Paul from Paris

Ad seen in the Paris metro, line 3, Villiers stop

The advertisement’s tagline reads, “Wake up your career by posting your résumé on careerbuilder.fr”.

That’s mundane.

What surprised me is that the ad also promotes Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a movie coming out this year that’s a sequel to Wall Street, from 1987.

Careerbuilder.fr is running a contest whose winner will enjoy a trip to New York.

The Wall Street pictures, both directed by Oliver Stone, view players in the financial services industry critically: they’re the other side, the bad guys. The judgment of those who choose Wall Street careers is shown, in the movies, as misguided or villainous or nihilistic. The characters in the movies don’t have careers that you’d want to emulate.

Don’t the people at careerbuilder.fr know this? What were they thinking when they approved this campaign?

“I don’t see what this is for“, a seasoned businessman told me a few years ago, about the LinkedIn social networking site.

I now hold the same view: I don’t see the point of LinkedIn.

I use LinkedIn as a virtual address book. Assuming that other users keep their e-mail addresses current, I will be able to contact and get back in touch with them in the future.

Thanks to this feature, I will keep my LinkedIn account. But for me, the site presents five drawbacks that seriously depress its value, to me:

• The site dictates the kind and form of content that users can post. It’s prescriptive and top-down.
• The basic template is a resume or CV. The site prescribes the form, so all users look similar. Over time, the site gives me the impression of an immense pile of resumes left “on file”. Being in a pile doesn’t particularly interest me.
• The site’s premise is to harness the network effect. But the site prescribes whether and how I can exchange with other members. And the structure looks to me like a constellation of private clubs or closed circles. If interest or affinity groups offer something to their members, wouldn’t they already have an online presence? Why would I want or need to access these groups through LinkedIn?
• LinkedIn emphasizes affirmation over demonstration. When making an outbound referral, I think first of those whom I know and whose work I know. In LinkedIn, exchanges tend towards the impersonal, and activities tend towards institutional affiliations (and so-called recommendations, where X –who is probably a stranger to me– says good things about Y, whom I’m supposed to know). I’m more interested in what Y is up to today and what her current work is. And I’d like to share what I do with others.
• “Upgrade to premium” solicitations or hiding content behind a paywall turns me off.

The French titre-restaurant turns 40 this year.

Like hallway lights on a timer or doorknobs that aren’t round, French people seem to take titres-restaurant as a matter of course; but they puzzle outsiders.

The titre-restaurant sprang from paternalistic reflexes. French law required employers to provide for meal arrangements for their employees. In the case of factory workers, this usually meant a canteen. Many factories and offices had canteens, but others did not. The titre-restaurant was meant to fill this cap.

The principle is simple: an employer issues an employee a titre-restaurant (I’ll call it a lunch voucher), which the employee uses to buy lunch. Restaurants and cafés and vendors accept a lunch voucher, which they redeem from a voucher issuer.

The lunch voucher system offers incentives to employers in the form of tax breaks, and to employees through a discount system, where an employee pays about 50% of the voucher’s face value.

This being France, the actual scheme is complicated, as illustrated by this charming diagram (which I’d like to call “Vouchers make the world go round”) from the national lunch voucher commission (French acronym: CNTR, here pictured as the equal of the French state):

The fortieth anniversary of the lunch voucher is more solemn than celebratory. New rules came into effect on 1 March to regulate lunch voucher use. Most of the new rules are intended to discipline an overly lax or relaxed use of the vouchers. Among the changes:

• Lunch vouchers are to be used for lunch only, not for dinner or on the weekend.
• An employee may use a lunch voucher only in the area where he works. Employees who travel are supposed to have special lunch vouchers.
• An employee is supposed to use only one lunch voucher at a time. A past tolerance for using two vouchers may be on the decline.
• An employee may now use a lunch voucher to buy fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Supermarkets and hypermarkets have reined in lunch voucher use. Henceforth, they will accept a lunch voucher only for salads (with lettuce or fruit), sandwiches, or prepared dishes (fresh, frozen, canned, or vacuum-packed); special bar codes will help police the system.

