Unsupervised

riverside simon rejected or selected (1): This podcast is recorded on Wajak Nungar Buja, country where sovereignty was never ceded, and we like to pay our respects to elders past, present and those emerging within the community. Welcome to Rejected or Selected, a podcast where we talk about job search woes, hiring for us, and everything fair and unfair in and around our work lives. Hey everybody. I have no idea where to start. letting you all know that it is unplugged, I guess you could call it that. I'm gonna call it unsupervised. It is an unsupervised 45 minutes. Or s or whatever, however long I choose to do this for. Whatever. It's an unsupervised episode of Rejected or Selected. welcome everybody. There's no guest, but more importantly, there is no co-host, there is no Deany to supervise yours truly tonight on the show. There's no agenda. Well, there kind of is, because you know, it'd be me speaking absolute crap into the void. Well, I guess how would that be different than normal anyway? if you've been wondering what I think when nobody is supervising me today, you will find out it is your lucky day. I could have sent this as an email, but you would have had to open it. And speaking of that, I'm gonna start today's episode or tonight, or whenever you're listening to this, I'm gonna start our nineteenth episode of Rejected or Selected with Talking about just that. We say it all the time, but what does it actually mean when a meeting could have actually been a fucking email? Now I'm already letting the swears loose. Deanny's gonna regret not being on this one. Okay. So anyway, I should let you all know, just to backtrack a little bit. Deanny's not joining us for tonight's episode, and the reason being she's just started a new role. Which is awesome, but she's had to travel for that new role. And at the same time, juggling a whole move back to Australia, finding a place to live for her and her family, and then obviously the daunting task of starting a brand new massive job. There's a lot going on there. So I have put my hand up and said, Deanny, I'll do it on my own. To which Deanny said, Sure. To which I am now thinking she's probably regretting that already. Anyway, as I was saying, the the topic, what we're gonna start talking about first in this episode of Rejected or Selected, I should mention a solo, a solo Simon episode of Rejected or Selected. I should also say, God, I'm already getting off track. I should also say there will be no video for this particular recording. It is like everything happens at once. When it rains, it pours. So there's no Deini. I've had to scramble and put something together really quickly because we had a really cool show lined up for you. But with no Dini, that show doesn't work. So I've scrambled some topics to put together based on ex recent experiences of mine. And I lo and behold, my webcam is not functioning properly. So that's okay. That's all right. You get to look at whatever thumbnail I scramble together for you for this episode anyway. So that's that being said, the topic, the first thing we're gonna talk about is emails. Now, we're gonna go into some something I like to call email dread in a moment. You you I coined that phrase, that's mine, right? Email dread. Talk about that in a moment. What I wanna do. First though is talk about those emails, sorry, those meetings I should say. Those meetings that someone in your team puts together, it could be your manager, could be someone you sits, you know, opposite you in the team, it could be someone from another team. They've thrown together a meeting when really it could have just been something they sent out via email to all the people that mattered who were invited to the meeting. So Let's have a look. When do we decide a meeting should become a meeting and it's no longer an email? Well, look, if there's a if there's an important decision to be made, yes. If there's an important decision to be made, the outcome is to make that decision, then yes, you get the people in the room or you get all meeting virtually and you come to a decision. You make that decision, right? Something sometimes a meeting is better than an email because the email can be 15 different reply or a decision is made and it may go on and on and on and on. Right? We've all been there. However, when it's not a meeting, is think to yourself, is there an actual decision that is needs to be made right now from this discussion we're having? Send an email out. Send out an email. Is there a real discussion needed? Now, if there is genuine consensus needed, genuine input, a genuine discussion that is required, yes. Have a goddamn meeting. Put it together. Put it on teams, put it in a meeting room, I don't care. Get the people involved, get the people you think should be involved, get them in the meeting. Is there a disagreement to resolve? Again, yeah. Make a meeting out of it. If there's a a disagreement between one or two people or more, then get that meeting sorted. Should we invite the entire team? No. If it doesn't involve or is not relevant to other members in the team, other members across the business, don't invite them. Don't invite them. You don't need them. There's a disagreement to resolve. Set up the fucking meeting. Here are things that that shouldn't. That shouldn't be a meeting. They should just be an email. For example, I want to have a quick sync. You ever seen that pop up in an email or a team's message from a direct report, a manager, someone in your team? I want to have a quick sync. As in S Y N C synchronization. People don't understand what that actually means and they they use it way too much. I want to have a quick sync because I believe it's hot weather today and you don't think it is. I think we need to sync up. You're wearing a jacket and I'm not, we need to sync up. That's no. I I don't know what you mean by quick sync. It's it's absolute jargon. Stop doing it. The meeting. Here's another one. All right. I this this gets gets up my nose, this one. This gets right up my nose with a rubber