#3: Warning: Beware of Fanatical Job Descriptions
Plus, outsourcing cover letters to A.I., Britney Spears conspiracy theories & feel-good survivalist programming.
Laid Off Life is a place of respite for the weary workforce. Whether you’re unemployed, on strike or just trying to make it through the workday, let this be your 5-minute mental break from the grind of late-stage capitalism.
In this weekly newsletter, you’ll find musings and insights about work and life, things I’m finding useful (or useless) in my job search, and recs about worthy ways to waste time - from articles to TV shows and podcasts and beyond.
Warning: Beware of Fanatical Job Descriptions
Here are some actual “requirements” I’ve come across in recent job descriptions:
A natural evangelical, seeing the future and inspiring others to get there
Social media obsessed! You possess an understanding of digital and social platforms, emerging social technologies/platforms, and internet trends and culture
Typos drive you crazy. Factual errors keep you up at night. You stay calm when working under pressure, think fast, and turn around quickly with no drama.
You bring a deep desire to succeed with a sense of controlled urgency.
What did these jobs all have in common?
I decided not to apply for them based on their use of fanatical language, even though I met many of the skills and requirements for the role.
Why?
Because I refuse to be a success-obsessed, up-all-night, crazy person for a paycheck. Because I have worked for people who fit those descriptions and they are toxic and culty. Because the moments that I’ve been most unkind to myself are when I’ve let work outweigh my personal needs and boundaries and absorb my identity. I’m not going back there.
I can get behind reasonable adjectives: Passionate, Informed, Entrepreneurial, and Adaptable. Yes, job descriptions are aspirational. Yes, all prospective employers want employees to care about their jobs. Of course, they do! But caring, being a high-functioning, high-performer is different than zealotry.
I acknowledge that work-life balance is still a concept that exists mostly in theory. If I learned anything from working through and managing people during the Pandemic, it’s that work-life balance desperately needs to be prioritized by employers, not just paid lip service in the form of well-being washing or even worse — discouraged overtly or covertly.
The use of fanatical language in a job description is a warning sign because it gives you clues about a company’s culture and expectations. When you read in between the lines, the implications are insidious. You should sacrifice your personal life for your job. You should fall in line with the company's ideologies without question. You should forego your own identity for that of the larger organization. No, thanks!
We need to see examples of more companies like CHANI (I’m a regular user of their app!) actually putting work-life balance into practice through their benefits and policies and finding that (shocker!) it’s actually more profitable when it comes to the bottom line. Says CHANI CEO, Sonya Passi:
“We can do work that we're passionate about and we can love our jobs, but at the end of the day, the reason that my employees come to work is because they need to make a living. And it costs the same amount of money, if not less, to pay people well and have them build expertise and longevity on your team as it does to short-change people a living wage and end up spending the same amount of money on HR, legal bills, rehiring and loss of productivity.”
PREACH!!
In my experience, disciples who blindly fall in line aren’t bringing anything interesting to the table. “Yes” people don’t disrupt or build. Not only do I insist on being a free-thinking, non-Kool-Aid-drinking member of the workforce, but prospective employers should want the same.
Useful/Useless?
In this feature, I try job-seeking hacks and give my honest assessment.
KickResume Can KickRocks
I can get on board with the promise of A.I. making my life easier. For instance, I want it to write cover letters for me. Can we all agree that we should get rid of cover letters altogether? Good! Yes! But in this super competitive job market, cover letters seem to be the only way to distinguish yourself from the other 5,000 applicants. Blergh.
On the hunt for a way to outsource and optimize custom cover letter writing, I tried KickResume, which promises to help you build the perfect resume and cover letter in minutes. Forty-five minutes later, I was waiting for LinkedIn to export my data because KickResume wouldn’t allow me to upload an existing cover letter template or a job description with more than 2,000 characters.
By the time I finally did import my resume, upload my LinkedIn data and edit a job description down to 2,000 characters, I had sunk in an hour’s worth of time for the piece of poop cover letter above. Maybe if I upgraded to KickResume Pro, things would have turned out differently, but somehow, I’m doubtful.
Verdict: KickResume is a place to download ugly resume and cover letter templates. As far as writing the cover letter, you’re going to have to continue to use your human brain for that.
Worthy Time Wasters
And now for some fun stuff! Here are my weekly recs to combat doom scrolling.
LISTEN: Barbie Director Greta Gerwig & Editor Nick Houy on IndieWire Filmmaker’s Toolkit
I finally saw Barbie this past weekend and all I’ll say is that it’s a slay. Take a break from the gazillion Barbie think pieces clogging your feeds to hear Greta Gerwig and Nick Houy talk about making the actual thing.
WATCH: Class of 2007 (Amazon Prime)
Once you finish Deadloch, and you’re acclimated to the Aussie accents, keep the fun going with Class of ‘07, a dark comedy about what happens when a tidal wave hits during the ten-year reunion of an all-girls Catholic high school. Watching the group figure out how to survive the apocalypse and their decade-old grievances was the perfect outlet for my anxiety. If you enjoy survivalist programming but want something a little more feel-good than Yellow Jackets, this is it. Plus, you can finish it in two sittings!
READ: Where Is Britney Spears? (Vulture)
If you follow Britney Spears on Instagram, then you know that what you see is – at the very least – bizarre and chaotic. But the leap from “Why is she naked?” to “I’m calling 9-1-1 because she’s being held hostage by her conservators” is a quantum one. From the speculation that Britney Spears was replaced by A.I. in her wedding photos to the assertion that all of her videos are being secretly recorded from behind a mirror, this article breaks down the wild litany of conspiracy theories that has splintered the Free Britney Movement. Whatever the “truth” may be, I think we can all agree that Britney’s forthcoming memoir is going to be a bestseller.
READ: The Guest by Emma Cline
Alex, a 22-year-old escort, finds herself playing “girlfriend” to a rich, 50-something man. When they break up, Alex is forced to grift her way around the Hamptons to avoid the trouble she’s left behind in Manhattan. The mounting tension of her impending exposure certainly kept me turning pages. It also turned this book into an instant bestseller in the Hamptons.
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