We gotta work, work, work, work. So when did it become "desperate" to say so?
A new shift to viewing work as optional with employers as clairvoyants doesn't seem to make sense.
About a couple of months ago, someone told me that people should be careful about posting that you’re looking for work, whether you need a little or a lot, on LinkedIn, a platform for - checks notes - looking for work. A bit hysterical. “I just think that it makes you look a bit desperate,” they said.
I didn’t say anything and part of me brushed it off. But part of me also felt irritated. Clearly others have been told the same and felt the same. This week, we’ve seen that very word only with a hashtag - #desperate - on purple banners around people’s LinkedIn profiles. Part of this was apparently a reaction to people saying that having green or "open to work” banners up puts recruiters off.
“Being laid off doesn’t reflect a lack of skills, talent or work ethic - it’s just bad luck,” wrote Courtenay Summer Myers, who created the banners for the platform. She’d been made redundant.
“No one should be embarrassed that they need to pay their rent and bills, support their family, or feed themselves.
Suddenly, this has me harking back to this recent conversation and thinking quite a lot about “work shame”, a term coined by Anna Condrea-Rado and Tiffany Philippou on their brilliant podcast or lack of work shame. And now that I look around, I feel that I’m seeing a fair bit of both.
It doesn’t matter how much you need. In 2024, it feels like it’s becoming completely taboo to say that you’re looking for work. Quite a swing back from five years ago during the lockdown and the “great resignation” when professionals bragged about how they were taking jobs stacking supermarket shelves.
Work shame just doesn’t exist in relation to having no or not enough work, it’s also about the type of work you’re doing. It’s writers admitting that they’re doing anything other than writing. (Although Vivienne Pearson wrote this great piece on this recently which was celebrated). It’s journalists crossing over to the “dark side” and doing PR. We’ve also seen it in relation to the coaching craze, which Anna and Tiffany spoke about on their podcast.
I couldn’t help but wonder why an editor thought it was news that someone got laid off, wasn’t unable to find another job in London and left in this recent i paper piece. Thousands in this city can’t get work. The writer is now penning what I think is his third book. Clearly very successful. But did they want to run that story because the status quo is now to shame anyone about work if you can in some way?
Like dating (if you’re single), looking for work is now something you must be very cool about. It’s not the first time I’ve thought this. Years ago, when I was doing shifts on the UK national papers, a colleague compared getting called up at the last minute by a certain title and expected to go in to a “booty call”.
In her smash hit podcast Sentimental in the City, which looks at every Sex and the City season, bestselling author Caroline O'Donoghue laments a couple of times that looking for work and dating are similar. In some cases involving both, when things don’t work out it may be for the best. Perhaps worth keeping in mind, although of course there’s a certain type of privilege that comes with that if you need work to survive.
“I’ve had this before with freelance gigs where they’ve felt very tenuous and the editor doesn’t get back to me very much,” said O’Donoghue. “I’m always afraid I’m going to lose this revenue stream and if I do lose this it’s going to fuck up my day and week and year. Then, inevitably as with all journalism jobs, it does fall through and I always feel this eerie calm afterwards, like ‘good.’”
In careers podcast Content Byte, LinkedIn marketing specialist Jillian Bullock likened the search for love to the search for work. “Asking people out or marrying, proposing on the first date, it's the same for sales – don’t try and sell yourself on the first message," she says. "It’s really very, very top of the sales funnel and it’s (LinkedIn) really a networking tool to help develop relationships.”
As a freelancer, the reason that the (lack of) work shame movement irritates me is because if I’m being completely honest you are looking for or trying to maintain the balance between what’s called “feast or famine”, or the not so famine, aka work, all the time. And the funny thing is when you look and look for more work because you don’t have enough you can end up with… too much.
We’re not supposed to say that we’re looking for work yet employers are not clairvoyants. No one has the ability to look through a crystal ball at someone’s Calendly or diary planner and call them.
I’ve had someone say “oh you’re so busy” when I haven’t been and vice versa. In a way, I think that LinkedIn could be a bit of a trap. All the app wants is for us to stay on that platform. But if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
When work can fluctuate for many of us but we’re now being told by many that we’re supposed to be magically booked up all the time without ever asking for it, this could make work rather hard to come by.
This year has been long, difficult and isolating in the UK and I know it’s been the same for people elsewhere. London is extremely competitive with one survey claiming it’s the second most popular place to work. The job market here isn’t what it used to be at all. The Work Foundation think tank has warned that people are becoming locked in secure work for years.
Working is one of life’s most basic necessities. For the majority of the world, it’s not a choice. How many people got up this morning and just played tennis instead of jumping on Zoom?
There’s about 3.5 billion people employed worldwide, minus Prince Harry, in some form of employment. In journalism, some editors say that three people doing something makes it a trend. So when nearly 4 million people are doing something I’d say that’s more than a passing craze.
Yet according to a LinkedIn post by a marketing and economics student, job seekers with the “desperate” banner who want to work have been branded “unprofessional”. “You can’t deny it’s different,” they say. But is saying that you need to earn a living so outrageous?
Never having had to look for work is certainly not an indicator of talent or skill. It doesn’t represent a life well-lived. It definitely should not be equated to success. It can actually mean you’ve never taken a risk or moved outside your comfort zone in fact. If you’ve gotten to a good age and haven’t had to work for work then that may not mean anything other than luck and privilege.
Are the #desperate banner job seekers really asking for too much? If they were just bumming around and saying they didn’t want to work what would people say?
This debate also forces you to confront your own privilege and what “desperate” means to you. If you are lucky and fortunate enough to have family and friends who would keep you from being on the streets, should you put up a “desperate” banner?
“No one should be ever embarrassed because they need to pay rent, food, and bills,” said Laura Pioli, an Italian based in the UK, who is another “desperate” jobseeker. ”Yes, I am desperate to find a job and proud.”
Social and digital director Ashley Kalena summed it up perfectly on LinkedIn when she said this: “Something else that isn't really discussed when you suddenly lose a longtime job is the vulnerability and shame that comes around it. You start to second guess nearly every action you make. Am I good at what I do? Am I in the right career...at all? I found myself not wanting to discuss it openly.”
That’s how I also partly felt when this person told me weeks ago that I should be careful about posting on LinkedIn about looking for work.
But there’s a price for honesty, as I was also reminded only this week, on this very site (Substack). To be honest anywhere but especially publicly but especially social media can also be like having an open wound. Some will ignore it. Some will pick at it and make it even worse. And others will help you and lift you up. That could be by being honest themselves that they are in the same boat or saying there but for the grace of God go I.
Although being honest can be a huge risk, it can also pay off. If I was working in social media or marketing, I’d hire the purple banner jobseekers, who if their posts are anything to go by, are creative, funny and empathetic.
Saying you need work when work is a basic human need is not desperate.
To any one who has read this newsletter, thanks so much- it means the world to me. Thanks so much also to the lovely person who bought me a virtual coffee this week! Going forward, I’m thinking about sending it out once during the week with a post on a various topic and then a roundup at the end on a Sunday on what I’ve been up to.
Have a lovely weekend all!