Part of our rethinking recruitment experiment.
I don’t remember how Abby and Andy started the pre-application zoom Q&A session, but I do remember that I started smiling almost immediately.
I caught myself in my webcam grinning like a loon, nodding along to Abby and Andy's conversation like a cartoon dog on the dashboard of a Jeep with supremely dodgy suspension. I tried reapplying my professional serious-job-face several times but to no avail.
Something, something community facilitation, something, something systems change…??
I was still in understanding limbo. I felt like I should have the experience to understand what this work is, after all it’s a similar field to those I have been in just with different grass. But I was currently suffering from the dawning realisation that perhaps what they do is not what matters, it is how they do it… and I didn’t quite know where to put that yet.
I was finding myself unexpectedly in the surreal position of finding ‘people I want to work with’ before ‘a job I’d like to do’ and, as a self-confessed introvert, this was a slightly horrifying turn of events.
So, as my inner world slowly became upside-down-land, I listened to other people ask Very Good Questions (©️) and lurked in the call like an inane gremlin, occasionally picking up pretty pebbles of information to turn over.
Then, out of nowhere, I was surprised to find I had a genuine question of my own. It wasn’t clever, I wasn’t trying to impress them, and it was something I felt bad asking about.
In many ways it was a challenge, a test, rather than an innocent question.
But I couldn’t help being curious. Could I... interview the interviewers?
I debated with myself whether asking this question was a good idea, but apparently my ‘brave pants’ are actually pyjama bottoms with skulls on them (who knew) so I asked:
"How did you manage having to let people go?"
The question was a surprise to them too. (Given that their mention of previously having to let team members go had been a brief footnote in their discussion on the company’s history, I don’t blame them.)
Abby replied by thinking aloud, treading the expected line of ‘it’s always hard…’ but with an insight and depth of humanity that was profound and deeply reassuring.
But it was Andy’s answer that floors me. If I hadn’t already been seated, I would have needed to sit down.
“It was messy.” He said bluntly, “Really messy and I felt terrible. We didn’t know what we were doing, and we made some mistakes along the way, we just had to try to do the right thing.”
Truth.
It hits me hard. This was the most honest sentence anyone has ever uttered to me about what it is like to have to fire people. It was raw, undiluted, and a shared echo of my own pain and guilt.
I am clearly not talking to the directors of the Collective Impact Agency, I am talking to Andy & Abby.
“So we managed the best we could.” Andy finishes, and I nod sadly because I understand; business is cruel. This was the expected script. Sometimes decisions have to made for the good of the company.
But Andy hadn't finished speaking;
“So, we took a look at everything, and we decided to dip into the company reserves and pay them for several months until they could find another job.”
I’m not sure if my jaw dropped physically or only metaphorically.
‘THEY PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEY MOUTH IS’ wrote itself (in neon) across my brain.
I didn’t know I was testing them for proof that ‘they are who they say they are’ until that moment... but holy shit did I have it.
I fumble for a reply because the fireworks going off in my brain are so loud. I say something about red threads that was probably intelligent sounding and sit through the rest of the session locked firmly in the haze of a profound culture shock.
Afterwards I told everyone.
Giddy, like a child on Christmas morning, I shouted at people: “OMG YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TODAY" and I watched as their disbelief (that a place like this exists) mirrored my own.
…and I felt sad
…and then I felt angry.
Because the reason Andy’s answer was so perfect wasn’t just because it was unusual for an employer to care about it's people, it was because it shouldn’t be, and we all know it.
I was now suddenly just as interested in the process of applying for this job as I was in getting the job itself – because what if? What if everything could be different? What would that even look like?
It made me wonder what else was possible.
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