Job Search And Hiring Nonsense
We accept a lot of toxic wind that makes us feel bad about ourselves and each other. If you're looking to be hired or doing some hiring, maybe avoid the following.
“Fomenting hashtag#FOMO” It's not 2014 and no one believes in FOMO anymore. Everyone is missing out, pretty much all the time and we’ve all learned to be okay with it. There are fully 11 people in hashtag#advertising and hashtag#media who are completely consumed by making anything enormously fun or interesting and 13 of them work at Mischief @ No Fixed Address.
Saying “I’m super busy…” No, you’re not. If you're on LinkedIn, you’re not busy and that's 100% super okay. Sure, everyone wants to be the busiest bee in Beesburry. But I’m not. And just because your not busy doesn't mean you're not valuable. You’re the pearls set before swine. The Van Gogh at the flea market. You, my friend, are a secret treasure. Don’t stay a secret. Be an intolerably loud treasure.
hashtag#Hybrid . Yeah okay, we get it. You hire me, my jacksie goes wherever you'd like it to be.
Data-led twaddlerot. It's super reassuring for everyone who doesn't understand advertising to think that they don't have to understand advertising to be good at advertising. All they need is hashtag#data. Sadly, leading consumers to new behavior is what consumer-focused hashtag#strategy and hashtag#creative does, not data. And while data is very useful, saying that it “leads” is the same as insisting that a pin-drop is both the map and the directions.
“Gap worry.” EVERYONE will have an hashtag#employment gap in their resume. Some will try to pass it off as a time of “productive introspection” and “renewed focus.” Whatever that zen-y flimflam means. The real issue isn’t the gap, it's what the gap seems. Which is…
Thinking, “If you were truly valuable you wouldn’t have gotten laid off.” It is blisteringly offensive to assume that a human being who has been laid off is valueless. Every day we throw away perfectly good things and people, for reasons that have nothing to do with their usefulness. As someone who's been in the room, I can tell you that these decisions are often the result of an immediate need to reach a specific $ savings. You may be 5x as good at your job as someone else who makes 2x less. BUT there is no data tool so nuanced it can tell how much value you bring, but by cutting your salary they get to their $ goal faster and lose fewer people. Do they kill productivity and scalability? Yes, but that’s not the point. The idea that ad agencies are “cutting the fat" when they lay off people is laughably outdated. No one who truly understands what’s happening in our industry looks down on anyone who was cut. And to do so is a product of unforgivably lazy arrogance, usually from someone so inexperienced, they have never been the sackee at a sack-off.
So please, be brave, my beautifully talented and unforgivably under-utilized mofo’s.
And don’t let anyone forget how much money they are wasting by ignoring the gold you bring.