The Causey Consulting Podcast

Bonus Episode: A Job Description from Introvert Hell 🔥

January 24, 2022 Sara Causey Episode 2
The Causey Consulting Podcast
Bonus Episode: A Job Description from Introvert Hell 🔥
Show Notes Transcript

Introverts, ambiverts, and extroverts who actually hate forced socialization and fakey-fake team building activities make up more of the population than people who want to mandate togetherness and silly kindergarten style party games. So why are we still allowing those types to create job descriptions?

Key topics:

✔️ If your job description is getting little or no traction out in the marketplace, you need to take an honest appraisal of why that is. Rather than blaming the entire workforce, the economy, and/or whole generations of people, look inward.
✔️ Why on earth would you require your staff to be filmed on Zoom every single day? WHY?!?!
✔️ If a company feels the need to drive a pin with a sledgehammer on togetherness and how "tight knit" they all are, ask yourself, "Does this sound like cult-speak in Corporate America to me?" 


Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. So I'm recording this as a bonus episode to piggyback off of one that I recorded on December 2nd of last year called decoding job descriptions, what do they actually mean? I received some awesome viewer mail from a listener who's early in his career, and he's in sales and marketing. And he said, I'm so glad that hungry was one of the words that you decided to decode in that episode, because I see them in so many job descriptions for sales and marketing gigs that I apply for. And it seems like anytime I interview with companies that have hungry somewhere in their job description, or it's like posted as part of their company culture, the interview never goes well. And it seems like they want people who are desperate and people that they can easily manipulate, like, you're either going to do whatever the manager tells you, or you're going to get fired. If you have any opinions of your own. Or if you maybe want to try a different technique, any sign of independence is going to be frowned upon. They want people that are easy to manipulate and easy to threaten. And it did my heart good. It brought me a genuine sense of joy to know that one of the episodes that I recorded had helped this person to be able to decode some job descriptions and make different choices like the light bulb went off over his head, and I was so happy that I could have been a catalyst for that. Not long ago, I saw a job description, I copied it and pasted it into a Word doc and saved it on my own computer as the job description from hell. And I just want to be clear, I'm not going to divulge the name of the company or the type of position this this was for. I myself have never worked as an employee for this company, nor have I ever done any freelancing or gigging for them. So I cannot speak to the internal workings of their company culture. For all I know, everybody at this company might be the nicest people on the planet, I just am reading the job description and thinking, I would be hard-pressed to find a description that would be any more repelling to me than this one, it just strikes all of the nerves. And I guess in that sense, it's doing what it is supposed to do. Because if they are looking for people who are highly extroverted, and who are willing to just go with the flow, they don't question anything, they're not looking at process improvement. They're just going to plug in and sit down and whatever the manager says goes, Okay, fair enough. A job description should attract in the type of candidate that you want to attract in and it should also repel the types of candidates that you don't really want applying for the job. Now, obviously, we don't want to do anything discriminatory. If you're a bigot, and you're out there trying to repel certain groups of people through a lens of racism or bigotry, then shame on you. But if we're talking about personality traits, you know, I really want somebody that's extroverted and highly compliant. Well, you wouldn't be happy with someone like me, because I'm an introvert. And I like to question authority. And I also like to question if there's a more efficient way to improve a process, or are we doing this because it really drives revenue? Are we doing this because we've always done it, or somebody started this as a tradition back in 1975. And no one is questioning that since then, even though we're now in 2022. Now, the same thing should be true by the way for your business development and your sales copy. Your sales copy should attract in your ideal prospects and ideal clients, it should repel people that are not ideal for you to be working with. If your sales copy is not doing a good enough job of repelling the wrong types of clients, then it's not fully doing what it should be doing. It's not fully serving your business as well as it could be. Because onboarding a pain in the ass, uncooperative nightmare client is worse than having no clients at all. Believe me. I've been on both sides of that situation before and I can tell you dealing with someone who makes your life a living hell is pretty awful. Now back to this job description. One of the lines or passages from the job description says our team is one of the most tight knit groups at the company. Everyone enjoys working together on Zoom every