In the current jobs market normal rules do not apply

ONE OF the least reported yet most remarkable market movements of the past week was the run on Mars and Snickers bars in the Lehman Brothers vending machines last Monday.

For me, this was the image that most sticks in the mind: bankers jostling with each other to liquidate their positions on prepaid vending cards and turn them into sugar, caramel and fat. Here was the whole story writ in miniature. Panic, desperation, pettiness and every man for himself. These bankers had lost their livelihoods and were saying goodbye to colleagues, and their knee-jerk response was to storm the vending machines.

"Sickening," a friend said disapprovingly. "They were paid so much and there they were scrambling for the last Mars bar."

I don't agree that it was sickening. In its mad, upside-down way, it made perfect sense. In fact, I'd like to make a prediction: those who cashed in on Mars bars will be the ones who adapt best to their horrid new circumstances.

For a start, they were behaving just as bankers should behave. Unwinding the catering contracts and taking delivery of confectionery showed a desire to balance books, an attention to detail, an abhorrence of waste and a desire to claim assets that rightfully belonged to them rather than let others claim them.

Concentrating on chocolate also made sense in psychological terms. To respond to something enormous and unmanageable by doing something small and precise is a sign of top mental health. And a shot of chocolate when things are bad is a tried and tested way of cheering oneself up. "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play," said the advertisement. But, on that black day, "work" was taken out of the equation, leaving rest and play for the bar to help with.

This strikes me as a good way to start; indeed, as an agony aunt, my advice to those who lost their jobs last week - at least to those with some money in their pockets - is to spend the immediate future on rest and play. This advice runs counter to that being churned out by what I like to think of as the agony aunt community. Jack and Suzie Welch, the king and queen among purveyors of management wisdom, have been offering the newly unemployed a strong brew of folksy emotion and empty urgency. "We're really sorry for the sense of loss . . . The shock, sadness, anger and confusion."

Their suggestion? "Don't be hungry for the past. We urge you to thirst for the future instead." Then they point out that Wall Street isn't hiring and suggest changing careers or moving elsewhere. "Start chasing leads today," they say.

Bad advice. Yes, we all know Wall Street is not hiring: that is what the fuss is about. And we know that some of the ex-bankers will find re-employment in other places and careers.

But my advice: don't start chasing leads today. Have a bit of a think and work out if you really want to move to Dubai, or retrain as a priest, before doing anything silly.

Other career coaches have been producing industrial quantities of lame advice. Think what you are good at. Network like crazy. Dig out the old business cards. Dust down your CV. Assess your strengths and weaknesses. Build a better web presence. Be flexible. Read self-help books. And so on.

Ordinary job-seeking advice doesn't work in times like these. It is too late to do sensible things. Even if you have a great network it may not get you anywhere as everyone is in the same position.

Even the advice being handed out to those who have not yet lost their jobs seems laughably wide of the mark. There is a solemn piece in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review giving three tips on how to hold onto a job in a downturn. You have to "act like a survivor", show empathy to your boss and be a "good corporate citizen", which means turning up to absolutely everything. I can't see any of this helping much: its only effect would be to make doing your job so loathsome that you might not be sorry if you lost it.

Unemployed bankers are in a world that has gone beyond pat advice. Only four things can help, none of which can be found in self-help books or learnt from an agony aunt.

The first is having a tidy pile of savings, safely stashed under the bed, or better, in gold bars. If you saved enough money for a rainy day, you can now take a long holiday in the sun.

Otherwise, what you need is character. This terrific word is sadly out of fashion, but what it stands for is needed in tough times. It is about backbone and level-headedness.

Character helps with the third thing you need: perseverance. Finding another job may take a while and will cost a lot in shoe leather.

And finally, the thing that will sort out winners from losers even more than a long position in Mars bars: luck. When the supply of labour vastly exceeds the demand, those who get work aren't necessarily the best. They are the luckiest. - ( Financial Times service)