Hiring Lara (3) - Listening for Stars in Meaningless Words

Part of our rethinking recruitment experiment.

My first impression of the 2nd task (to produce comms about a 20min conversation between Abby and Andy) was: ‘I could summarise this information in a couple of paragraphs.’

There didn't immediately feel like there was much there to grow. Abby and Andy did a great job of explaining the concept of autonomy on their own, using their own examples.

They had asked us to ‘encapsulate’ the conversation and that word choice seemed important. So I googled it:

1.      express the essential features of (something) succinctly. Summarise, abridge, digest.

2.      enclose (something) in or as if in a capsule. Encase, contain, confine, envelop.

I opened up a blank page (hello old friend) and gave myself an hour to free write whatever came into my head.

I got stuck after 9 paragraphs.

I pressed the return key twice and started again.

I continued until my hour was up and after a quick copy edit and review I had something, and... nothing.

The edges were murmuring something, something bigger than a few stories from my professional life… but I couldn’t catch what they were trying to say to me.

The attempt trickled through my brain for the rest of the day, repeatedly reaching dead ends no matter what direction I took them in. I listened to the noise, hoping for that edge muttering somewhere underneath it all to become clearer... and pointedly ignoring the imposter syndrome that was snickering in the background: 'Oh so easy to summarise in a few paragraphs eh?' (Ugh.)

I idly read the definition of encapsulate again, treating it like the north star in a crowded sky.

Abby, Andy, and I would talk later about how many times I looked up 'encapsulated' – because I sheepishly admitted to them that I did this every single time I got stuck and by the end of the process, I’d probably read a dozen different definitions ten times or more.

I spent a lot of time searching for meaning in that one word as if it would unlock the meaning of the universe. Trying to navigate these new waters by highlighting the ‘keyword’ in an exam question like I knew I should.

Abby had to tell me it was meaningless (although by the time we reached the interview where that conversation took place I had already guessed it might be). ‘Encapsulated’ wasn’t chosen for a particular reason, it wasn’t a test. There weren't 'shoulds' here.

I’d spent a lot of time listening to a satellite pretending to be a star, searching for meaning where she simply hadn’t intended any.

I also knew, every single time that I did it, that I was looking for direction in a task that was supposed to be autonomous.

My experience of the task was truly meta from the very beginning: I was experiencing autonomy and the debilitation curve (the 'oh crap I have no idea what I am doing' rollercoaster) while writing autonomously about an autonomous conversation about autonomy.

I love a good dose of irony. I was truly the architect of my own demise, and I was taking myself along for the ride....

Today, however, I am writing this reflection weeks after the task with a dawning sense of new clarity. There was actually something there, something in that word that I was reaching for, I just couldn’t see it.

The synonym I was looking for just smacked me in the face and bought out the chair for a takedown when I copied it into this blog post:

Envelop.

I had started by trying to make things smaller, started fitting them into a capsule, containing and enclosing them - summarising Abby and Andy's words without adding much. I started trying to fit them into a box, a nice neat 'appropriate business comms' box. The same box I was trying to claw my way out of. 🤦

At the time I intuitively felt the need to go wider, I felt the wrongness in the direction as a sort of 'gut knowledge,' but I spent a long time fighting that and seeking the 'head knowledge' - the clearly articulatable, measurable, reasons for why something didn't feel right.

I wasn't valuing the felt knowledge - because felt knowledge has never been enough for any one else in any role I have ever been in before. I'd been taught to devalue it and I didn't know how to trust it again.

The word I needed to see, the star I needed guidance from, may have been there all along (and perhaps it is comforting to know that now) but it was also there in that moment, in a different knowledge, inside the feelings and the discomfort, I just needed to be brave...

You'll never know what else an applicant has going on...

My breakthrough happened at about 1am, when I was definitely not still thinking about the task and definitely asleep.

I do know where I have felt this level of autonomy before, but it’s not work related.

It’s when I was ‘playing vikings’.

