I always feel depressingly old and preppy there, the neighborhood proved to be a better scouting ground than the more mature and affluent Slope, and the sheer population density on the streets provided me with many more people to approach.  I went up to groups of women clustered on stoops, lying on the street eating pizza and leaving cute boutiques with bags.  I had a conversation with a man who asked if transsexual women were eligible, and went into every retail store I saw on my way to McCarren Park.

At the entrance to McCarren Park I saw a man petitioning for a political candidate, and went up to him to add my name to his green sheets. Once you’ve petitioned yourself you understand the agony of begging people to stop for thirty seconds and being rebuffed forty-nine times out of fifty, so now I just sign every petition I see even if I’m not asked to do so. We talked shop about the petitioning business, and he told me he was averaging over twenty signatures an hour, an astronomical number in the game of soliciting John Hancocks.  I asked the Master Petitioner for his secret, and he told me that it was all about eye contact.  “Once you make strong eye contact you know you’ve got them,” he said.  I wondered how this was possible when faced with a job that caused people to deliberately not make contact with you and rush by as quickly as possible, but was grateful for not only his advice but the five names and numbers he gave me of women in debt.  McCarren Park was blissfully smaller and flatter than Prospect Park and the rug rat-free demographic was better suited for the show.  I encountered several promising subjects, and even had a gentleman ask whether he could be cast as the “gay best friend” if his female companion was chosen.

Monday

On Monday I resolved to continue searching for reality show participants, and to not turn my names over until I had gathered more leads and heard from the numerous emails and facebook missives I sent out beseeching friends to assist me with outreach.  I was exhausted from walking through several neighborhoods in two boroughs and two parks on a hot summer day, and was glad to have no formal gigs to complete.

In the morning I spoke with a legal headhunter about a position at a top law firm, and told her that I knew it would be highly unlikely for me to secure a new position in New York City with a title or salary similar to my last two jobs.  The several rounds of layoffs at my next-to-last employer, I informed her, had provided me with a wide range of examples of the next steps for former colleagues who ranged from their early twenties to their fifties.  Not one member of this cohort group had assumed a full-time position at another bank; several had moved to the academic side in institutions in New York or out-of-state and accepted 50% pay decreases, some had signed on for four month consultant or temporary positions and others had moved to hedge funds or asset management firms.  She, in turn, informed me of the massive over-qualification levels of the other applicants for the position, and the fact that many laid off lawyers were applying for administrative positions that didn’t specifically require their law degrees.

In the afternoon I spoke with a Career Services leader at a top business school about assuming more resume review work, and discussed the wave of recruiting professionals from the private side moving into, or trying to transition into work on the university side.  We agreed that the exodus of human resources professionals coupled with the number of jobless alumni had made landing a university position incredibly difficult, but was a tremendous boon to those hiring on the academic side because they had a surplus of highly credentialed candidates willing to both relocate and work for a fraction of their former salaries.  I gave him some tips on what recruiters in my old world looked for to help his students, and expressed my interest in future openings in his office and at any peer institutions.

Tuesday

I have repeatedly vowed to cease mystery shopping at banks, but during unemployment it’s hard not to be vulnerable to legitimate requests for paid assistance.  My three day odd job as a carnival worker was pretty disastrous because I could neither handle great wads of cash while operating the game nor climb into the booths without injuring myself, but I have excelled at all my subsequent endeavors, and the ego boost and promise of extra money proves incredibly tempting.  When I received an email about remaining shopping opportunities in my area for the month I couldn’t help but sign up, and so on Tuesday I had to visit yet another branch to play the role of a customer seeking investment advice.

The mystery shopping job involves going to a branch to enact one of several scenarios designed to test the skills of the banker, and assessing other areas like overall cleanliness and presentation of marketing materials.  Most visits take no longer than 20 minutes and it pays $15 per visit, with each shopper being allowed to complete up to five visits per month.  I tend to rely on the same scenario of seeking advice on CDS, an easy but somewhat dangerous ruse because CD rates are so incredibly low that a shopper will invariably end up being directed from the personal banker to an investment associate for a longer session.  I usually decline the immediate introduction and vow to return at a later time, but this time the banker transitioned me so quickly to an investment colleague that I could not extricate myself.  I ended up spending over thirty minutes being led through the world of tax-free municipal bonds and five year annuities, and when I returned home that evening I had a message from the bank asking me to call them back to discuss my options.

