Extreme Makeover – Job Search Edition

Except my break comes as creative thinking time.

I had this idea yesterday to create a new reality show for Hollywood called Extreme Makeover – Job Search Edition.  Out goes Ty Pennington (thankfully) and in steps Jane the Career Coach.  And she’s a tough one, that Jane.  We’ll get back to her later in the idea.

It is perfect timing, really.  Who hasn’t heard about the sizable layoffs so far and who out there does not anticipate more adjustments at large companies around the U.S.?  A big national story is screaming out for a Hollywood solution.

So the show works the same as the home edition, but its focus falls right on the job seeker.  We’ll look for folks who have fallen on hard times.  Folks who deserve the help of a qualified career coach but can’t afford one.  Also, to make it interesting, we’ll look for job seekers who clearly have no clue what they are doing.  They’ll send in videos to describe their situation.  They’ll also send us their resume, cover letter and current interviewing suit.  We will mock them and then we will scrape them off the dirt, lift them up and fix them – just like on TV.

In the end, our Jane will be a mix of the super nanny, the dog whisperer and folks at extreme makeover.  She will be tough on them, she will work with them and call out issues during the middle of real interviews, and she will yell at them with a megaphone.

Instead of “you’re fired”, it will be “you’re hired”.  And instead of “move that bus”, it will be “signing bon-us”.  As people walk to their new desks with their new business card in hand, you will hear them utter the famous words: “oh, my God.  oh, my God.”

Maybe a national TV show would put the right focus on the needs of the “out of work”.  Just maybe.