The bubble had recently burst and I was too far between hi-tech jobs. I had no experience as a talent scout, but the job posting on monster.com stated that I’d receive training, benefits, and a competitive salary plus commission. The Assistant Director of Scouting apologized via email for the short notice of the meeting scheduled the next day, but the position was to be filled as soon as possible and it was the only timeslot available.

The deception didn’t end there.

I was surprised the next morning to step into a seemingly newly occupied office suite, expecting something more established, more professional looking. A huge CRT television monitor loomed at the front of the room on an aged rolling cart. While a dozen or so of us recruits waited for what was apparently a presentation to begin, an attractive girl began hanging movie posters on the bare white walls at the rear of the office. Another women told us to take a series of handouts on a table near the door, a couple brochures, a non-disclosure agreement, and multi-generational copies of forms that were barely legible.

We each signed our forms and applications in third-grade style — each recruit taking turns reading sequential paragraphs out loud. Next we watched a polished video that is normally presented to potential talent, selling them on the effectiveness and connections of the scout company.

Each person was told to stand up and tell their story, most of which were five- to ten-minute synopses of life and career. A question-and-answer session followed, most of the responses later turned out to be false or misleading. While the attractive presenter, a former model, seemed confident and assertive, I believe she merely filled the role as saleswoman, selling us on the prospect of becoming a scout.

You will not find talent like this at the mall.
Photo © iStockPhoto / Ivan Mikhaylov

The email that I received that stated the availability of only one timeslot was a lie; it turned out that three separate scout sessions had been scheduled that week, and likely every week. Based on that, I dismissed her response to my direct question as to how many scouts were employed through that particular branch office. I doubt that her answer of 12 was anywhere close to the truth.

We were told to use the same techniques on the “talent” we discovered, to tell them that they must show up at the appointment we provided to them, giving them a sense of urgency.

The brochures handed to scouts were sophomoric, looking as if they had been designed by a high school student — too many mistakes that a professional desktop publisher would have avoided. While the scout position was touted as salaried in the advertisement, she indicated that a recent change in policy at this particular branch had taken effect, that payment was by commission only. There were no benefits, also against what was advertised. All of these changes for this brand-new branch had taken effect long before the placement of the ad; this was purely a case of bait-and-switch.

The frequent quoting of performance metrics of results of scouts on a national scale that made the math of commission calculation way too coincidentally simple; of the 160 prospects that the average scout recruited to attend the “open call” appointments each week, 25% were expected to show up. And of those 40, 35% (or 14) were expected to sign up for the talent package, the math continuing on until the scout had generated approximately $70,000 in annual income, lowish for Silicon Valley hi-tech standards, but a decent part-time living. To earn that, the scout must on average prospect 8,000 potential clients annually, statistically earning $8.75 per prospect.

If I were to discover the next generation’s Mikhaila Rocha, Jessica Stam, or Karolína Kurková, I’d want more than a measly $8.75.

Over and over she repeated the benefits of talent signing up with the scouting company. A one-time fee plus a modest and reasonable monthly expense was all that the client paid, none of which we would have to know or deal with since the “hard sell” was done by telemarketers at the corporate offices. The video and her presentation both expressed the cost savings that models would undergo, including the reduction in photographic and printing expenses. At no time did she reveal that the company does in fact ask potential talent for photographic and other costly fees as revealed in an undercover investigation performed by a local news station.

In a private conversation with the scout scout, I was told that I had been accepted for the position if I still wanted it and, for those “lucky” few (perceived to be anyone who walked in the door that could speak English without a translation dictionary), the meeting resumed two days later — which I attended purely out of curiosity rather than false hopes of opportunity.

A regional conference call ensued, each office taking roll call with a raucous yell. This week’s “graduating class” of scouts consisted of a variety of questionable people, ranging from a scraggly haired 18-year-old girl who had been beaten proverbially and severely with the ugly stick and who did not have the confidence to speak above a whisper, an Afghani taxi driver with horrific body odor, and a lecherous old man with an admitted brain disorder who put everyone to sleep with his mindless rantings — all of whom would undoubtedly inspire great confidence and trust to those being recruited into the modeling industry!

The two biggest red flags to me were the apparent lack of concern for quality of scouted talent, and the utter lack of training for scouts. There were only few criteria for which to search: height, skin, and overall attractiveness. Once that list of steadfast attributes was memorized, scouts were given stacks of business cards with the company address and phone number. Go scout, they said. Meeting quotas was key. While the paperwork conflictingly told us both to avoid the malls and that malls would be assigned to individual scouts on a daily basis, the head scout told everyone to go hit the malls running. Training, such that it was, was over.

It was the airing of the undercover investigation that night during the local news that pushed me over the edge towards nonparticipation. The company accepts basically any “talent” with a pulse and a major credit card. My so-far unblemished reputation of honesty and integrity forced me to abandon the recruitment.