hose. The meeting about the meeting or the pre meeting or the pre pre meeting. We need to have a discussion. Before we meet with this external party to talk about how we're going to sync up and how we're going to approach this meeting. No. No, no. And a meeting and after the meeting? We need to we need to have a a debrief. We need to debrief about what was discussed in the meeting. First and foremost, the debrief if you want to pronounce it like that. I kinda do. Bullet points, send them out after the meeting to anyone that was actually in the meeting. Done. Easy. If you take your notes properly, or you got your AI assistant to take the notes, take the notes. It can even generate the fucking email for you. Send it out. Send it out. Okay. goodness me. If if you need to sync up you need to sync up before the meeting, well send an email out. By the way, we're meeting with X or XY tomorrow at nine AM. Here's some of the stuff I think we should bring up. Can you cover off? Da da da and I will cover off a da du. And then, hey, look, guess what? We're synced up. It was a five-minute email. Took you one minute to read it. Five minutes to send out.001 second to actually arrive in your inbox. Easy. I don't need to waste 30 minutes to an hour of your life and your work day by discussing what we're going to say in another meeting that is going to take another. 30 minutes to one hour of your work day. Or I don't need to set up another meeting after a meeting to cover off what was discussed in that meeting. Don't need to. But it's happened. It's happened to me. I can guarantee it's happened to Deanny. It's happened to you. If it has happened to you, I want to hear from you. Hit us up, rejected or selected at Instagram. Rejected or selected on our LinkedIn. And hit us up on YouTube, rejected or selected. You know, there's no there's no magic to it. It's just rejected or selected. Just those three words, put in on any of those platforms, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn. I I think we have a Facebook. We have a Facebook. It's just rejected or selected. That's it. Okay. So Riverside's just booted me off and I've had to jump back onto my own studio. So yeah, not only not only have I had to scramble and put together a very quick, very quick episode run sheet. I've I no I no longer have a co well, I I will have I do have a co host. She's just temporarily not in this episode with me tonight and no fault of her own. Through no I should emphasize, through no fault of her own. It's totally cool. Things happen. I was away for the last Anonymous Confessions episode. And she's away for this one and that's totally fine. But now my webcam not working. And now Riverside just drop me a look. Love Riverside. The technical support people at Riverside. Fan fantastic people. Great support. They are real live human beings, by the way, I should say. But not having a good time tonight. Not having a very good time tonight on this one. And I'm I I have to head off to a birthday dinner after this very shortly. So I'm hoping I can get everything I need to in the next f for fifteen, twenty minutes or thirty minutes or w whatever I've got on this show. I'm so sorry. You are the most patient audience. If you're still listening, you are very patient people. I've just started presenting At a local community radio station. One thing they one thing they they teach you, and this is very important, no matter what technical difficulties you face, get through it and do not bring attention to it. But I'm not on community radio right now. I'm on Rejected or Selected, where we bring attention to everything that's on fire. And right now the entire podcast is on fire. Not in the good it's on fire way or you're so fire. Well that's fire, not in that kind of way. These lyrics are fire. None of that. It's more as in everything is fucking on fire and I'm trying to get on top of it. Anyway, meetings that could have been emails. Meetings that could have been emails. Here's the other thing about about meetings. If they don't have an agenda, me no want to attend. No agenda. If I can't see anyone else that's been invited and you've hidden the list from me. I don't like that. If there's no outcome, we're gonna meet so we can decide what Chinese takeaway we're gonna order on a Friday afternoon. Then I don't I don't wanna be part of your meeting. If if there's a pre read, which maybe takes maybe up to three minutes of my day, but Bart gives me a good overview of what the meeting is gonna be about and why I should attend. Yeah. I'll read that, I'll read that shit. I will read it with a cracker and some cheese. Cheese and crackers, I should say. Don't know why I said that. If if you can name one decision owner by the time the meeting ends, if we had a meeting to decide a meeting, to decide a decision, if you can give me who the owner of that decision is, even better. If it's me, fine. If it's Larry or Lisa or Leon or anyone else starting with an owl or anyone else in the meeting I should say, then yeah fine. And guess what? You know what I You know what I absolute absolutely love this? When you finish the meeting with five minutes to go. But don't do this. I'm gonna give you five minutes of your day back. You say that And I would like to slap you across the face. Especially if I'm in back to back meetings. You're giving nothing back. Guess what? I'm jumping straight into the next meeting, no matter what. Cameras Cameras on Teams and Zoom and WebEx or whatever platform does anyone use WebEx anymore? Whatever whatever platform your organization's using, Google Meet, if you're really, really adventurous and and not risk averse at all, jump on Google Meet for a for a really interesting time. Anyway. Cameras. What's your what's your point of view on cameras? I want to hear what you think of mandatory cameras in meetings. that according to the United Nations, it is actually a breach of our human rights to insist that an employee turns their camera on during a meeting. Now Deanny's gonna wish I wasn't unsupervised. I'm calling them out. In 