Thanks, But No Thanks
I’m currently unemployed for the first time since I was 15 years old. I didn’t lose my job because of Covid 19, I resigned because of the company’s response to Covid 19, Black Lives Matter, and the way they treated me - a brown woman. As I’ve stated multiple times since my resignation - black lives are more important than my job, every time.
As a poor kid from a brown family I’ve worked multiple jobs since I was 15 with my max capacity coming in at jobs totaling 20 hours per day, 6 days a week for three years (because we don’t pay entry level HR folks nearly enough, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss today).
As I settled into this extremely unfamiliar and uncomfortable world of unemployment, people began to feel quite cozy handing me unsolicited advice.
People on Twitter, LinkedIn, this blog, everywhere, felt extremely confident they had the key to my unemployment jail cell. People I didn’t even know, people who had never seen my work or watched me in the boardroom or witnessed me deescalate a screaming employee or present on remarkable employee relations data trends were telling me what my next job should be.
The advice was slapping me in the face as I wrestled with the emotions of quitting a job I moved to Texas for and I soon found myself trying to figure out which way was up.
And then I received a Twitter DM from a woman I already found brilliant, Laura Mazzullo. Laura is the owner of a top HR recruiting firm in New York (East Side Staffing) and we had been floating in the same HR Twitter community for some time, but hadn’t really connected.
Her DM was simple but authentic, she saw my resignation story and was inspired. She was doing a virtual workshop and wanted to offer me a spot. No pressure to attend, here’s the link if you want to show up.
So I showed up, mostly because I liked Laura a lot already, and also because she wasn’t slapping me in the face with advice during an already really tender time. I accepted the invite because Laura was already someone I wanted to have a beer with well before I wanted to listen to career advice.
As with every encounter following this one, Laura’s workshop strengthened my battered soul. You’ll have to take the workshop to get all the goods (and trust me you should), but Laura reminded me of something profound that a mentor taught me long ago in my career:
This is what I want in my next role, and if you can’t offer it to me, thank you for your time.
Being unemployed can wreck your confidence like a breakup. Instead of the, “Am I pretty enough, funny enough, interesting enough, good enough to bring home to your parents enough,” mental tear down game, the unemployed game is: “Am I innovative enough, smart enough, able to build rapport, a good enough leader, can I even interview good enough anymore?”
That mental tear down can convince you to accept advice and offers that aren’t aligned with what you truly want, and that is dangerous.
On a recent call a white male told an unemployed woman to accept, and I quote, “Any job that comes your way, regardless of the pay. Just be thankful you’re getting a job. Maybe you can move up later.”
The woman was a director before being laid off.
And for a moment no one spoke up. It was silent because that shit advice seems sound when you’ve been mentally torn down, or you have been convinced that you are worth less than your original price because you have been off the market.
And then a couple forces of nature stepped in and said thanks but no thanks. Myself, and Jaycke Clayton, one of the strongest Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Warriors I’ve met.
We reminded the call that this mentality is the reason women and minorities are paid less, discriminated against and can’t ever reach their full potential.
This is why women re-entering the workforce after having children don’t make what they’re worth. This is why pay secrecy should be illegal. This is systematic prejudice. This is wrong.
We reminded the call what Laura reminded me: thanks but no thanks.
Bad advice curates systematic racism, and unchecked bad advice breeds inequity. Whether you’re unemployed and trying to find the next role that you deserve, or you’re in a position and trying to sift through advice as you make decisions, it’s crucial that you determine what’s bad advice and what isn’t.
Here are a few tips that have helped guide my bad-advice-meter:
No relationship, no advice - Let me be as blunt as possible, if we do not have a relationship, I don’t take your advice. I don’t take your advice on my hair, my career, or my team building exercises. HR is a lonely, lonely place, and it’s supposed to be. You should not be taking advice from people that don’t know your heartbeat and intentions. You should be taking advice from people that know your weaknesses, call you on them, and love you. Brene Brown says it like this, “If you’re not in the ring with me getting your ass kicked on a daily basis, then your opinions of me or my work don’t matter.”
I only need one Kayla - I don’t take advice from people that want to please me, because there’s already one Kayla and I don’t need a clone or an ass-kisser. I need people that tell me what I don’t want to hear when I don’t want to hear it…in love. My advice circle does not look like me, believe like me, have sexual preferences like me, and they don’t all work in HR. DEI isn’t a program that we slap together because the media is finally televising the lynching of the black community in the streets of America; DEI is having a community of diverse people influencing you and your decisions every single day.
If it quacks like a duck - It’s a damn duck. If the advice sounds like shit, it’s probably shit. We have created an extremely lucrative empire centered around convincing women not to trust themselves. We’ve also created a culture convincing men that if they aren’t ultra masculine then they aren’t a “man,” and because of this we’ve stopped trusting our intuition because we don’t trust who we are. If the advice doesn’t sit right with you, walk away and don’t look back. You alone are smart enough to make these decisions, you don’t need someone’s approval or thoughts to pull the trigger.
No - Lastly, the answer is no. Human Resources has become a master at talking around the word no. I’ve taught courses on how to say no without saying no. While it’s effective in business processes, it’s not effective when you’re navigating advice. It’s important to utilize an outright "no” and voice it confidently when bad advice comes your way or is given in your presence so we can start to dismantle the systems of racism and prejudice that are chaining down underrepresented groups. No, do not accept the first offer that comes your way. No, don’t accept a salary that’s $20k below your requirement. No.
As HR professionals we’re faced with advice hundreds of times a day, and it’s time we sift through that advice purposefully. Thanks, but no thanks.