10614: Truthiness In Advertising—And Advertising Job Listings.

 

The actual job listing depicted above shows all that is wrong with Adland, the current employment market, and job hunting in general.

 

Here’s a quick review of all that is wrong:

 

• Delegating the screening process to inexperienced recruiters is a bad move. These individuals tend to have limited skills assessing talent. Plus, as this ad demonstrates, they also have limited skills with basic spelling and writing. “Copy of Art Director” is not a common title—or even a title at all—and the full job description has clearly not been reviewed by a proofreader. Or a competent hiring manager. The mess appears to have been copy-and-pasted together in haphazard style. In short, applicants should realize they are pursuing a completely unprofessional and lazy enterprise.

 

• Related to the previous point, it’s unclear which enterprise an applicant is pursuing. Employer names include Publicis Groupe, The Makers Studio, and PXP Studios. It’s a safe bet that the three places suck. The fuzziness underscores how White holding companies have created a commoditization of talent and company—that is, people are viewed as interchangeable drones and places are all pretty much the same.

 

• White advertising agencies do a lousy job of defining jobs—that is, they don’t really know what they want. Instead, job descriptions are seeking mythical unicorns. For this one, qualifications open by stating candidates’ “experience spans social, digital, integrated, and holistic brand marketing across multiple brands and industries.” Plus, “Experience with production is a HUGE plus” means the candidate will be handling studio production duties too. In fact, the winning candidate will likely be doing menial labor versus omnichannel campaigns—it’ll be holy shit versus holistic.

 

• Finally, the listing makes no mention of diversity, equity, and inclusion; additionally, it doesn’t discuss the company’s culture or provide any incentive to join the corporate community. In fact, it’s likely that the screening process doesn’t feature any deliberate desire to find non-White applicants. This all flies in the face of the performative propaganda that is probably posted on the agency website. It’s another red flag that the place may be a hypocritical cesspool steeped in systemic racism.

 

Employers should not be baffled when employees are quick to quit. Relationships that start with lies and deception rarely last long.