2000 and actually, no, it was probably earlier. Yeah, 2020. So December 2020, there was a I was working for an innovation hub called OS Cyber, right? I was there for about 18 months. In December of 2020, only six months after I started, there was a decision made at the very top, a sole decision, by the way, by one person, the CEO. That they were going to be brought out. They were gonna sell the innovation hub, which I don't know how you do that, because it is a government funded entity. They were gonna sell the innovation hub to a a what do you call it? An incubator, a business incubator of startups and blah blah blah. Stone and chalk, I believe, is the name. They're still around Stone and Chalk, Oper East, based over in Melbourne and Sydney. And God knows where else. But to get to the point of my my whole story here, the CEO knew must have known the rumbling is coming from every one of us about how this was a bad decision and I stand by the fact that it was a horrible decision. Before this meeting she insisted I would like to see everyone's cameras on. I I haven't been spoken to like that since I was in school by a teacher. That didn't sit well with me. But I guarantee you every single person turned their camera on, including me. If I had known if I had known at that point that this was a breach of my got given human rights As laid out by legislation, the the fantastic legislators that work for the United Nations, the UN, I would have said you can you can stuff it where the sun does not shine, Michelle, because I am certainly not going to be turning my camera on. I turn my camera on, as any as any good as any good boy would at that point in time. You want to keep your job, you don't realize what your rights are. But looking back, definitely definitely should have kept it off for many different reasons. I I can tell you though, when we had our cameras off in those meetings, all how broke loose we were texting each other back and forth, sending memes. I tried so hard not to burst out laughing at some of the anyway, I'm getting off I'm getting off topic here. All I'm saying is I don't believe you should have tech have your cameras on. And the UN also agrees with me. You don't have to have your cameras on at a meeting. And if your boss tells you I want to see you with your camera on, well guess what? You don't have to have your camera on. Okay, so before we before we move on to the next segment, I wanted to I mentioned earlier the email what was the word? Anxiety. Well, I didn't use the word anxiety, but I'm gonna say email anxiety. Email anxiety. Yeah, we get those emails, and they usually they usually come after hours or on a Sunday night, right? If you make the mistake of checking your email on a Sunday night. I've done it, I still do it, we've all been there, right? We're all guilty. Okay? No one's no one's innocent. No one's innocent of this, okay? These are the email titles that on a scale of one to ten, with one being Relatively relatively calm. Nothing to nothing to worry about. To ten where you're full blown panicking. These are the email titles that will and and look, I've kind of I've kind of scaled these. So they start off, they're not so anxiety ridden, but then they get worse. So we're gonna start off with some of the classic, the ones I like to call the classic, the classic offenders. Alright, the usual suspects. Okay. Alright. So here we go. Classic offenders. Number one. Quick question. That's that's the title of the email, by the way. Quick question. I've had that one before, I'm sure you guys have too. Number two, following up. Another one. Number three, touching base. Now there's a pattern here. They're all one or two words. Okay, touching base was number three. Number four, update. Nothing else. Now this this is a classic. This can come with or without any kind of punctuation. The classic one is thoughts with a question mark or thoughts without the question mark. They can mean two different things. One thoughts I'm gonna run something past you on a Sunday night at eight thirty, even though you're spending time with your family, but I couldn't give a shit about your personal time. Thoughts on this? Because you know your my time is way more valuable than yours apparently. And then there's thoughts. I'm gonna share some things that I think should be happening. Anyway, the next one. The anxiety starts to rise a little bit with this one. Can we chat? Exclamation mark. Can we chat? Can we chat? Having a little chat as innocent as having a little chat as a sentence might sound, we all know in the world of work and in relationships too, can we chat? Is pretty bloody serious compared to the way it comes out. Can we chat? No one's ever had an innocent quick chat that was inconsequential. It did not mean make or break in your career. It did not mean your partner's about to break up with you. Can we chat? It's never an innocent conversation. Can we chat? Can we chat? Remember 50 bucks only last month I loaned you? Where is it? Can we chat about that? Can we chat? Your son keeps coming to class violently threatening the other students. Can we chat about that? Can we chat is never innocent? Never innocent. Okay. The last two in the classic offenders category. Urgent. When it it really isn't urgent. But you see that at eight thirty on a Sunday night and you you s the anxiety goes up a little bit. And then the next one, the classic offender R E colon, R E colon, R E colon, R E colon, forward colon, high. