I got an email from a reader following yesterday's piece on Impostors and Bullying enquiring as to just how many impostors I have encountered in my working life. I'm not sure how statistically valid the encounters of one ranting blogger in his working life are. Well that's not strictly true - I can state with a high degree of confidence that the statistical validity of my encounters is precisely ... none. However, undeterred by something so tedious and unimaginative as statistical invalidity, I press gamely on. How many impostors have I met in my professional life to date?
A lot.
Remember that wonderful line from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which Douglas Adams is describing the immensity of space?
[Incidentally, isn't this new-fangled Impostor Syndrome thingie just a way of restating our old friend The Peter Principle? Yeah, yeah, I know - but Impostor Syndrome sounds so coooool.]
Let's just examine my first couple of [utterly statistically invalid] years out of college. I stumbled into the advertising industry largely because I enjoyed fooling around with words and had really enjoyed a couple of optional lectures I had attended entitled The Use and Abuse of the English Language. My first job was in a boutique advertising agency which had a wonderfully shambolic approach to the business.
Very shortly into my sojourn in the advertising game, I was approached by a Director from another agency who wanted to know if I'd be interested in moving to his agency? By now the shambolsim I was enduring on a daily basis was wearing a little thin, so I unhesitatingly said, "Yes."
So I was invited to interview a few days later and wandered up the road during my lunch break. I stepped in the door of this agency, looked down, and thought, "Oh ho!" Because my shoes had literally disappeared into the deep pile carpet of their reception area.
Then the most glossy human being I had ever seen in my life asked if she could help me. ["Oh hooooo!"] I told her I was there for an interview and took the proffered seat in the reception area. I gazed around at the rich decor, the award-winning advertisements set into subtly-lit alcoves, the glossy receptionist, the immaculate magazines and newspapers on the coffee table, the glossy receptionist ... and I thought to myself, "Oh ho! Now these people know what they are doing!"
Long story short, I did the interview, was taken on the tour of the agency ["Oh ho!" at every turn] was offered the job and showed up a couple of Mondays later for my first day. I sat through a ferociously impressive cup of coffee and briefing with my new boss, attended an equally impressive weekly meeting with all the department heads and then got down to my first day.
That afternoon, my boss and I were taking some creative concepts out to a major client. Back in the 1980s, that meant sticking the hand-drawn roughs down onto some stiff card, carefully placing a sticker with the agency logo on the mounting and hiding the concept beneath a hinged card cover, ready for the dramatic reveal later. As the scary hairy creative geniuses brought the roughs out to my boss' car, I noticed something a little odd - none of the roughs were covered.
"They're all wet," I was told. The mounting cards were placed carefully on the parcel shelf of my boss' car and the heating was turned up so that they would dry en route to the client's premises.
I was with that agency for about a year and I never saw a dry rough. Not once.
People make jokes about the value of the last minute. Were it not for the last minute, that agency would have been out of business in a day. Everything happened at the 59th second of the 59th minute of the 11th hour in that place. Which, as you can imagine, grew a little wearisome ...
So there was this client company of mine. Seriously together people. Sound, smart, polished. These guys knew their market share data down to tenths of a point. Broken out by region. These guys could tell me the science behind their products at a molecular level and they could tell me which customers were using what product and who was 'for sale' and who wasn't. Broken out by postal district.
"Oh ho! Now these people really know what they are doing!" I thought.
Not so.
They poached me, I had the same sort of bewildering first day and then ... nekkid emperors as far as the eye could see. Short-termism, P&L stripping, profit calls, loading the trade, interdepartmental squabbling, stupefying bureaucracy ...
Is there a lot of this about or is it just me?
A lot.
Remember that wonderful line from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which Douglas Adams is describing the immensity of space?
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen ..."How many impostors have I met in my professional life so far? A lot.
[Incidentally, isn't this new-fangled Impostor Syndrome thingie just a way of restating our old friend The Peter Principle? Yeah, yeah, I know - but Impostor Syndrome sounds so coooool.]
Let's just examine my first couple of [utterly statistically invalid] years out of college. I stumbled into the advertising industry largely because I enjoyed fooling around with words and had really enjoyed a couple of optional lectures I had attended entitled The Use and Abuse of the English Language. My first job was in a boutique advertising agency which had a wonderfully shambolic approach to the business.
Very shortly into my sojourn in the advertising game, I was approached by a Director from another agency who wanted to know if I'd be interested in moving to his agency? By now the shambolsim I was enduring on a daily basis was wearing a little thin, so I unhesitatingly said, "Yes."
So I was invited to interview a few days later and wandered up the road during my lunch break. I stepped in the door of this agency, looked down, and thought, "Oh ho!" Because my shoes had literally disappeared into the deep pile carpet of their reception area.