From the bank way out in Brooklyn I headed to Central Casting in Manhattan, where I’d signed up for extra work in television and movies only a week earlier.  I thought I could scout the women registering at the 12:00pm session for my reality show project.  Although I’d been cautioned against soliciting actresses when real people were the ideal, nobody can really make a living doing extra work so the majority of the registrants would have to be students or have other day jobs.  I joined the line outside of the casting office, and went up to each woman with my pitch of “Would you be interested in appearing in a reality television show?” I was surprised by the lack of interest amongst those who were willing to take on extra work – pretty much the lowest level in the entertainment food chain – but was able to get nibbles from two young women, one of whom luckily had her stage-struck mother in tow.  While the spot outside the office was convenient, the proprietors of Central Casting kept trying to usher me into the session, and I clearly couldn’t reveal that I was trying to cast from their pool of applicants.  I then went down to the lobby, hoping to head off women on the way to the elevator.  I was uniformly rejected by the women racing up to the session although one or two agreed to take a flyer.  Building management then came over to ask why I was soliciting tenants and visitors to the building.  I told the gruff building supervisor I would be gone in five minutes and pushed as many flyers on budding extras as I could before fleeing.

On Tuesday afternoon I had my final stretch of petitioning for the District Attorney candidate, and was overjoyed at the prospect of never again standing on a corner entreating pedestrians for signatures.  I was assigned to West 72^nd Street and the immediate area, and took off from the Times Square headquarters with my pint-sized college age looking partner.  I had lost several partners in mid-shift when they grew exhausted from rejection and repeating the same “Are you a registered Democrat?” pitch but I recognized her from a few previous shifts, and was optimistic that she could make it through the 4 ½ hour stretch.  When we arrived at our Upper West Side destination we discovered that we both wanted the coveted space outside of Fairway, but I graciously allowed her to have it and headed down to cover the small shady park area outside of the West 72^nd and Broadway subway stop.

The fact that it was not raining and I wasn’t standing directly in the sun or being cursed at made this a more pleasant stint than several others I completed, but it’s hard to get used to being repeatedly ignored and having the vast majority of people who answer your question with an affirmative keep walking as though you are simply taking a poll on their party affiliation, and not trying to wrangle a signature from them.  In this particular location I had an audience of people sitting on benches all around me, and I tried to imagine I was performing in theater in the round in the role of a valiant laid off heroine on a fearless quest to get signatures from New Yorkers unwilling to make eye contact.  After some particularly stinging rebuffs I even tried to get sympathy from my “audience” members by pointing out the people who held up their hands in front of them to prevent my questioning from more than half a block away, or the few who engaged in enough promising chat to make me chase them up the street before declining to sign.  As usual, I attracted a fair amount of conversation starved types, one of whom insisted that I write down a website on conspiracy theories, and another who wanted to tell me about a disturbing encounter with a petitioner on the East Side.  “I was across town and someone came up to me and asked if I was a registered Republican. I almost threw up on their shoes,” said the posh looking older blonde lady.  Thinking that this inflamed her Democratic passion I offered her the clipboard, but she apparently only wanted to complain about the horror of being mistaken for a Republican and declined to sign.

Near the end of my shift a large number of clean scrubbed and youthful people supporting a church descended upon the Upper West Side in an attempt to push granola bars and literature about their religious beliefs.  In addition to wielding a staggering number of granola boxes, they positioned themselves three to a block, and drowned out my calls off “Are you a registered Democrat?” with “Free granola bar!” The competition proved impossible, although I was heartened by the fact that they too were frequently turned down.  I made my way up to Fairway to retrieve my partner, fighting granola pushers all the way, only to discover that she had left without me.  After snagging the better spot for herself, she had given up a few hours into the shift.

Wednesday

On Wednesday I had only one hour or so of work to complete before going to lunch and an afternoon movie with my cousin and dinner with my brother.  My assignment for the day was a trailer check for the first show of the day in every auditorium for “Harry Potter” at the Clearview Chelsea.  Near the beginning of my stint in unemployment I found out that I could get paid to go to the movies through the marketing company Certified Field Associate (www.certifiedfieldassociate.com), but there’s a considerable amount of competition for these gigs. I probably land only one for every five I apply to do.  If you’ve ever seen a tremendous line forming around the block for a free screening of an unopened movie, you know how fanatic New Yorkers can be when it comes to snagging complimentary tickets, and the payment of up to $12.50 for this task ($2.50 for each additional screen as well) seems to push people over the edge.  My job here was to watch the trailers at both the 10:15am and 11:50am shows, assess the reaction to the coming attractions, determine whether the correct versions were shown and call in my results from the theater.  Trailers at 10:15am shows don’t generally elicit much of a reaction since many of the audience members, and frequently the projectionist, are only partially awake.  This screening was no exception.  Rather than watching part of Potter before exiting for the start of the second showing on another screen I ran a few errands in between, and completed my parallel assignment of surveying the manager on ticket prices in all categories.

