We know how Michael Brown got his top-level management job -- and a heckuva job it was. Most of us, though, have to work a little harder to find a good-paying position.

		"BAIT AND SWITCH: THE (FUTILE) PURSUIT OF THE AMERICAN DREAM" By Barbara Ehrenreich Metropolitan Books ($24)

These days, as Barbara Ehrenreich tells us in her latest job-hunting project, hard work and even cold cash aren't enough.

At least in her previous investigation, "Nickel and Dimed," she found lots of crummy work sweating at menial jobs.

That 2001 book was classic stealth journalism that produced a gritty, realistic and eye-opening picture of the underclass. The writer went underground taking low-pay work that failed to cover basic living expenses.

She also encountered a wide subculture of people who worked themselves to exhaustion often in more than one job and still couldn't pay the rent. While they followed the American work ethic, they never came close to finding the American Dream.

Surely, Ehrenreich reasoned, those with college degrees and solid professional experience would fare better when a stumbling economy, mergers and overseas competition put them out of work.

Statistics and stories painted a different picture, however. Since the start of the 21st century, more and more white-collar workers were jobless, making up about 20 percent of the unemployment rate by 2003. Just as unsettling was evidence that qualified people were furloughed simply to save money.

A great idea for a book, thought Ehrenreich, so she applied her approach to blue-collar life to the executive suite.

Using her maiden name, Alexander, the writer devised an exaggerated resume aimed at landing a public relations post and secured references willing to back up her claims.

Her goal was to land a $50,000-a-year job with benefits at a solid company. She allocated 10 months and $5,000 for the search and, like Candide, set out with high hopes.

All Ehrenreich gained from her time and money were two sales-position offers, one at Mary Kay, the other at AFLAC insurance, and neither fitting the bill.

She used her resources for coaching, seminars, job-hunt "boot camps" and an appearance makeover. She trolled the Internet employment sites, fired hundreds of resumes into cyberspace, followed up with phone calls, attended job fairs, researched companies and devoted hours to the old-fashioned art of making contacts, now called "networking."

Nothing worked. "No one, apparently, is willing to take a risk on me," concludes the author of several best sellers.

As a job seeker, however, Ehrenreich had the knack for choosing incompetent advice, worthless seminars, "consultants" who were only interested in taking her money and a collection of hapless "networkers" whose unemployment might have more do with their poor skills rather than the system that she ends up condemning.

Surely, there are better advisers out there than the one who uses "Wizard of Oz" and Elvis dolls and the dubious Enneagram exercise? Why bother with the "faith-based" employment services that ask their clients to let God pick the right positions for them?

In her journeys to sessions in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey, Ehrenreich never deals with a successful person or firm, meets a job seeker with impressive credentials or finds any insider with enough clout to land her an interview.

She never makes it inside the corporate "castle" to examine the source of these white-collar blues. And despite marshaling facts and figures to set the scene of her project, Ehrenreich surmises that the job-hunt culture reflects the corporate culture, both of which she finds "disturbingly looney."

Does she have enough data to reach that conclusion? I don't think so.

Unlike "Nickel and Dimed" where Ehrenreich scrubs floors on her hands and knees, "Bait and Switch" feels detached from its subject as she wanders from windowless motel conference rooms to dreary offices in strip malls.

Her solutions -- guaranteed income, access to affordable health care, a vague organization for the jobless with the "courage" to work for change -- are noble, but perhaps naive.

The decline of traditional American white-collar companies offering decent salaries and benefits is a fact of economic life.

Changes for the better would seem to require more than an emotional response.