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit. There's a lot of RE's there. But I've seen it. We've all been there. High. Don't ever title your email hi. Even if it's a joke. All right, next ones. These ones are mysterious but slightly threatening. Number one, we need to talk. That's up there, we can we chat, but it's I think it's even more serious. We need to talk. The next one, please see below. That's that's that's also the as per my last email. Please see below. The next one. Please see my last email. We're following a theme of you people. Number four, action required when there really isn't. It's just is this a yes or no? Are you coming to the office Christmas party or not? Heads up. Heads up. Heads up. Redundancies around the corner. Heads up. Consultants coming in to talk about structure. Heads up. It's your turn to to shout us all drinks on a Friday. That's not too bad though. Next one, FYI. FYI. For your information, redundancy is around the corner. Second last one in this category. Call me when you get a sec. Now there's this is ang the anxiety is starting to bubble. Your stomach's starting to get that kind of queasy summings up feeling. And the last one in the mysterious A slightly threatening category Quick One. Spoiler alert, it's never a quick one. Okay, we're going down the the line, down the list. Okay, next category is corporate fog. There there may not be so much anxiety. Some of these do come with anxiety, like pre-built. It's default setting, anxiety driven. Some might not be so much. Corporate fog, here we go. Number one, alignment. Number two, next steps. Next steps is fine. Look, I don't mind next steps. Put it into context though, if it's following a meeting where next steps was discussed and someone agreed, they will put it in writing and everyone can agree who's the owner of what bullshit is going to come up next. Next steps is fine. Circling back. If you're a circle back kind of person, I don't want you in my professional network, and I certainly don't want you in my personal friend circle. number four, catch up. Now That's ominous. that comes from your boss and it says catch up, something's up and something's not good. If it comes from a workmate, maybe they're having problems with the boss. Or they just need to vent. If it's coming from someone in another team across the business, redundancies are around the corner. Okay, next one. Number f number five. Sync. Again, it's going back to this. This is completely worthless. Sync. and n and the next one. R. E. colon, R. E. colon. Sync. The second last one in this character. Revised revised final version three. Someone has been micromanaged and is now sending you a document. And the reason they're sending you the document, their boss or your boss, has asked you to also jump in the micromanaged pylon. And micromanage this document. Because they've had enough. And the final one in corporate fog, open to your thoughts. They're not really open to your thoughts. They're putting forward what they think should happen. And they're just they're just test they're fishing. They're fishing. They want to see who in the business agrees with them. They want to see who's aligned. Who's synced? Who's synced up with me? Alright, the final The final category, this is just anxiety, default setting, pre-built, pre installed, no need to subscribe. You you don't even subscribe to this shit. You own it. This is you owning the pure dread. This is the pure dread category. There's a few there's only a few in this one. But these are the ones that you see this and you just feedback. Alright, if it comes from your boss. I'm gonna put some context. If that is if it says feedback and it's asking for feedback about a training session or a team building thing or you know, something your your boss is trialing, that's fine. But if it is your boss sending you an email explicitly with the title Feedback Panic. The next one, can you jump on a call? Can you jump on? Can you jump on a call is a very direct way of saying, call me when you get a sec. We need to talk and a great, let's have a chat. Okay, let's move on. The next one. This is one of the this is in my opinion, the worst. Concerns. Concerns. Especially if that comes from your boss or a senior manager and it's directed at you. And here's here's a context, people. You're reading these and if you check the recipient list and you are the only recipient but you look in the C C and there is HR and another senior manager in that list. You are completely justified in your panic and dare I say it having a quick vomit. All right. Third last, quick favour. Now quick favour isn't as anxiety driven, isn't as in ex isn't as should say, anxiety inducing, but it also means that you're giving up the rest of your Sunday night. The second last one in the pure direct category, important. You don't want to see an email with the title, just important. Especially if it's from your boss. And the last one Meeting invitation Colon Quick Catch Up and the meeting is sixty. Quick catch up. Is A never a quick catch up and B always bad news. Where did you score? Where did you score these? In the pure dread category, where what was making your stomach uneasy? What about corporate fog? Mysterious and slightly threatening and classic offenders. Hit us up, rejected or selected at gmail dot com. Let us know. Get on the LinkedIn, rejected or selected. Get on the Instagram, rejected or selected. Get on the YouTube. Like and subscribe. Anyway, finish your meetings five minutes early. Don't ask your employees to turn their cameras on. Make sure there's an agenda. Don't ask to sync up beforehand. Don't ask to meet after the meeting to make sure you're all on the same page. Just just have the meeting. Make your decision. Get out. If wasting time to meetings is bad, imagine being made to do unpaid homework just to get in the door. And that brings me to my next topic, the hoops. You have to jump through to get hired. Now I'm lucky. I've I've got a great job. I enjoy my job. I enjoy my my workmates are great. I enjoy the work that I do. Love my boss. Absolutely love my boss. Great guy. Really easygoing guy, but also, fair, firm. Understands what we need in his team. And, you know, understands what we need to be able to do our jobs well. Now I'm being fair here. Assessment is a legitimate part of the hiring process. There's no doubt about that. It's how you get selected. It's it's half the name, well it's one third of the names in our podcast. It's how you get selected. Or how you get determined to be rejected. The issue the issue I have is proportion. Proportion, transparency and clarity, and respect for your time as a candidate. So we're gonna draw the line today between the sensible process of hiring and doing the hula hoop course. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna rank, well not rank, I'm gonna I'm gonna have a rating. We're gonna talk about different ratings for the different types of hoops that we are asked to go through as a candidate. So zero hoops is a clean process. Sometimes that might not be great though. For the the hiring company. One to two is normal friction. So for example, you need to have a second interview. That's normal friction. Three to four, the hoop course. We'll talk about that in a second. And five, you are competing in the Olympics, my friend. So let's have a look at some different types of hoops that we're going to call out. And I want you lovely listeners to think about where this fits on the scale. Is it a zero, a one to two, a three to four, or is it a five and you're in the Olympics? Okay, here we go. Common hoops that I'm calling out today. Four, five or six interview rounds for a role that is not senior leadership. I think that's a five. That that's massive that's an Olympic circuit. That's that's an Iron Man with hula hoops at the end thrown in. That's just that's ridiculous. And look, I know from experience and speaking to people and I know Deanie had to go through a lot in her current role in terms of hoops and the number of meetings, but to be fair, she has a senior leadership role. But I know people who have just gone for associate roles or roles that I have no direct reports and yet they are jumping through five or six of these interviews with different people or even the same people. Doesn't make any sense. Okay, next one. Large unpaid take home tasks, so homework. So we want you to design a pitch deck that we would commonly use with one of our stakeholders or customers or whatever it is, about X problem. Now, if it is a problem that the company is currently facing, that's unpaid that's unpaid labour. It looks suspiciously like real work for the employer. Where does that sit on the scale? I think that's a five. That's definitely a five. You're taking you you may still be employed while applying for this particular job. So you now, in addition to doing your own job during the day and job seeking in your spare time, you're also using that spare time to do the work. For a company that doesn't actually pay you a salary yet and may not. The next one one way video interviews where you talk to a webcam and nobody answers. Being there. You're like, you're speaking into the void, which is what I'm kind of doing right now on this podcast. You're speaking into the void. Do you is there anybody is there anybody out there? Sorry, I can't sing. Is there anybody out there? I I think maybe that's a That's a three. I think that's a three. There's there's definitely a hoo a hula hoop course there. It's not Olympic level. You're not gonna win a medal. You're not gonna get your photo on a Wheaties box or anything like that. Or have some shoe endorsement sponsorship. But you're definitely proving your worth. Okay, next one. Psychometric and personality person I'll start again. Psychometric and personality tests. With no feedback and no explanation of how they are used. That's probably a three. And again, I've been there, I've done the psychometric tests, they are not short. Some of them go for an hour, hour and a half plus. It's almost like you're doing homework. It's almost like you're doing unpaid labor for no reason. Because sometimes you don't get the feedback. You won't even get a parcel fail. Or you won't even get a where do you fit on the scale of being completely psychopathic. Too completely. All right. Presentation tasks on a business problem the company actually has, that's a five. You're you're doing unpaid labor again. You're doing unpaid labor. You're having to put thought, genuine deep thought into something that you don't get paid for. Here's another one. Asking for salary expectations while refusing to share the range. So if you're And this could be during the interview process, or it could be an email from the hiring manager or the recruiter afterwards. What are your salary expectations? But you have no clue as to what the range is with this company. So if I'm asking, if I'm currently at my job making 120,000 plus super and I want to go a bit higher, and I say I would like to earn 130,000 plus super, but The hiring manager knows that the job, the ceiling is 100K, then there's a huge misalignment there. Now, there's a huge other problem here. The problem is not all job ads have a salary range, and legally they should. That's a whole nother discussion for another episode. And I think we've covered it extensively already anyway. But if you're asking for the candidate's preferred salary range, And you haven't given any indication of what you're willing to pay, that is completely unfair. And that's a five. That's Olympic level jumping through hula hoops right there, folks. There and the the hoops are on fire. And you have to ride a unicycle right up to the hoop before jumping through it. And there's a rabbit dog chasing you on that unicycle. And it's over it's over a it's over a a vat. Full of sharks with freaking lasers. That's exactly the kind of Olympic level obstacle course you are being thrown through when they're asking you to give a salary range and you have no clue what they're prepared to pay you yet. Okay, we've got two to go. Reference checks requested before any offer is on the table. Yeah. I know it's standard procedure of some companies, but the way I see it, we've made you an offer, but we're also going to do some reference checks. That's that's when the reference checks happen. Not not bef not after one interview. by the way, we're gonna we're gonna call those referees you put in your C V. We we may be wasting their time and yours because We're probably not even going to give you the job. We've got someone internal in mind. But for shits and giggles, we'll call those referees anyway. And guess what? If it's a