Wednesday’s highlight proved to be my brother’s paying for the Planet Sushi dinner, the joy of the treat only mitigated by the fact that he mentioned at least ten times that this was the first time in our careers  as a recruiting executive and doorman where he was earning more than me.

Thursday

While flyering the Columbia campus for reality show participants a few days earlier, I found a listing for a motion study paying volunteers $15 an hour to play a video game.  I called up the hotline with my details, and was booked for an hour visit at a facility at the 168^th Street medical campus.  As an undergraduate I was always game for paid participation in any experiment the Psych or science departments could come up with, and continued participating in experiments through graduate school. The most notable of these research studies required me to eat varying size portions of Beefaroni and assess my hunger and satiety after each serving.  I can’t remember how much I got paid back then for that, but I remember that it took me several years to conquer the resulting addiction to Chef Boyardee products. This study didn’t promise any free food, but I’d never visited the uptown campus before and had nothing else lined up for the day,

The Columbia motion study required me to sit facing and pushed underneath a frictionless video screen with my dominant right arm strapped up and monitored.  I was instructed to flick my arm back and forth and direct a puck into a circle a few inches away.  The exercise was a lot more difficult than it originally appeared, and the instructor told me several times that I was flicking and pausing rather than moving back immediately as directed.  I was also using my shoulder rather than relying on my wrist as directed.  After a few minutes of neuromuscular embarrassment coupled with the fear of losing my $15 for being spastic, the researcher found a skydiving-like harness to strap my arm up so that I did not put too much shoulder into the action.  I continued aiming the puck for thirty minutes, and then the puck disappeared and I had to continue shooting with no measure of whether I had successfully hit the target.  I’m not sure what the study was trying to assess - other than whether the motion was the same without the subject’s being able to gage performance or the willingness of poor students and laid off alumni to participate in experiments - but I was profoundly relieved when I could finally be freed from my bondage.

On the way home I stopped off at the main Columbia campus at 116^th to check for postings on additional experiments, and spent my entire day’s pay on a chicken Caesar salad, a diet coke a tip.

Friday

On Friday I was scheduled to talk to the headhunter to prepare for my Monday interview.  I called her when I hadn’t heard from her by late afternoon, and got the message that she was on vacation for several days.  I had a 3:00pm call scheduled with a former colleague now employed in a job similar to the one I’d be interviewing for to get some helpful hints. She wasn’t there when I called, and didn’t return two messages. All my employed friends are now busier than ever, widening the gulf in our situations even more. I’ll be chasing her advice on the weekend.

In the morning I did one more mystery shopping gig at another bank branch.  I am ashamed to admit why I picked up another, but I am on my way to earning a $10 bonus if I complete a 5^th shopping gig for the month.  For many years at my investment banking job I earned bonuses larger than the salaries of most Americans, and at my law firm job I was in line for a 15% bonus on my six-figure salary.  Of course the firm cleverly postponed the delivery of bonuses for professional exempt staff until after the massive layoff so I didn’t get mine, but that is beside the point.  I am determined to get a “bonus” this year, even if it’s only $10.

The mystery shop began with the always awkward question of what I do for a living.  I have now tried on about fifty different responses to this question, ranging from “I’m retired” to “I’m a blogger,” to “I’m between jobs at the moment.” This time I decided to go with a more upbeat response, and said “I’m a freelance casting agent working on a reality show about women in debt.”  The banker perked up considerably at this response, and offered that he might know of people who would be interested in participating in the show.  “Wouldn’t it be a bit of a breach of confidentiality or a conflict of interest for a banker to refer people in debt to a reality show?” I asked.  He thought about this for a moment, and then asked for some flyers to give to people outside of his workplace.

In the afternoon I heard from an ad I answered on craigslist for extras to appear on a boat for an upcoming theatrical project.  The listing called for “all types”  from 21-45, and the woman who called me said I didn’t need to bring anything in particular to my meeting with the casting agent on Saturday.  It’s vaguely suspicious, but at least the meeting is in a midtown office building rather than a hotel. I would have been hesitant if they’d only requested attractive young women, as many ads for temporary jobs do these days, but I feel a bit more secure in knowing that there may be homely middle-aged men there to protect me.

I ended the evening with a trailer check on a sneak preview of “The Ugly Truth.” Although I didn’t pick up an extra $2.50 for a second screen check, I did take in the entire film in a comfortable seat and enjoyed the romantic comic chemistry between Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, even though his poorly disguised accent was never sufficiently explained.  I called in the results of the check from the screening after the theater but apparently should have done it immediately after the trailers because when I got home there was a message on my answering machine demanding to know the results.