The Concise BS in Recruiting and Communication

I’ve struggled with being concise. I understand it’s a skill to develop as a writer. Yet, I think it’s one thing to be concise in a story and another to be concise in an email. 

Societal sentiment epitomizes conciseness. That could mean responding to emails with 0 or 1—yes I’ve experienced this—or cold emails that should be six lines or some other sales tactic to hook someone in. 

It’s all part of the facade of respecting someone else’s time. It’s all horse shit. 

Conciseness is about trying to make people “who don’t care”, care. Yes, maybe that’s important when you’re trying to hit some sales or response targets. I get it. I had to figure this shit out when I was sending hundreds of cold emails over the years. 

Behind every email was my begging desperation for their answer. All written in a concise format that showed precision, determination, and an air of “I don’t care” because that’s how you win negotiations. After all, emails are a negotiation for time and attention. 

There are countless books, essays, and lectures on the art of getting people to respond to you. They unanimously recommend short shit that’s to the point. That never sat well with me. 

I’m much happier sending people an essay as my cold email. Most have told me it wouldn’t work. But guess what? I felt great sending those than some dinky paragraph that tried to distill life’s context down to a sentence. 

I might as well have said, “Just give me a fucking job because I’m great!” It’s as if adults wanted to go back to high school courtship rituals during the days of "texting”. Looking back, I realized most of corporate communication was high school kids giggling and crying over text messages that lacked all context. 

Look at interviews. When you go on a date with a stranger, a dinner or coffee conversation can easily last a few hours. You are trying to figure out if you want to spend more time with them so it’s an important conversation. Yet, when companies are deciding who to hire (i.e. pay them money and trusting them with work) the interviews are often 30 minutes. 

Sure, it’s only the first few rounds that are 30 minutes. Then why the fuck do they even have the first few rounds? How is that any better use of time than an initial three-hour conversation to understand the human in front of you? Instead, the concise protocol asks candidates to riff of their life story in 10 minutes because that’s how little companies value candidates.

What else can it mean when an interviewer says “Tell me about yourself in about 10 minutes?” It’s just a simple reason. They don’t care. Every other reason is bullshit.

If you cared, then you would have a three-hour conversation instead of breaking that up into five different rounds where the first half of each 30-minute block is the candidate trying to dumb down everything to the recruiter, some other hiring manager, potential teammate, or the janitor their life’s story. What a fucking waste! 

People will rationalize such idiocy with reasons like efficiency or effectiveness or some other manufacturing word the academics and technologists tried to make cool. At the end of the day, it means they don’t care. 

Life isn’t something to be boiled down to 10 minutes or a paragraph. There’s a complexity to human beings. 

I’m not saying the modern recruiting structure is bad. Well, actually I’m saying it’s hot garbage. But that’s okay. As long as everyone accepts that and admits that they will stick to the modern form of recruiting with 30 minutes interviews with 10 minute "tell me about yourself" bullshit because they don’t care about the people they hire. That’s what it is. What’s lacking is the self-awareness to own up to how little they give a shit.

That’s what conciseness means. That’s what a short email or short reply is. It means you don’t give a shit about the person. You just need a result that fits your paradigm, whether it be a circle or a square. Everything else doesn’t matter. 

For humanity to work, for connection to work; it’s going to have to be a long conversation or email that incorporates context in all lights and shapes. 

My long emails of 1000+ words worked. They got the attention of people I admired. Maybe that’s the trick. By communicating with humanity, care, and effort behind it, I got the response from people who cared. 

Isn’t that what you want? Who wants someone who thinks “Oh yeah, I’m so important and my time is so valuable so I’m going to reward your concise email with a 20-minute phone call?” Fuck that guy. 

Write long emails. Actually, write emails that are honest. Write emails and have conversations that are meant to connect with another human being. Screw all the tips and tricks to get shit opened in an inbox. I, for one, fucking love reading long journey emails from my subscribers and students. It shows you care so I’m going to care too. 

I’m not against simplicity. I love simple architecture and design. I love short stories and simple writing. I think there is true beauty in simple writing. I’m always working towards becoming a minimalist writer. But beautiful writing has honesty and humanity supporting the simple structure. 

Einstein said everything should be put down to its simplest form but no simpler. Everyone forgot the last part and decided to make things barebones into the 0 and 1s of computer talk. Then why even be human?