So, if someone walks up to you while you’re shopping at the mall and says that you have what it takes to be a model, be polite and take their business card. Just don’t forget to toss it in a recycling bin on the way out.

Update (2012)

The NDA long since expired, I can now openly say that the agency was John Robert Powers, the new branch office located in the Pruneyard Towers in Campbell, CA.

On January 22, I found myself within a mile of the Concord degree confluence as I headed back to San Jose from an appointment east of Concord, not realizing earlier in the morning that I had come so close to the confluence even though I had driven along the same stretch of highway, just in the opposite direction.

Fortunately, I had the 13 closest confluences to home loaded into my GPS (along with the usual number of about 400 local geocaches), so it just popped up as I headed back west along the highway towards Concord to nab this, my second degree confluence visit. My GPS showed the degree confluence at 157 feet, and accuracy with seven good locks on overhead satellites was 17 feet, well within the 100-meter minimum distance for an acceptable confluence visit.

Directions

From Highway 4, head south on Willow Pass Road. Almost exactly a mile down the road is a small crossroads with a no-left-turn sign. About 40 feet to the left is as far as you can go because of the chainlink fence and the posted warning sign.

I didn’t stick around very long — probably a wise choice, considering the posting made by the first visitor to the confluence back in 1998 which I hadn’t read until AFTER I visited the Concord naval weapons area. Within moments, he was amid a swarm of military police. For some reason, the MPs guarding a naval base that houses nuclear weapons are wary of the occasional civilian holding a GPS in one hand and a digital camera in the other…

Another Space Shuttle is gone.

I was a senior in high school when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986. The news came during the five minutes between classes as I headed to Ms. Wendell’s chemistry class. I distinctly remember hearing the news as I crossed the Los Gatos High School basketball courts heading towards the small flight of stairs leading up to the science wing. A student, nameless in memory, he or she leaning against the upper wooden railing, shouted down the awful news to the scurrying masses.

Similar to September 11th (although lesser in magnitude), the reaction by the student body and everyone I knew at the time was one of abject horror and grief, another one of life’s tragic experiences that you are never prepared for, that had never been experienced by anyone before, and that you never fully forget throughout your lifetime.

Space Shuttle History

Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-099)
Photo courtesy of NASA

The first shuttle was a Main Propulsion Test Article (MPTA-098) called Pathfinder. Its purpose was to test out the procedures for moving and handling the orbiters. Designated in honorarium as OV-098, it was made of wood and steel, and was not capable of flight. Enterprise, the second shuttle, was used for suborbital approach and landing tests and did not fly in space.

The next shuttle to undergo construction, Challenger, began assembly by Rockwell International in November 1975, as a Structural Test Article (STA-099), and was created to run real-life intensive vibration tests to simulate the expected stresses of launch, ascent, reentry and landing. Construction was completed in February 1978, and in November 1979, the process of retrofitting Challenger began, with Rockwell contracted to convert it from a Structural Test Article into a fully rated Orbital Vehicle (OV-099).

Reengineering completed in July 1982, the shuttle eventually had its inaugural flight on April 4, 1983.

Construction on the fourth shuttle, Columbia (OV-102), also began in November 1975, arriving at Kennedy Space Center on March 25, 1979 to begin preparations for its first mission, eventually launching from Edwards Air Force Base on April 12, 1981, making Space Shuttle Columbia the first to fly into orbit.

Similarity of the Shuttles

At 73.124 seconds into Challenger’s tenth mission (51-L), the onset of the structural failure of the hydrogen tank led to a sudden thrust, pushing the hydrogen tank upward with 2.8 million pounds of force. The rest was history, caught on tape and broadcast on every television station for days on end, forever embedded into our unconscious — paralleling the visual impact that the more recent incident of passenger planes crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11th had.

Today, 15 days and 22 hours into the flight, while traveling at 12,500 miles per hour at approximately 200,000 feet over Central Texas (not the 200,000 miles as originally reported by CNN), Columbia also earned the dubious distinction of being the first landing casualty in 48 years of space flight history. Unfortunately for the memories of the latest seven astronauts lost in today’s diaster, the impact on our lives will be much smaller than that of the Challenger. The only visible evidence of this recent accident was streaming contrails of unidentifiable debris burning up in reentry, not shocking enough for today’s hardened viewing audience to evoke any long-lasting impressions.

None of the astronauts died in the initial explosions. In Challenger’s case, the crew were all alive and probably conscious until the culmination of the 165-second, 4.5-mile plunge into the water at 207 MPH. Columbia’s crew survived the initial break-up only to have their crew module break up a minute later.

The entire summary of mission STS-107 is currently succinctly and stoically summarized by NASA as “Crew and Vehicle lost during landing”.

My apologies, regrets, and well wishes go out to the families of astronauts Husband, McCool, Anderson, Chawla, Brown, Clark, and Ramon.

Author’s Note: Looking back (during a 2012 revision), it is interesting that many others continued to indicate that Columbia exploded “200,000 miles over Texas”, including Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Associated Press.