The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Productivity Consultant

Hi there--right on time, come on in. I see you've already dropped off a resumé and a synopsis of what you want to discuss today. Do you even really need to hear anything I have to say? Data collection? I guess you could call it that. My car? Yeah, I know it's probably not the best on gas mileage, and it does seem to end up in the repair shop a lot but... Hey--this is about your future, not me, right?

"Productivity consultant"? Hmm--that sounds to me like what we used to call "efficiency experts". You're talking about one those people who businesses hire to show them how to improve the profit margin, right? Well, it's not a quick path to popularity, but I suspect that won't matter much to you if you're really into this.

You'll go to some college where you probably have family and can live cheap in their basement while you get your degree in economics or business. You'll take electives studying the works of Ayn Rand while your main courses teach you all about Keynes and Locke and all that philosophy of economics and stuff. You'll do your required work experience in the college credit counseling office, where you'll quickly become convinced that most of your peers are morons--or are you there already?

After you graduate you'll sniff around a few consulting firms, but nobody's interested in some kid just out of college, and you find yourself unimpressed by the fancy lobbies and high-end water coolers that some of these companies have sitting out for the public. It's simply not cost-effective, as far as you're concerned.

You finally decide to set up your own firm. You realize you won't find clients rushing to your crappy storefront location in the bad part of town--all you can afford--but you begin surreptitiously visiting your target businesses and jotting down a dozen ways each can shave costs, then mailing your thoughts to their owners and managers, along with your business card and an offer for a complementary consultation.

A few bite, and one meeting with you convinces them you're wise beyond your years. Soon you're dropping off 200-page reports with detailed cost-benefit analyses, but you are disappointed to discover that no more than a third of your suggestions are ever implemented. When you question the clients, they explain that some of your cuts seem simply too cruel--laying off the loyal 20-year secretary to replace her with a call center based in India, or slashing the employee health-benefits package by choosing a cheaper but disreputable HMO for medical services.

You begin writing letters and editorials for the most fiscally conservative of the financial publications, and after two years you collect your essays and letters into a book: "The Courage to Compete".

You also find your notariety isn't always positive in nature. Unions and anti-poverty groups begin quoting you--out of context, as far as you're concerned--as evidence of the soul-less nature of big business. Employers keep secret the fact that they've attended your 'slash and burn' business seminars.

You still keep consulting--it's your bread and butter--but you notice an annoying trend. Whenever word gets out that your company is doing an efficiency audit, or your vehicles show up at corporate offices, suddenly all the employees are on their best behavior. Video games vanish from break rooms, and lunches are suddenly 29 minutes, rather than 50. You find that most of the data your compile is tainted by this false work ethic that hampers your ability to ferret out the shirkers and the deadwood.

You hit upon a brilliant solution: You'll go undercover. You take a new approach; when you get a new client you send members of your team most comforable with that particular industry or business to work as new employees, who in truth are reporting daily back to you. Usually two weeks of research is all that's needed; employee theft, truancy and incompetence are all dealt with mercilessly.

You even enjoy the occasional foray into an undercover job yourself. You're still relatively young, and you delight in the pompous pronouncements of jaded, lazy corporate slugs who take you under their wing in hopes of keeping you unproductive and non-threatening. You even secretly tape some of their juicier cynical observations.

Just out of curiosity--you're not taping this interview, are you? Good.

Your ego will be your downfall. You'll make a lot of enemies along the way, but you drive a nondescript vehicle, live in a high-security residential complex, and have no kids to be targeted. In fact, you have relatively little social life because you find it a waste of valuable working hours.

You will, though, have employees who become friends of a sort. You'll come to rely on two of them--a guy you got to know in college and hired in the early days, and a ruthless girl you dated for a while and although that didn't work out, you respected her cutthroat approach to business.

Late in the fiscal year, as businesses realize there are some heads to roll when the financial report cards are shared with stockholders, is always your busiest time. This one particular time you're supervising the audit of a transcontinental trucking company, your male partner is overseeing a hospital analysis, while your female partner is running point on a major grocery chain's examination. You're up late working on your findings when your male partner gives you a call.

"I've found something pretty big," he whispers. I think I want you to come here and help me sneak some files out. At least bring the microcamera and we can get some proof before someone figures out they should've shredded all this.

You jump in your car and head to the hospital. It's almost midnight, and you part next to your partners car and flash your headlights. He opens a side door and lets you in. When you get up to the room the filing cabinets are empty. You look around, but nothing. You ask your partner what's up, but he smiles.

Seems your enemies have taken a page out of your book--work from within. Turns out he'd been working for the hospital union after they got wind of his audit and arranged a compromising blackmail situation. He soon saw their side of the argument, and he's being well paid to help arrange your tragic fall down an out of service elevator shaft.

Your funeral will be poorly attended, but it will be short, and very efficient.