Slow job growth. "White Collar Crunch." Trends of the time. The economic statistics and personal stories bludgeon us every day.

But is wallowing in the soft patch our only choice? Where's our American "can-do" attitude? Shooting wars aren't our only battles "of choice."

Where's it written that we don't have a choice about the rules of engagement in the battle for work and career opportunity? Who's ready to concede that a trend is shaping our epitaph?

It's time to adopt a new strategy and tactics to counter the quicksand of current trends in the job search/hiring system.

To winch ourselves out of the quicksand, we must first recognize that the job search/hiring system is broken. What else describes a system that expects knowledge workers, for example, to pass silly "litmus tests" of responsibilities, skills, and keywords?

Are we meekly accepting this litmus baloney because of the belief that our career's a journey, not a destination?

Quaint.

Except quaint isn't bankable. Try paying the mortgage with quaint.

It's not about our journey or litmus lists. It's about creating enterprise value. It's about "payoff destinations," as in what kind, how much and how quickly, and what business challenges we overcame in the process.

Forget the journey and litmus muck, which is a quicksand of posturing hooha and not enterprise payoffs.

To counter the trend, we must learn the art of the deal as it relates to our candidacy for a job. What kind of deal going forward is best aligned with the kind of payoffs we've driven? What's the highest and best "business case" our candidacy makes at this moment for a prospective employer? Making that case is our job, not theirs, which is a huge reason that the system's broken.

We've never done that. We've assumed that's "their" job. Lousy assumption. We've passively allowed litmus tests to become the trendy choice and system default because we've never learned to make a business case for our candidacy.

How did that happen? Fat times masked the system's wobbliness. Tough times are exposing the emperor's nudity. And it's not that we're unfamiliar with the art of making a business case while risking being shot down. Our enterprise success hasn't been achieved without that toughness and competence.

So change the order of battle. Let's not parade ourselves as mass commodities for mass markets, the flawed premise of litmus testing and moss-backed job searches.

Rather than hoping our mass commodity candidacy is saluted and compliant with the silliness of the moment, give them one to shoot at.

Make our candidacy the biggest, baddest, reddest bull's-eye possible. This means we have to stop compliantly cowering below the line of fire. Better to risk being shot down than dismissed as an irrelevant wimp shooting blanks.

We offer niche solutions, not mass commodities. That's our calling. Always has been. Always will be. So leverage it. Outfits are in lots of pain right now. Big fat juicy targets of pain. So aim for their pain. What kind of painkiller are we?

Make that case. Career trajectories are traced by the niches in which we've created value and defeated enterprise pain. Once we see our trajectory, we're positioned to succeed by pointing our candidacy at the challenges that make sense.

Intuitively we understand that we aren't all things to all people. But then when it comes to our job searches, we conveniently ignore that truth and do exactly the opposite, trying to be all things to all people, as if we can hold many jobs simultaneously.

Baloney. Self-delusional and lousy self-marketing.

But whoa. Sounds like a very tall order defining our candidacy. Doing the due diligence, making a business case why our candidacy's the right one, at the right moment with the right enterprise.

Indeed. But as white-collar knowledge workers, isn't that the case we're making -- that we "make a difference"? That we deliver tall orders?

Or do we prefer staying mired in the soft patch, a convenient cover for not making something happen? Maybe the tough times are hammering us to make less of a difference and avoid the heavy lifting of confronting the hiring system's broken silliness. Making a buck while making a difference means first challenging that silliness.

If we're ready to counter the trend and fight the good fight, we must adopt tactics that fit our new resolve. We must unilaterally change the rules of engagement.

Where's the downside? Fewer hits than we're scoring following the old rules? Fewer insulting job offers? Less marginalization and devaluation?

Some downside.

And if an outfit doesn't cotton to our new rules, maybe that's more of a reflection of their circling-the-drain rigidity than our worth and competence.

We can hold only one job at a time. The destination payoffs we've helped shape in the context of previous challenges makes a more eloquent business case for our candidacy than the trendy silliness of the old rules.

Payoffs trump litmus tests. Do we really want to be part of outfits that don't get it? Our job is to find ones that have it right and make our case.

That's the upside, fixing outfits in pain and moving us and the economy out of the soft patch.

Let the upside start now, with us.