recruiter making those calls, that conversation turns into a complete B to B phone call. It's a it's almost like a cold call, but with a reason to call. Yeah, I'm just calling off about ex candidates. He's he's raw job application, he's put you down as a referee. Great, great, great, cool. Thank you. Awesome. By the way, are you hiring at the moment? Or yeah. Don't do it. Don't do it. I w I remember when I was a recruiter, they would tell us every single time you do a reference check, that is a B2B call right there. You get keep them on the phone and you ask them about their own team. You ask them about their hiring needs. You ask them if they're looking for a job. Yeah it makes me sick. Anyway, last one, final one. Ghosting after the final round. So a process that asks for hours of effort and he gets no reply. That's that's a three or four. You're not jumping through the hoops, you've already jumped through them. But the fact that you're now being ghosted means that those it's almost as if did those hoops even exist? You know what I'm saying? Did you even jump through the hoops? Did that job even exist? And that's what ghosting feels like. It feels like that recruiter, did they even exist? That hiring manager. Was it all a dream? Were they ghosts? Do I see dead people? That's that's what you're asking yourself. You you you it's gaslighting from every single angle. Did am I going crazy? Did that even happen? Ugh Ask about Okay. Would you ask a current employee to do this unpaid work in their own time? No you wouldn't. So if not, well if not, why is it fine? Why is it just okay and just dandy to ask a candidate to do unpaid work in their own free time? Or if we asked this of the hiring manager before they were allowed to run the process, would they still agree it was reasonable? No. No no no. No one way whatsoever. Getting very cynical in my older age. All right. So where what did you score? Where did you score those? There were quite a few there. A few different examples of hoops. Did you give any of them a zero? Did you give any of them a five? Why the twos and why the threes or fours? Why the ones? Let me know. We want to hear your thoughts. Rejected or selected. You can hit us up as well, our email account. Just g just get us there. Rejected or selected at gmail.com. All right, you'll listen to rejected or selected unsupervised Simon on his own flying solo today for episode number nineteen for our twenty twenty six season. Okay. I promise you folks we have a really awesome guest coming up in our next main show. But our next show, which will be coming out on Friday, The thirtieth of October, so a couple of days after this one, is going to be another anonymous confession. And it's going to be an absolute I'm trying to pick I'm trying to find the right verb. It's going to be an absolute blast. That's yeah, that's that's a verb, isn't it? Blast or a a noun. And adjective. I don't know. It's too late in the day for me. Former English teacher, by the way, people. Okay, practical takeaways for candidates. Okay, some some stuff that you should be taking away from that last segment there. So what you should be doing is asking early how many stages there are and the expected timeline. Set your own limit on unpaid work and say so politely. Don't say that's rubbish. I'm not getting I'm not getting paid for this. Why should I do it? Don't say that. You may still want the job. So frame it in a way that sounds a little bit more diplomatic. Ask where the task output will be used by the company, and that is you have every right in the world to ask that, especially if it's being used for a real world current problem that the company is facing. You have every right to ask. Ask for feedback after a final round. You're allowed to. Email them, give them a call. Say I would like some feedback, please. Every right in the world, you jumped through six interviews and you got ghosted. Ask for feedback. For hiring managers, here's some things you could do differently. Publish the stages and the timeline in the job ad. You will be asked to sit through three interviews, or you'll be asked to sit through two interviews and a panel interview at the very end. The expected timeline would be anywhere between three to six weeks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Pay for if there is a substantial task you're asking them to do and the hoops are Olympic level. Again, those sharks with lasers in the vat. Pay for any substantial task, or just use up fictional scenarios and they're not doing work for you. Give the final round candidates real extensive, concise feedback. Be detailed. People love detail. It helps them with the next job. Close the loop with everyone, including those you rejected. or selected. Anyway. Moving on. Conferences. I was at CyberCon, the Australian Information Security Association, otherwise known as ACER. I was at ACER's CyberCon last week in Melbourne. I was there to deliver a think tank presentation, which is a fancy way of saying a presentation out in the main lobby because we'd run out of room. Where you will be exposed to lots of people walking past and making a lot of noise. Little bit of disappointment. CyberCon. There's nothing against the organizers. And it's not their fault this happened, but they stuck my think tank at the very end of the day after day two of a three day conference. So at 4 40 in the afternoon, they put me in think tank number four, which was right at the end of the hallway. Giant space, by the way, at at the Melbourne Convention Center. Beautiful place. Always love it. I'll be this is my third one. I love going there. Beautiful place. Big space. Lots of seats in front of me. But the problem with having lots of seats in front of you is that if you don't get a very good attendance, it looks very, very empty. Now, the problem with four forty on a Thursday afternoon is that at four thirty in the main auditorium, which seats about three thousand people. At that time there was the closing keynote for the day. So where do you think most delegates are going to