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The irony of writing a newsletter 2 weeks ago about showing up anyway and then taking an unannounced week off.

My apologies for no newsletter last week. The truth is I just go overwhelmed by so many things happening and simply ran out of time.

If you have not heard, my debut book, “Yes, You Are Being Judged” was finally released after nearly a year of work. The launch was a huge success including reaching #1 on a few charts, and I’d of course love the support from any of my readers. The response from readers so far has been amazing, and I do think this book can be a huge help not only to jobseekers, but also to recruiters as both a source to point to, a validation of some of your feelings, and potentially some mistakes I talk about from my career that you see and realize that maybe you’re also making.

This Week’s Breakdown

I keep waiting for the week when recruiters aren’t the villains of the internet.

Spoiler: it’s not this week even though I gave it 2 weeks.

Everywhere you look, someone’s angry at us. Candidates, managers, other recruiters.

• Reject a candidate? “Heartless gatekeeper.”

• Move a candidate forward? “You don’t know what you’re looking for.”

• Send rejections in batches? “Cruel and robotic.”

• Send them individually? “A waste of time.”

• Have rules? “Too rigid.”

• Have flexibility? “No consistency.”

Polls go viral, memes spread like wildfire, entire threads exist just to dunk on recruiters. Half of it may even be true at this point, I can’t even keep up.

As a reminder, we’re operating in broken systems with clunky tools, misaligned stakeholders, impossible deadlines, and contradictory expectations.

We are seeing so many applications that make 0 sense from people who are convinced they have what it takes to be your new CMO after 2 years as a social media manager.

The constant scapegoating makes it feel like we’re the only job on the planet where failure is assumed, success is invisible, and literally everyone thinks they could do it better.

So if you were hoping that when I took a week off that, the damned if you do, damned if you don’t theme would go away…LOL!

And until someone invents a process that magically pleases 100% of applicants, 100% of hiring managers, and 100% of LinkedIn commenters… we’re stuck in this role.

The villain who can do nothing right!

But hey, if we’re going to be hated anyway, at least conference season is coming up!

Recruited in the Wild

Seen on LinkedIn, overheard in Slack, or posted without shame.

It’s been quite a week (or 2) out there in the wild! I bookmarked several posts I wanted to share and discuss, and included a few in The Breakdown, but to not overload this week’s newsletter and try too hard to make up for lost time. I really wanted to just highlight this one post by a new connection of mine on LinkedIn Leigh Tobenas.

So many times in this section I make fun of the absurd that we can all point to and laugh, but this one hit home for 2 reasons.

1. It is absurd of course to speak like this to someone trying to help you find a job, nobody is going to pay you a fee to speak about the role.

2. But more importantly, this is the state of the recruiter/jobseeker relationship and we have to accept and acknowledge that. I fully believe anyone reading this newsletter isn’t the kind of recruiter who causes a candidate to get to this level of jaded, but enough recruiters have, and even if you didn’t cause it, you’re likely to encounter it one day anyway.

Given my rant above about always being the villian, I do think it’s important to sometimes pause and say…well maybe we are?

As I commented, this is what happens when a jobseeker has been burned by one too many recruiters over the years. It’s the equivalent of treating a first date poorly because you’ve been hurt by too many exes in your past. While it is our instinct to put all of this on the jobseeker for not acting in a proper way, let’s also remember why they are probably acting like that in the first place.

There are a ton of things candidates do that make me (and you) mad and most of them seem unreasonable. But it was interesting my first instinct when reading this was to wonder what we (colloquially) did to them to cause this.

Horror Stories

True recruiting nightmares from the field.
Want to share yours anonymously for a future issue? 

Submit your story Here - It won’t even ask for your name or email don’t worry!

I had a candidate log in for what was supposed to be their second-round interview with a hiring manager, except… about five minutes in, it became clear they thought they were meeting with a completely different company.

They kept referencing products we don’t make, a person we don’t employ, and even said they were excited about the office location because of its proximity to his spouse’s work…except it wasn’t where our office was.

When the manager gently asked who they’d spoken to so far in the process, they rattled off a recruiter who was not me (the person they had spoken to previously. Turns out they had been interviewing with two companies at the same time and somehow, they thought our Zoom link was theirs.

The best part? They didn’t even realize the mistake until the manager finally said, “I think you might be mixing us up with another employer.” Their response? A blank stare and then, “Oh”

They didn’t even apologize. Just closed the window.

Safe to say the manager recorded a strong no in the ATS.

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Cope of the Week

Because it’s either this or scream into a pillow.

The irony of writing a whole newsletter two weeks ago about “showing up anyway” and then promptly not showing up is not lost on me.

Like many of us do in our day to day lives and jobs, I simply just ran out of time. No clever excuse.

And you know what? Some weeks, you don’t get it all done. Some weeks, you drop the ball and actually don’t show up, even when you preach consistency. And that’s okay. You come back, you keep going, you own it.

Because recruiting is the same way. You’ll miss things. You’ll make judgment calls that blow up. You’ll get blamed for things outside your control. And the internet will roast you for it anyway. The trick isn’t to be perfect, it’s to keep showing up after you weren’t.

On that note, thank you to everyone who supported the launch of Yes, You Are Being Judged. Hitting #1 on a few charts was surreal, but the messages from recruiters who feel seen (and jobseekers who feel a little less alone) mean the most.

And with the podcast kicking off soon, plus conference season around the corner, I’ll need the same thing I’m telling you right now: patience, forgiveness, and the ability to laugh at the mess while you keep moving.

That’s the cope.

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