So you think you can… Brand?
Friendly reminder: your mandatory HR module is overdue.
(we will conveniently copy the entire marketing organization on the next reminder!)
I have only ever truly looked for a job one time in my adult life. Fall of 2010. Yes, old.
I had just graduated from Oklahoma State with a marketing degree and no clue what was next. A lot of my friends had internships lined up, were going to work for their family, or got placed as a junior-nepo-exec somewhere cool, probably making more money then than I did this past calendar year. Cool.
I found resume paper at Walmart because it was cheaper, printed that bad boy out and stuffed it into some faux-leather folder thing. Somewhere in there I decided I was destined for the ad agency life. I was "creative," I was young and cheap, and the world was my oyster.
So I googled every ad agency in Austin, wrote the physical address of each one into said faux-leather folder thing, and hopped down MLK to the bright lights of GSD&M, E+K and every indy shop in between. I literally walked into each office with a resume in hand, my white shirt tucked in and the confidence of a 21 year old with nothing to lose. I was met with almost the same reaction every time:
“Uh, do you have an appointment?”
“No, I would like to show that I am a go-getter AND that I am available for hire. Can I give you my resume to pass along to anyone hiring?”
I won't lead you on any further. That plan absolutely DID NOT work. It was brutally embarrassing reading the faces of those poor front desk people who didn't have the courage to tell me I was wasting everyone's time. LOL.
One small shop did take a swing at me. The owner, Richard, saw something I did not see in myself yet and let me shadow his team long enough to actually learn something. He still runs an independent agency in Austin and we still connect on LinkedIn every so often. Richard, if you are reading this, thank you for your generosity back in the day.
Pull up with one of these and you for sure mean business.
Fast forward a few... years. Here we are again. Bright-eyed, willing and able, with a few more grey hairs. Maybe still a bit naive, but I am confident the right fit is worth waiting for.
Almost everything about looking for a job is different than it was in 2010. The questions are not. Over the past few months, as I've dusted off my interviewing skills, I've found that most companies interview the exact same way, with the exact same questions.
Can you share a time you led a cross-collaborative project? How do you handle conflict? Tell me about a difficult stakeholder. How many years of P&L, and how much? What is your social security number... wait, no. That one was a scam.
In all seriousness, how do you even answer those things. In a 15 year career, how did I handle conflict? Pretty much like everybody else does. It's awkward and not fun, and if you do it respectfully, in an educated and timely manner, it sort of works itself out. Or it doesn't.
And which cross-collaborative example would you like? Major League Baseball? London? The one where I was the mascot at a Saturday morning fun run? The one on headset producing a World Series game? Throw in a few very different industries, a different culture, being an exec while parenting. I don't know where to start, and most of the time I have about three minutes.
I get it, and I'm not complaining about recruiters or hiring managers. I've been on that side of the calendar about a million times. HR books over your team's weekly meeting. You have to shoot everyone a note that you're moving the meeting that already moved once. You have time-sensitive info to share. And now you have to talk to some goober with a mustache who seems to speak in poems. Big YIKES.
I haven't even mentioned AI, and how the current shit-storm of slop has infiltrated every piece of our feed, our inbox and our... lives?
I was slow to adopt it, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, its impact on humanity. I truly believe the rate human brains evolve and adjust cannot keep up with the pace these tools are developing. Is that scary? YES, sometimes it really is. Is it AWESOME? Absolutely. Are we all going to die from it? POTENTIALLY. I was also slow because I spent the first post-pandemic AI boom at a 100 year old company that wasn't able to pivot those tools into our everyday work yet. I was even encouraged in a year-end review to adopt AI more aggressively, at a point when the one tool available to us mostly rewrote emails I already wrote. I digress.
One of the best parts of being fun-employed is the extra time to write. I mean physically, with a pen, on a piece of paper, whatever is on my mind. I have always loved writing. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I love seeing what I can make. Almost every entry starts with a little poem. It may make sense, it may not. It may rhyme, it may have Spanish in it. No idea why.
On Tuesday I wrote out:
Please can you share how you cross-collaborate?
With how many people? please elaborate.
Just share an example, I have a hard stop.
Do you want a real version or more AI slop?
Definitely not winning a Pulitzer. But reading it back a few days later, I was clearly annoyed at answering the same generic question, rushed, for someone who is checking a box and running to their next meeting. I don't even fault them. I've been in their shoes.
So this week I sat down and wrote out every question I've answered a thousand times over the last three months, and started building a bank of new answers from the back of my brain. Real examples, not something an AI hallucinated about my own life. The intention was just to refresh myself for the next round. Maybe the example I used last time didn't land the way I hoped. Surely I can find one that sticks a little better.
Then I got to wondering what would happen if I asked those questions back. In STAR format, please.
Instead of "Tell me about a time you had to prioritize competing business needs," here's a launch plan. Finance just took 30% of the budget. The date did not move. The target did not move. Six perfectly reasonable people each have something they believe should survive. You decide.
Instead of "Tell me about a time you demonstrated accountability," you approved the proof on an eight-foot sponsorship sign. It went up this morning. The sponsor is Bald Eagle Air. The sign says BALD EAGLE HAIR. First pitch is in nine hours and your executives are already in the car.
Instead of "How do you manage conflicting stakeholder feedback," you have a weird idea for relaunching a cereal nobody under 40 has thought about since 2003. Finance has a concern. Legal has a concern. Sales has an objectively good idea. Creative has become emotionally attached to something unnecessary. The CEO is in the room now, for some reason. You decide.
So I built Final_Final_v7. Think "So You Think You Can... Brand" mixed with one of those mandatory HR modules you are currently overdue on.
Every case was inspired by the kinds of mini-dramas I’ve encountered across my career, my leadership and my own mistakes, then exaggerated considerably for the internet. Nobody in the room is a villain, everybody in it is right at least once, and you are absolutely allowed to be the problem. Every time you give something up, the brief edits itself in front of you, strikethroughs and all, and the filename creeps a little closer to Final_Final_v7.
Three cases, three completely different situations, and the same thing keeps happening. The stuff at the bottom of your list, tone, plain language, protecting your team's time, almost never survives. Nobody ever attacks it, five reasonable people just each take one small bite, and none of them thinks they're the one who killed it. I've been all five of those people at some point.
If you unfortunately follow me on LinkedIn, you have been spammed by all the silly things I've been building and learning from lately. I'm sorry. I mean, sincerely sorry. You have a hard stop and you did not need this filling the two free minutes someone just generously gave back to you. But apparently, to get into that sweet, sweet algorithm, I kind of have to. I promise I am at least trying to make them fun.
I wrote every scenario, every stakeholder and every dumb little reaction myself. AI helped me with the coding, because I had to drop out of the only coding class I ever took, back in high school. Shout out to my Plano East Panthers.
The other thing I built by accident was a system. Every case runs on the same engine, so I can keep writing new problems without rebuilding the whole thing each time. Creative judgment, accountability and prioritization are live now. People leadership is next, assuming I can make a hard personnel situation entertaining without turning it into Corporate Survivor.
In 2010 I handed strangers a piece of fancy paper because I didn't know another way to show someone I really wanted to work there. Sixteen years later I'm building browser games about brand leadership. The paper was cheaper.
Go play it. Tell me where you landed, where I missed the boat, or which decision made you irrationally angry. Or hire the goober with the mustache. I'm pretty fun, I care a lot about the people I work with, and my cross-functional leadership is off the charts.
-rob
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