day. You know I hear that almost like something from a horror movie. Everyone enjoys working together on Zoom every day. I don't know if they mean it this way or not. But to me it skews very much like you better enjoy being on Zoom every day and you better enjoy being part Have a tight knit group, you better not rock the boat, and mess up what we got going over here. Meanwhile, what on earth is the necessity for being on Zoom, or any type of video platform every day? What could possibly be going on within a company that would necessitate you being on camera every single day, I find that really weird. I find it to be a time suck. You know, as I've mentioned before, with the time and motion study that I had done, those damn video calls are huge time sucks. You have to spend a whole bunch of time getting ready for and then you have to be on while the cameras are rolling. And then typically people veer off topic, whether they mean to or not, it's just a big time suck. So I'm going what on earth? from the business point of view, I'm thinking as a business owner here and a consultant that runs lean, like, what on earth are you going to be doing that needs to be on camera every single day? I find that really weird. I'm just saying. One of the things that I talked about in the decoding job descriptions episode from December was these job descriptions that say something like no one likes a jerk. And it's like, Well, duh, why? Why would you feel the need to say that specifically in a job description? Do you have a higher jerk to nice person ratio and your staff already? And if so, why is that? Why have you had a pattern of hiring people that get in and act like egomaniacs? What's going on? And you're hiring funnel that that would be happening? Another thing is, do you assume that anyone who thinks for themselves and has a mind of their own or who questions anything that happens? It does that automatically? Make them a jerk in your eyes? Like how are you defining the jerk that you're saying nobody wants? Just find it a bit suspicious, you know? And in this job description, it's like, Well, why do you feel the need to so specifically say that this team is one of the most tight knit groups at the company? Like, okay, why, why do you feel the need to spell that out in a job description? You know, why is that not something that's getting discussed maybe later in the process? Hey, you know, we're a tight group here, we all get along, we have a lot of synergy. There's another good corporate buzzword, you can hate center, we have a lot of good synergy here. We want to make sure everybody on the team kind of feels like one of us, one of us, you know, you're going to are you gonna fall in line like that? Or what? So it's almost like, I guess maybe they're putting it out there to sort of predetermine if you think that way or not, because yeah, I'm looking at him going, Nope, nope, nope, nope, that's something like that would repel me as well, it should. I'm just wondering who is the type of person that it actually attracts? I'm scratching my little imaginary devil beard contemplating that one. The job description goes on to say, upon signing, we'll send you a brand new Apple laptop, of course they will. I feel like the Red Skull, you know, in that scene where Captain America is saying I could do this all day. And he's like, Oh, of course you can. But I on the other hand, I'm on a tight schedule. So of course, you'll be sending a laptop...we'll send you a brand new Apple laptop, as well as$1,000 outfit the rest of your home office with things like a monitor, webcam, keyboard, and mouse. You know, a lot of people are going to already have if they feel the need to have a keyboard and a mouse on top of their regular laptop, they're going to already have those things on hand. Typically, I mean, a lot of people that work from home with a company provided laptop, just use the company provided laptop. And that's the main thing, the main tool that they utilize. So I really, I'm going to go out and want on a little limb here. And I'm going to say the main thing they want to make damn sure that you buy out of the things they list off is the webcam. Well, why is that? Well, they've already told you that they want a tight knit team and that everybody works together on Zoom every day. So you got to have that webcam, huh? When I want a company furnished webcam in my home? Hell no. They go on to say that even though the entire team is completely remote, they do travel regularly for in person meetings. So here's what I'm going to say to that if you're 100% remote in my mind, you know from thinking about it as an HR and staffing SME, if a company or a client tells me that they are 100% remote, I take that to mean 100% If it's hybrid, or it's well, let's say it's 90%, remote 10% travel, then you need to be very clear about that. But what you don't do is put a paradox or contradiction in terms. You don't say 100% remote and then do sort of a bait and switch by saying Oh, but you know, now we are going to have some regular in person meetings. You know how that goes. And it's like no, if I were applying for a job and the manager told me is 100% remote and then a month Later they said, now you're going to have to go to New York City for an all hands on deck meeting, I would be mad as hell, I would feel very deceived and misinformed about what I was signing up for. So