It's a battlefield out there: Indeed, Hebrew uses the word tzanhan (paratrooper) to describe those suddenly dropped on a company from above.
By LIAT COLLINSHebrew Hear-Say logo(photo credit: )
After that peculiarly Israeli period combining religious festivals and eating that put even the global slowdown (he'ata) on hold, people all over the country are returning to work and praying it still exists. The job market (shuk ha'avoda) simply does not work over the holidays so it is only now, after The Crash (known locally as "hamashber hafinantzi" - the financial crisis) that people are getting down to the serious business of looking for work.
Whatever it is you might be looking for is not just your own business (ha'esek haprati shelcha/shelach) - not only is it hard to keep your business private in Israel, it's not always advisable. Much of the job market operates by word of mouth (mipeh le'ozen - from mouth to ear) and the more people who know you are looking, the likelier somebody is to find what it is you are looking for (or able to compromise on). Of course the concept of "suitable work" (avoda matima) varies greatly, like that joke that when the government declares the level of unemployment to be "acceptable," it means that the statistician who compiled the figures still has a job.
Times have changed and jobs have changed, too. Not always for the better. Take the hours, for example: It used to be that "9 to 5" was a concept: In Hebrew we get an early start and call it 8 to 4, shmona ad arba. In army slang there are "jobniks," non-combat soldiers who are said to serve in the 804 unit (i.e. they arrive at 8, do nothing and leave at 4), although that too is gradually becoming a thing of the past.
The whole work environment has radically altered as the world has gone dot-commy. In the good old days, you took a job, received tenure (kviut) and stayed there until retirement age (gil prisha or yetzia lepensia). The Chinese called it the "iron rice bowl," a term which itself became redundant (muvtal) as even in the land which gave us Mao and "made in China" people can lose jobs.
Nowadays, tenure is almost as quaint as the non-computerized office (misrad), and most workers (ovdim) are subject to a personal contract (hozeh ishi) which is about as reassuring as having a gangland contract. Although the tenured worker is literally a dying breed (if you can't dismiss someone, you have to let nature take its course), the term "masmer lelo rosh" (literally a nail without a head) is still heard to refer to those (minority of) workers who are either unnecessary or untalented but cannot be fired.
Resume writing is also a work in progress. Once upon a time it was considered best for a CV (korot haim) to show stability with long periods spent at the same company (hevra). Now, if you don't move around in certain fields, it is taken as a sign of either lack of initiative or lack of attractiveness - headhunters (tzayadai rashim), those issuing the most lucrative personal contracts, have skipped you. No wonder divorce rates are so high nowadays - not only do jobs require ever increasing hours, they also inculcate an atmosphere where loyalty is not considered desirable.
It's a battlefield out there: Indeed, Hebrew uses the word tzanhan (paratrooper) to describe those suddenly dropped on a company from above - and they usually start firing as soon as they land. The CEO (hands up and surrender all those who started work when there was no such thing as a CEO, just a director-general/general manager) is still called a "mankal" (short for menahel klali - general manager) in Hebrew but can also be (fondly?) referred to as the "big boss," particularly if you are just a small cog (boreg katan). Nonetheless, a boreg katan can be a rosh gadol, a "big head," someone who takes the initiative (and then their large head is hunted and so on).
I had a communications lecturer at the Hebrew University who used to say one of the major differences between Israeli workers and their peers abroad is that in the rest of the world people read newspapers on their way to work and in the Holy Land they read them at work.
When I first started in journalism (so long ago "cut and paste" meant just that - with scissors and tape), I knew I had found my vocation (yi'ud). Not only could I justify reading the paper at work, my profession (miktzoa) actually required me to spend part of my day playing with words. And that still works for me.
liat@jpost.com
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