I enjoy playing a sandbox survival game called Valheim. A game that gives players autonomy. A game that I initially struggled to enjoy and have seen countless others become frustrated with – because of the lack of direction.

The floodgates opened.

I lie in the dark scrabbling to (quietly) punch letters into the nightlight of my phone as quickly as possible (without waking my fiancé). The pattern matching machine in my brain chugs steam and pulls away into the distance, rapidly outpacing my ability to type.

I put my phone down three times, only to have to reach for it again to add a new thought.

I wake up to 52 WhatsApp messages from myself.

I’m surprised I slept.

By the afternoon I have 3300 words and I am panicking for an entirely different reason.

It is longer than the original transcript, and I am expected on stage as the local pantomime villain for the next 3 days (no, really).

I need to go terrify small children, I don’t have time to make a 25min long video.

The idea had grown so much bigger than I had intended.

I fight myself all the way through an editing session, desperately trying to put the howling, spitting, feline of my creation back into the bag.

It won’t go and I am frustrated with myself.

What kind of comms professional can’t do this in a few days?? No one is going to wait this long for a task to be completed. Maybe I am just not right for this job.

I stop.

I hear my own negative thoughts screeching alongside the very angry idea-cat half-stuffed into a sack - it is a cacophony of shoulds:

• I should do more background research, deep dive their website, take their own ideas and feed them back to them

• I should put less of me into this, this is about them and their work,

• I should feedback what they want to hear, what is expected of me,

• A comms person should speak with someone else’s voice and use the royal ‘We’ of established company tone,

• I should email Abby a question (she did invite them in the email) because maybe this should be collaborative and I was supposed to ask questions, to build something with them. Maybe that was the real test all along?

I swiftly realise that I can’t think of a single question to ask Abby.

I can’t think of a question because I genuinely can’t think of anything that doesn’t boil down to ‘Hi, Um, do you like this idea? Is this what you want?’

I was, essentially, reaching for someone with ‘more power than me’ to tell me what to do.

Deadly Nightshade: (Upstage, right) I, the Great Evil Queen of Fairies, Nightshade The Magnificent, am here to place curses on Sleeping Beauty! I do not ask permission! (Nightshade exits dramatically through the audience.)

I realise, somewhere between encouraging bemused adults to boo me as loudly as possible and abusing my poor bumbling henchmen on stage, that maybe I needed this to be about me too.

Maybe what I needed was to know for myself that I could interpret the brief entirely my way. Not just to trust that I understood and could connect with their work, or to test if I would be able to sustain this level of autonomy long term, but because part of me still didn’t believe them.

I didn’t believe in their fairytale.

I didn’t believe this game wasn’t rigged and I wasn’t about to walk into an invisible boundary in a world that seems more open than it is.

I essentially had several suitcases of 'baggage' on this train and one of them was clearly labelled ‘misconceptions of expectations’ and was full of lost socks and really awkward conversations with past managers about how my idea of what ‘independent working’ means wasn’t actually what they meant...

I didn't trust the process, I didn't trust myself, and I didn't trust Abby & Andy - I needed to find my brave pants and put them on one leg at a time.

On Monday morning, still slightly glittery and finding confetti from the confetti cannons in random places in my house, I have a solution.

I return back to the parts I had highlighted on the original transcript, I copy them into a list of key points and I use that list to edit the script down to 1292 words. I know now, for certain, without deep diving their website or trying to talk like them, that I have covered all of their points.

It is not the 3 minute video I wanted. Maybe, though, it was the 8 minute video I needed.

I checked the email again. The deadline was specifically written as 9am, Wednesday.

It hadn’t occurred to me until then that a specified and clear deadline for applications was so unusual, that it didn’t just say ‘By Wednesday.’

I close the email feeling blessed by their attention to such details, my current unemployment, and my night owl tendencies - and only slightly cursed by the purple eye make up that I can’t seem to scrub out of my eyelashes.

Maybe there was just enough time to do 8 minutes of video before the deadline…

Originally Published Sep 19, 2024.