the job description goes on. We are very excited that COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted and we are resuming all company travels starting in June, in person events combine work and fun designed to make up for the in person interaction that occurs in an office job. Yeah, so depending on where you're at in the world, depending on where you're at, in the United States, I mean, have your COVID-19 restrictions been lifted? I mean, depending again, on where you are, and how the different variant strains are impacting your community, your your restrictions may not have been lifted, and there are still a lot of people, myself included, who don't feel comfortable with the idea of getting on an airplane and going somewhere without being sure of what their restrictions are going to be like, and what's going to be expected. I mean, I just I find that to be a bit insensitive, and like jumping the gun. That's just my opinion, like Dennis Miller said, I could be wrong. I just think that saying all right, well, starting this summer, you know, y'all are all going to have to start traveling again, you're going to have to go to all these different cities around the country in order to keep your job here like I don't, you know, in thinking about the employment law courses that I've taken and like best practices to stay legally compliant. I myself would tell a client like I think you need to have an attorney review that policy because I'm just not sure that it's a great idea. Legally speaking, I'm not sure that it's a great idea, ethically speaking either. Again, just my opinion. Any idea in my mind of sort of in person office events or combining work and fun? They're never fun. Okay? For introverts and ambiverts, typically speaking, they're they're not fun, okay. And I've even known some extroverts who felt that way, some extroverts who said, Yes, I love to socialize. I love to talk to people and meet new people. But that doesn't mean I want to go to a sack race. That doesn't mean I want to play cornhole. That doesn't mean that I want to do asinine pin the tail on the donkey, you know, no pun intended, no, I'm thing about asinine pin the tail on the donkey tricks with my coworkers like I would rather be doing something else with my time than that. Again, I have never worked for this company not going to disclose the name of the company or anything like that. They've never been my client. I've never been their employee, they might all be as sweet as peach pie. I'm going to hazard a guess that the position stayed open for a really long time. Because again, you're talking about a large percent of the population being introverts or ambiverts, as well as extroverts who, yes, they like to socialize, and they enjoy meeting new people and talking to new people, but they don't necessarily want to travel during COVID. And they don't necessarily want to be sort of forced into ridiculous corporate games. You know, they, they, they realize now the emperor doesn't have any clothes on. They've been out of that world long enough to debunk it and go, yeah, all these times that we were thrown into a conference room and made to play games in order to get soggy sub sandwiches or some subpar pizza. It's just not really worth it. You know, I can get my social battery charged up in other ways. I don't want to do it that way. Probably they read that job description, I thought, Oh, hell no. You know, and then that you may have had people that thought, okay, you know, sure I'll, I'll give this a try. And then they went through the interview process, and they got into the hiring funnel, saw what the company culture was going to be like, and how this might actually play out for them and decided to opt out of the funnel. So what can we take away from this lesson? Well, first off, as with sales copy, a job description should attract in the right types of candidates, as well as repelling the wrong types of candidates, the types of people that just would not be a good fit at the company. Number two, you need to really think about your priorities. You know, these activities are fun, according to who? a CEO who sits in an ivory tower somewhere and never attends the freaking events. They just watched them filmed and then laugh at how everyone's dancing around for their amusement. That's so freaking gross. You know, just everything about that has gross energy to me. Number three, if your job descriptions are repelling everyone, if you're hardly getting any applicants at all, or no applicants at all, you want to really suss out why that is what kind of language in that job description is turning someone off? Is it the salary? Is it the forced socialization? Is it the terminology that you're using? What's going on that you have repelled? Everyone who's out on the job market, and if you are in a situation where you're just flat out getting no applicants at all, then it's important to look inward instead of blaming the economy blaming jobseekers, blame entire generations of people you want to assess what can we do better as a company better as hiring managers better as an HR department to attract in more people and if that means doing away with ridiculous in person meetings that should not happen, camping out on Zoom every day for What possible reason. You want to be cognizant that times have changed. If you don't change with the times, you will get left behind.