Part of our rethinking recruitment experiment.
Then the waiting began.
Just enough time for me dislike the comms piece that I also sent as part of the application.
I mean it’s fine but, I spent far more time on the book and I wasn't really sure that the comms piece added anything.
Their podcast made me feel a way – inspired, seen, understood - and I wanted to elevate the idea further, to ask where it could go. I began feeling like I could have done so much more than just telling them a story with ‘Check out our Podcast!’ at the bottom.
I could've explored changing how social media comms for businesses are usually done...
Which was ironic coming from someone who just had a full blown life crisis over writing a different kind of letter.
I am not surprised when I don’t hear back from Abby and Andy on the day they said they were going to contact people.
For a start I didn’t believe they were going to contact people by that date (because no one ever does) but I also knew that my work was caught in that limbo of going far enough vs going too far. I'd fought myself through the process and I wasn’t entirely happy with it, so it made sense that they wouldn’t be either.
I did wish I had enjoyed the process more though, that it had been a true opportunity to create and experiment, and I’d not held myself back.
By the end of the day, after the contact deadline, I have resigned myself to not knowing. I assume it was probably ‘too far' and that I’d likely never know for sure. They'd had hundreds of applications (I know because I went looking for the applications metric on the LinkedIn job advert) so I understand they can’t give feedback to everyone.
I wished it could be different, though. I had so hoped that it was. Even a cookie cutter rejection email would have felt, at this point, fairly revolutionary.
I throw a few more pennies into the inbox wishing well (using the refresh button as currency) but it remains empty.
I try to let it go.
I try very hard.
Later the next evening an intrusive thought that is stubbornly, definitely, completely not letting this go insists that I haven’t checked my spam folder recently.
So I do.
And there it is:
We loved your application for our Insights and Communications Lead vacancy and would like to invite you to stage two of the application process!
It wasn’t too far.
IT WASN’T TOO FAR!
I am simultaneously unsure if I want to kick my inbox filter in the shins for putting me a day behind on the next application task or kiss it for catching the email. I settle for a long meaningful look at it instead.
I knew then, though, that I had to go all in with the next thing I created. I had tested the waters and had already ‘lost’ the opportunity once. It wasn’t even so much about the job itself. I needed to know what would happen if I followed the edges from the start, if I followed the process instead of the outcome.
I wanted to find out what would happen if I worked the way that The Collective Impact Agency does (human-first, autonomously) instead of the toxic-productivity focused way I have learned to work (to fill the needs of the system).
It was easier said than done...
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