be? Some unknown dude talking about cyber education in a think tank at the lobby? Or are you going to go to the main closing keynote? Well, it's a no brainer. You go to the main closing keynote. So I had a total of three people, including the MC that introduced me to the stage in front of two other people. I had those three people sitting right at the back row during my think tank. And I was doing exactly what I'm doing now. I was speaking into this void into my microphone. Now I'm not sure if you understand the format of a think tank presentation. You can't walk around. You don't have a microphone. You don't have a handheld mic. You have the microphone at the podium attached to it. And you must stand behind your podium and speak to your notes. I I don't know why I applied. I submitted my presentation as a think tank. Because I I if you see my if you see me on on on Rejector Selected stream on YouTube, you can tell I'm an animated guy. So even me moving my hands around behind the podium, it felt like we shouldn't be doing that. I like to move around when I talk, can't do that. I like to use a lot of different tone in my language and be very animated in the way I speak. Couldn't do that either. So not only do I have three people in front of me nodding their heads along as if they were zombies because they just wanted to agree so I'd hurry up and finish. But I am also having to speak like I'm a zombie to this void. into the microphone. It just didn't sit well. Anyway, some key takeaways from the conference. Well, if you're a vendor, the conference is great. It's a great way to to get all your leads, have those follow up meetings, sell whatever you sell, AI this and something with AI tacked on that, or the newest revolution in AI detection, blah blah blah blah. There were probably half the stalls there with some new AI security tool that existed for years, but we slap AI on the end of it to sell it now. here's the thing, and you can't see me, I I'm I wish I wish I had my webcam working. But I believe everyone at a conference by default, you should be looking down at a forty-five degree angle. So so that you when you're walking through the expert. the expo room where all the vendors are and all the noise and everyone's going about their business of trying to sell, sell, sell. You're at level, your eyes are level with their name badge. So they're wearing their lanyard and just around above their navel you've got their their name badge. So you can determine do I really want to speak with this person? And then When you do raise your head and lock eyes, you've already signed that mutual agreement that you are going to speak to them. It's it's like locking the eyes is a signed contract. I now have you for five minutes and you're gonna listen to everything I say. And let's do with the small do away with the small talk. I'm gonna sell you this and I'm gonna get your email address and I'm gonna hound you for weeks on end relentlessly after this conference. And you're gonna regret every second of locking eyes with me. That's that's what it feels like. That's what it feels like. And look, I've been on the other end. I I've been at the booth. I've been the guy behind the booth with the team who's just hoping and praying that you're gonna lock eyes with me so I can have that mutual contract sign that I have you for five minutes and you're gonna listen to every single word I say, and then I'm gonna hound you relentlessly after I get your email and I'm going to harass you for weeks and weeks and weeks on end. To get that meeting. I was that guy. Not anymore, thankfully. It's a horrible existence. But I understand you're in BD, you're in sales, you're in customer suc customer success. You want to be there behind the booth and your job is to I've got a quota. I've got my KPIs. Boss said, if I don't get at least six meetings out of this expo, we're not coming again next year, and then I can't comp every single meal I eat. I can't go to the big after party and get absolutely sloshed. Well, I can't come to Melbourne and get absolutely tanked up and pissed. Yeah, I can't do it. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna aggressively make eye contact with every single person you can, and you're gonna have that mutual contract signed, and you're gonna get their details and their email address, and you're gonna hound them relentlessly for weeks and weeks and weeks, and you're gonna get that meeting, and you're gonna get your KPIs and you're gonna do it all over again next year. Sorry vendors. I I have nothing against you. I know you're doing your job. You're you're trying to sell something. And especially if you're a startup, you're a startup. There are startups there. My I bumped into my my former boss from a few years ago, great guy, Aaron. Aaron Cub wrote a ball recently too. Really good guy. He's a startup. He was there promoting his startup. And you talk about the cost and what it costs to go out there and set up the booth and market and get all the materials for your marketing. And bring the whole team over with you. Hey, just the ROI, is it is it really there? Is the return on investment really there for a startup? Because there is so much noise. There is so much noise out there in the tech industry and in cybersecurity as well. And in AI. And anywhere in tech right now, there's a lot of noise. And if you're a startup and you make the same amount. And same kind of noise as everyone else, you get lost in that noise, right? But if you can find a different pitch, and I don't mean your elevator pitch, I don't mean, we want you to put together a slide deck to pitch to the your pitch can be louder or a bit more high frequency, or something a little bit more interesting that sounds a bit bizarre, but I'm curious, I want to know more about that sound. Then yeah. You may actually get somewhere. Anyway, what a conference is really for the value is usually in the hallway. It's the coffee queue. It's not the keynote. It's not the keynote. People look a thousand, two thousand, three thousand people ran to