Let's call networking what it really is

Recently, I was watching a news report about the immigration crisis in Europe. Migrants from Africa (I believe the country was Mali) were being interviewed, asking why they were risking their lives to get to Europe. Everyone had the same answer: "We're looking for jobs." One fellow said he was thoroughly fed up with having to know someone in order to get a job, and if you don't know someone, then you have to know someone who knows someone. 

And, I said to myself, gee, that sounds a lot like America.

It is now a fact that the only way to get a job today is to personally know somebody who's hiring. We call this "networking" today, and there is no shortage of advice columns written by so-called "hiring experts" hammering home the point that it's the ONLY way to get hired today. Go on LinkedIn! Join meet-ups! You gotta know someone to get on the inside track of a company! 

Networking sounds so posh and proper. It was called something else twenty years ago: cronyism.

My mother comes from Macedonia. Over her lifetime, she's seen 99% of her relatives abandon that country for either America (in the 1960s) or Australia (1970s and onward). They leave because they cannot find jobs in their native country. I remember my last trip to Macedonia back in 1990, I spoke to lots of young people who were frustrated about their inability to find work because they "didn't know the right person." This was, in fact, how everything ran in their village. You had to "know somebody" whether it was for a job or to get a leaky bathroom pipe fixed.

Lots of these folks flocked to my hometown of Pittsburgh back when the steel mills were still alive. All were practically guaranteed work in those mills (my mother worked at J&L for four years). The best part of the deal was that they did NOT need to know the right person to get that job. 

America was supposed to be better than that, better than the "old world" that was still ruled by cronyism. This was the place where you could arrive and get a job without the burden of "knowing the right person." 

So, congratulations, America. When it comes to finding a job, you're now no better than Macedonia or Mali or any other Third World craphole. Well done.