I confess to having used multiple vouchers for a weekend dinner (at which wine was served) far from home, during what was apparently an anything-goes high time for lunch vouchers. I’m not eligible for lunch vouchers today; given the glorious proliferation of rules around their use, I hardly miss this privilege.

Does a long commute cause stress on the job?

A French consultancy, Technologia, looked into this question. Its efforts are a model to understand how companies can use proprietary research to advance their marketing.

The context

The French workplace is heavily regulated. In larger firms, committees with employee representatives discuss business information, workplace safety, or site closures. In doing their work, these committees solicit input from consultancies that do audits and offer advice. (Consultancies also act for management, for example in putting together required paperwork for a layoff or site closure plan.) When a committee chooses a consultancy, the committee is probably confronted with bad news, and time might be short; urgency often limits the consultancy selection process.

The study

Technologia is an established consultancy. It has carried out big-scale projects, reported in the media: in the wake of a perceived suicide wave at France Telecom, its survey tended to show that France Telecom personnel feel stressed.

Technologia put together a survey. It then interviewed 63 people and had 92 respondents complete a questionnaire. (I couldn’t tell whether the 63 interview subjects figure among the 92 survey respondents.) To the extent Technologia surveyed its clients, it was able to solidify relationships by underscoring its intellectual seriousness and by valuing client input.

The completed work, Impact study of mass transit in the Paris area on employee and enterprise health, runs 72 pages and reads like a master’s thesis. The title promises more than the study actually delivers. The study is in not medical and does not establish a causal relation between commuting and health. For this reader, it instead catalogs issues that commuting presents to employees and their employers.

To an extent, it’s beside the point whether the study answers the question it poses. No one will counter that commuting is pleasurable. What matters is that the issue has been put on the table.

How the research is marketed

Technologia seems to limit circulation of its study to clients and prospects. My request for a copy went unanswered. I accessed the report through an article in French daily Liberation, which I found referenced on a blog by a union activist. The report is perennial enough that I expect that the consultancy will be able to use it for several years.

Technologia carried out an impressive marketing campaign through French media. On a Monday, major French dailies reported on the study: in addition to Liberation, the study was reported in Le Parisien –the daily of choice for taxi drivers and commuters– Le Figaro, and Le Monde. Weeklies and television news also picked up the story. Especially in the Paris area, there are plenty of disgruntled commuters. The story resonates with many and confirms provincials’ worst suspicions about life in the capital.

Technologia offers readers a sort of handout to follow up on news reports. The handout is posted on the consultancy’s web site –which this visitor found dull– and especially through hypertext links in media reports posted on the web, such as on sites of French newspapers.

The handout is not a summary of the study. It’s instead a call for action. It’s a two-page Manifesto (!), with a ten-point plan. Most of the suggestions are matters of public policy, not action points for employers; they all struck this reader as aspirational. The design and layout of the Manifesto rivals that of the study. It clearly identifies Technologia as its source and solicits reactions from readers.

French teens (age 14-17) have a good understanding of their parents’ work life.

That’s the first point I got from the latest report by the French interministerial delegation on the family‘s Observatory of parenthood and the workplace.

French teens know what their parents do for a living. They talk with their parents about their jobs several times a week, and most teens have visited their parents’ workplace.

Given this awareness, I was surprised by the second point I got from this research: teens are most likely –53% for fathers, 45% for mothers– to describe their parents’ careers as stressful and tiresome. In other words, what comes to mind first, when teens think about the work world, is a negative view.

I’m speculating, but am left with the impression that the more teens know about their parents’ jobs, the more negative they become.

I’m curious whether similar attitudes are observed elsewhere in Europe. I’m also curious to what extent the negative views can be attributed to adolescence, and to what extent they stem from differences between school and business.