this keynote when I started my think tank. But they all want to go to the keynote. You've got to be at the keynote. Because we're gonna have we're gonna have drinks later and if you don't know what we're talking about, you're not part of the conversation. We're gonna get absolutely pissed in hammer later, and we're gonna go we're gonna make in jokes and references to the keynote. So if you weren't there, you're not gonna get it. You're looking moron, laughing along, not knowing what we're talking about. So you gotta be at the keynote, you gotta be there. There's no value in it, apart from wanting to fit in later, have a few drinks, make a few jokes. But that's not where the business is done. Business is done over a coffee outside. Let's go to a cafe, let's get out of this com I've been in this convention center for two and a half days. Let's go grab a coffee down the road. There's a nice cafe on on South Wharf. Let's go let's go grab a beer. Let's grab a beer you like martinis. Okay, have a martini. I'll pay for your fucking martini. Let me have your olive, I'm fucking hungry. Haven't eaten two and a half days. Because I got a quota, got KBIs. But anyway. That's where the deal is done. That's where the business is done. It's not done in the isn't no one's gonna go listen to your presentation, hang around after, go, my God, give me your business, give me all your business. I want all of it. I want to buy all your shit. No one does that. I've never seen one deal done after a presentation. Where I I and again, the hallway, the the expo floor. I've never seen a deal done on the expo. You you're standing there, you're talking to a guy, or because you just want to get That cuddly teddy that's sitting behind the counter because your kids back home have asked you to grab something. And you're like, Well, I'll get him a teddy, 'cause I'll save some money, you'll get him somewhere at the conference. Get all the swag, some nice, cool, colourful socks, some fridge magnets, maybe a hat, some pens, but there's just pens everywhere. look, it's a nice little teddy. I'm gonna get him a teddy. So you're gonna stand there and To get the teddy, you've actually got to have this. It's like this implied agreement. You have to stand there and nod and at least ask one interesting question before they let you go and say, can by the way, can I my my my 10 year old would love that. You can't do that, straight. You can't walk up and go, hey, give me your fucking swag. You can't walk up and do that. You can't do it. What you can do, what's socially okay to do, stand there. I I what is Wiz AI? What do you guys do? I'm using them as an example. Cause this is what I did. I walked up to Wiz AI and I basically said, I'm really keen on what you guys do. They told me what they do and I said, that would be a fantastic solution where I work. And then they went, let's show you a demo. Great, let's have a demo. And I'm standing there nodding my head, trying to think what's my best next question. And I just blurted out something that sounded half intelligent. And they answered the question. Well I think they answered it, 'cause I don't even know what I asked. And then I went around to the corner, around to the back to the counter, and I said, Hey, I just had a demo with what's his name over there. It was great stuff. And then I'm got my fingers crossed behind my back. I booked a meeting too. did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A couple of this time, yeah. By the way, my ten year old love one of those teddies. Yeah, what? Yeah, we haven't got a lot left, but you're a nice guy and you listen to us and you booked the meeting. Here's ye go mate, and here's a bag. here's some socks too, 'cause you listen to us. thanks, guys. And I scamper away. Do am I am I going to buy their business? No. Does my does the company I work for need that business? No. It's not a solution we need. What did I want? I wanted the swag for my ten year old. Simple as that. Simple as that. We're all there to get the swag people. We're all there to to have a presentation. We're not there to to make the presentation and sell after the presentation. We know that doesn't happen. We know that doesn't happen. That's it. All right. My time is up. I hope you really enjoyed the unsupervised solo Simon rejected or selected episode, episode nineteen. I'm gonna call it I'm calling it unsupervised, by the way. 'cause I've just been allowed to talk about whatever I want for the last forty five minutes or so. Deanny, be great to to have you on the show with me again next week. look forward to episode number twenty. We have a special guest for that particular episode. They are locked in, and I'm not just saying that, they are locked in, they're ready to go. and also subscribe, like and subscribe, hit us up on YouTube, comment. on any of our videos that we've had up there to date, there's quite a few. Deanny's been going nuts with the the shorts, lots of shorts. Lots of shorts out there on YouTube land as well. got a anonymous confession. You can hit us up at our anonymous confessions. I'm going to put that in the show notes for this episode. If you've got an inquiry, if you want to be on the show, if you want if you got any feedback, rejected or selected at gmail dot com. Trust me, we'll have a domain by next year. It's in the works. We'll have our website back up and running very shortly. Until then, LinkedIn, you can just type in rejected or selected. Instagram, rejected or selected. It's been confirmed. We do have a Facebook, rejected or selected. We want to hear from you. So yeah, like and subscribe. Make sure you subscribe on on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream this as a podcast. If you don't like watching it on YouTube. And you believe yes you have voice, you have a face for radio, Simon, then hit us up on those platforms and subscribe to the channel. That's all for today. We'll see you next week, me and Dee for some more supervision. Until then, it's been great being unsupervised with all of you. Have a great week. Bye-bye.