Fear and loathing in LinkedIn

Lately, thanks to a very good friend, I came across some motivational posts on LinkedIn. I don’t use this social network too much, so I wasn’t paying attention to what’s going on there, and after getting some samples on how the people behave, I have to say that it’s like a mix of feelings, like being totally disgusted, but at the same time wanting for the next dose, like a good horror movie, what makes you suffer while you enjoy it.

Let me analyze here some of the posts I received lately, of course, I’m going to skip any personal information, or give any reference on who wrote these messages, fortunately, this information won’t affect to the quality of these motivational dumps. Let’s go with the first one:

“I just informed a 18 years old person that we decided to hire him, he told me crying “thank you for this opportunity, it’s my first job and thanks to it, I will be able to help my family, because my dad is unemployed, I’m going to do my best”.

This kid has no experience, but sometimes motivation, and go the extra mile are more than the experience, and we can give an opportunity to those who want to work.

I do consider that situations like this makes HR profession very beautiful”

Ok, if you don’t see anything wrong here, please check with the optician. The messianic and condescendant tone of the whole post starts to smell soon, when they try to convince you that the companies make favours to people (yes, if you are hired just because your motivation, they are making you a favour), because companies are good and have soul, I start to think the autor of the post is taking me for a fool, but when he adds the fireworks of the guy crying, he just went too far. But it’s fair enough, this person wanted to make some marketing and he collected near 80k likes when I saw the post, so my respects for him, goal achieved. Let’s continue with the second one:

“For all that people that just makes destructive critics and they only add suffering and unrest.

To criticize it’s something very easy, the difficult thing is to make a critic that really adds value to the other person, a constructive critic.

And something I don’t like at all are those non requested critics with the only goal to hurt the other, using toxic expressions as “you are a disaster” or “you said the worst idea I ever heard”.

In general we associate the critics with negative comments, but critics can be useful to improve something we are not totally doing well.

I always thought that the worst mistake is that one we don’t commit, because we can learn from the errors too.

But sometimes the issue is that make a constructive critic requires to be brave, assertivity and empathy, not everyone applies these skills.

And a good critic can open our eyes to face situations we didn’t realize before. So listen, reflect and apply these skills if needed. And please don’t judge without knowing.”

Ok, we start to get serious here. This is clearly written by somebody that cannot take any single critic, constructive or destructive. I can see it in the sentence “using toxic expressions as “you are a disaster” or “you said the worst idea I ever heard””, honestly, I have been working with many idiots, and absolutely nobody is so rude to say that you are a disaster or say that an idea is terrible, with no further reason, just to “hurt”, so this sentence is not adding fireworks to your story to make it more credible, it’s directly adding a nice Hollywood plot to the whole post.

Theres also some other clues I use to support my opinion, weird post structure, the motivational shit that is super obvious (the worst mistakes are the ones we don’t commit), and that final “And please don’t judge without knowing”. This makes me think on a toxic-drama-queen colleague, that cannot take a critic, a person that prefers to post this instead talking with the people that supposedly did that to him/her and get some easy likes.

Let’s move on with the third one:

“Imagine you have a partner that only stress your weaknesses, that doesn’t value you, that doesn’t have a single detail with you, that doesn’t listen or understand you…

Would you like to keep living with this person?

It’s the same when you have a manager that pushes you, that when you come back from your sick leave he asks you for the medical report without asking about how do you feel, that tells you off if you arrive 10 minutes late, but won’t value if you spend at the office 1h more, that if you are overflowing with tasks, not only won’t help you out, but asks more from you and faster. A manager that only stress your weaknesses and not your achievements, that he doesn’t add any value or offer any solution.

So when you come across with somebody that adds value, helps, understand, that’s is the first on offering help, that teaches you something, that value you, that he doesn’t see problems but solutions….

There, you realize that you were not valuing yourself and you were not the problem.

It’s very important who do you put to lead a project, depending on this person, the project can fail or succeed”

I don’t need to read more than the first paragraph to know what comes after is first quality bullshit, if your partner is an asshole, change partner! Don’t waste your time writing about how bad he/she is. Anyway, I gathered all my strength and read it to the end.

It’s clear that here we have more drama queens, in this case the complain is that the manager is not a friendly high school teacher, and everytime there’s a problem, he doesn’t react as you expect. Well, welcome to the real world, were we all are surrounded by assholes, and sometimes and depending the circumstances, that asshole can be oneself, but that’s called self reflection, and this post it’s about everything, but self reflection and putting all the blame in others when something goes wrong. If the story above is right, if you are really being abused, then change job, use your time to look for a new job and reflect on what you did in the previous assignment, not only in what the others did.

I think I have power for one more…

“My husband has no CV, when I ask him to make one for him, he answers “they can give me a task and I will show my value”.

He has been working for 20 years in the same sector, he’s good, hard worker and very commited to his job. This is something that cannot be reflected in a paper sheet, the attitude, the value, the commitement, that’s something that has to be shown.

Why do you need a piece of paper with a lot of info if we cannot check if it’s true or false?

That’s why, while I was participating in a selection process, I was wondering “what do you show there?”

As time passes, I’m more convinced that the selection processes are outdated”

I really do love this one, or she’s omitting an important part of the reality, or she did write a priceless piece of science fiction. If you are living on the Earth, you will need a CV to be called, and once you are called for an interview, yes, you can have that bar brawler attitude of “bring it on!” this guy seems to have, and ask for an assignation, but 99,9% of the online job offers requires a CV as a mandatory option to submit your application, and I imagine that the people that still going walking through the streets asking for a job, they are also delivering paper CVs as presentation cards, because a CV is a presentation card, nobody reads it and decide to hire you or not, so don’t worry, a company will test you for sure, doesn’t matter the sector.

Another reason for this post can be that, maybe, he’s very well connected and he doesn’t need any CV (thats why I think she can be omitting information), but that’s not a general situation, and the exception cannot be used to write such a stupidity. Yes, selection processes can be outdated, but not because the companies ask for CVs.

Why do the people write things that are obvious, that insults the intelligence of the readers, things that they won’t follow either? (because they won’t change job when needed and they will still sending CVs…), why? because there’s public, people loves these good feeling stories, they feel represented by them, all of them had a good bunch of likes, and people is addicted to likes, so here’s the double lie, they don’t really believe their motivational bullshit, and they are using the readers not to advise, but to inflate their ego’s.

I really wonder if it deserves the effort, exchange some likes for your credibility on a social media used, among others, to look for a job. Many people like these posts, but there’s other people, smart ones working for a nice company you applied, that can be thinking on hiring you and, if they read your posts, maybe decide not to offer you a contract. But they don’t realize about this, how mediocre is to write and exaggerate about the bad things of the labour market, that’s for sure, but ey!, up to them, I’m just trying to understand people, but wait! I think I’m doing the same right now!