Then the most glossy human being I had ever seen in my life asked if she could help me. ["Oh hooooo!"] I told her I was there for an interview and took the proffered seat in the reception area. I gazed around at the rich decor, the award-winning advertisements set into subtly-lit alcoves, the glossy receptionist, the immaculate magazines and newspapers on the coffee table, the glossy receptionist ... and I thought to myself, "Oh ho! Now these people know what they are doing!"
Long story short, I did the interview, was taken on the tour of the agency ["Oh ho!" at every turn] was offered the job and showed up a couple of Mondays later for my first day. I sat through a ferociously impressive cup of coffee and briefing with my new boss, attended an equally impressive weekly meeting with all the department heads and then got down to my first day.
That afternoon, my boss and I were taking some creative concepts out to a major client. Back in the 1980s, that meant sticking the hand-drawn roughs down onto some stiff card, carefully placing a sticker with the agency logo on the mounting and hiding the concept beneath a hinged card cover, ready for the dramatic reveal later. As the scary hairy creative geniuses brought the roughs out to my boss' car, I noticed something a little odd - none of the roughs were covered.
"They're all wet," I was told. The mounting cards were placed carefully on the parcel shelf of my boss' car and the heating was turned up so that they would dry en route to the client's premises.
I was with that agency for about a year and I never saw a dry rough. Not once.
People make jokes about the value of the last minute. Were it not for the last minute, that agency would have been out of business in a day. Everything happened at the 59th second of the 59th minute of the 11th hour in that place. Which, as you can imagine, grew a little wearisome ...
So there was this client company of mine. Seriously together people. Sound, smart, polished. These guys knew their market share data down to tenths of a point. Broken out by region. These guys could tell me the science behind their products at a molecular level and they could tell me which customers were using what product and who was 'for sale' and who wasn't. Broken out by postal district.
"Oh ho! Now these people really know what they are doing!" I thought.
Not so.
They poached me, I had the same sort of bewildering first day and then ... nekkid emperors as far as the eye could see. Short-termism, P&L stripping, profit calls, loading the trade, interdepartmental squabbling, stupefying bureaucracy ...
Is there a lot of this about or is it just me?
5 comments:
Hi Rowan
Firstly congrats on a great Blog.
I think your experiences above highlight the weaknesses in the interview process. Many people think the interview is a one way relationship in that the company is recruiting you and therefore you have to put on your best face. Which of course we do. We research the company as best as we can. Make sure we are well groomed the morning of the interview. Put on our best attire and present ourselves as the perfect employee. What we forget is that most experienced interviewers know that we do all the above and their job is to peel away all our protective layers to get to the real person underneath.
The interviewee though often does not reciprocate this relationship. In most cases they may feel they are an impostor and just want to get through the experience as quickly as possible. So much so that often they only have a few stock questions for the end of the interview.
Interviewees should remember that just as they prepare for the interview and put on their best facade, so too do most companies. Thats why interviews happen in nice meeting rooms or offices and not in the janitor's closet 8-). We should use those interviews to "recruit" the company. Perhaps when applying for a job with a company think what would you want to know about that company if you were to be their new best customer and ask questions accordingly to see if they have the ethos and environment you want to work in.
Keep up the good work.
Brian
Excellent points all Brian - and indeed it is probably these early experiences that informed my approach to career management and to the almost fanatical level of research and preparation that I recommend doing in advance of an interview or accepting a job.
Quite apart from employee satisfaction surveys and high churn rates in certain industries, when one considers the rate of marital breakdown across the developed world, it is indicative to me of how little thinking is going on in the human decision-making process.
My paltry defence from this period is that ! was 21, rising 22, I barely had enough sense to come in out of the rain, and each of the companies offered my a 100% pay rise to move ...
Continuing on Brian’s comment, that’s one reason the internet is helpful. Individuals and companies no longer have to rely purely on physical word of mouth, but are capable of researching each other and finding out if they are compatible. Google and networking sites lay at our fingertips and though they may be helpful, they can also act as a double edged sword. I have to agree with an article from Focus Management, a recruitment consultancy that boundaries need “to be set between an individual's personal social life and their attributes at work. With everything being accessible, our lives are now under the microscope 24/7.” There are also the possibilities that an ex-employee will post some negative comments or air dirty laundry about a company as well. The pre-hiring process is a form of courting, but with today’s technology is it becoming easier or more difficult?
Regarding the bullying issue, there's a useful book called Working with Monsters by John Clark which came out a couple of years ago or so.
It's about how to spot and deal with the psycopath in the workplace - who is not necessarily an axe-wielding maniac - many of whom are in senior positions. It's very illuminating and highlights a good number of how people cause havoc and stress in the workplace.
Misha - very useful article, thank you. I agree, you can run up against very ugly remarks about organisations from disgruntled ex-employees. My solution? I like to have LOTS of sources of information, offline as well as online, and then I can make my mind up on which to take with a grain of salt.
Sheboom - I haven't read Working With Monsters yet, but Babiak & Hare's Snakes in Suits is more than worth the cover price. Thanks for the steer.
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