A CEO went on LinkedIn and asked whether job applicants should pay $20 to apply, just to slow the flood of resumes he can't get through. The internet did what the internet does. But underneath the pile-on is a real question nobody wants to answer: if employers and applicants both hate this process, who broke it?

Ryan and Daniel land on an uncomfortable answer. Both of them did.

In this episode:

• Why a $20 application fee is a bad answer to a real problem, and what the fee is actually trying to cover for
• The "let them eat cake" test for any leadership decision you're about to announce publicly
• Why a lazy job description guarantees a flooded inbox, and how "garbage in, garbage out" applies to hiring
• The case for killing your job board postings entirely and hosting the role on your own site
• What actually happens when applicants use interview requests as leverage for a raise somewhere else
• Why most ghosting isn't malice, it's a broken handoff between an ATS, a hiring manager and a calendar invite
• The self-work applicants skip, and why skipping it means you'll hate the job even if you get it

00:00 — Cold Open: "ChatGPT Told Me I Was"

02:00 — The $20 Application Fee That Broke LinkedIn

07:00 — Let Them Eat Cake: When a Leader Loses the Room

14:00 — Spicy Take: Kill the Job Board

24:00 — Work Receipt: Ghosted by a Calendar Invite

31:00 — Monday Morning Fix: Do the Hard Work Up Front

36:00 — Last Word: Pay Now or Pay Twice

DANIEL: If you're 24 years old, I'm sorry, you're not a corporate leadership development expert.

RYAN: Sure I am. ChatGPT told me I was.

RYAN: So if you are an applicant looking for a job and the company is not being upfront about what the job is, and what the culture is, and what working there looks like — run. If they don't have the time and energy to do that, then they're probably not going to take the time and energy to invest in you.

RYAN: All right, so how do we make this better?

RYAN: Most people that are searching for jobs and looking for one right now, they're probably not the person you actually want to hire. And I don't think this is entirely the right solution for everybody.

DANIEL: But I think the bigger problem is, hunting for jobs is not cheap. It's not easy. It's a full-time job to look for a job. I've got a couple of friends that are in the job hunt right now, and it sounds brutal out there. I'm hearing about organizations just ghosting people, setting up Zoom interviews and then not showing. It sounds like it's a pretty difficult space right now for both sides.

DANIEL: I do think, if I can crap on applicants for a second, there are a lot of people who — to your point — hate their job, and they're just applying for anything to get themselves out of the situation. And they'll apply for things they're barely qualified for, or they're not even qualified for. And I have yet to see that really work out for anybody. Certainly the companies need to do their job better, but I think applicants share some of the blame here too, because they're just spamming and praying.

RYAN: I've known dozens upon dozens of Gen Zs that have done this. What they're doing is they're using the application process as a means for self-validation. If someone looks at their resume and comes back and says, "Hey, we're interested in talking to you," they'll use that as leverage to go negotiate against their current employer. They have no intent — I should say, their intent of leaving their current employer is say 20%. It might go up to 40 to 50% based on this response. But they'll use it as justification to go leverage for a pay raise within their current organization.

DANIEL: If you keep doing what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always got. And I think both employers and applicants are sick of the process. It's not working for anybody. Let's change the game and do something better, because this whole process is making work suck for both sides.

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

--- THE BIG WHY: THE $20 APPLICATION FEE ---

DANIEL: Ryan, have you heard about the $20 job application fee that broke LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago? There is this CEO who posted, I think it said this: "Am I insensitive to the world if I think that people should pay a small fee, like $20, to apply for a job, as a means to prevent an overwhelming quantity of underqualified or mismatched applicants?"

RYAN: I've got to give the guy credit for trying. Good idea. Vision, maybe. But disconnected from the reality of culture, and maybe not the best journey. I think LinkedIn might be the wrong place for that.

DANIEL: Isn't there a whole section of Reddit that's the "Am I the asshole" section? Have you seen that? The AITA — that's where that comment belongs. It belongs in a subreddit, not on LinkedIn, because I'm pretty sure you're going to struggle to hire anybody after posting something like that on LinkedIn.

RYAN: Oh, yeah. There's so many things wrong with this. Where do you want to start?

DANIEL: Let's start with the out-of-touch CEO here.

RYAN: Okay. I'm going to totally butcher this. What's the French chick?

DANIEL: Marie Antoinette.

RYAN: Yes. The "let them eat cake." All right, you had to educate me on this one. Give everybody the backstory. What's the phrase, "let them eat cake"?

DANIEL: I think the "let them eat cake" came from — she's a French monarch, ridiculously wealthy in a country with many, many ridiculously poor people. They're starving to death. There was a bread shortage. She said, "Why don't they just eat cake instead? If there's no bread, then eat cake." So, historical illustration of the ultra-wealthy completely out of touch with the day-to-day realities of people that are struggling to survive.

DANIEL: Let's take that to the CEO. How disconnected is that CEO from reality by wanting applicants to pay a $20 fee?

RYAN: I mean, you pay like a $20 fee to apply to an apartment. You pay a $20 fee to apply for a loan.

DANIEL: Yeah. I guess that's a bad example.

RYAN: College applications. That was the worst. I spent way too much money on college applications.

DANIEL: Here's the thing. I think there's different kinds of problems. I get — and to an extent, I sympathize with — the fact that this is actually a problem for him. He needs to hire somebody to fill an important role in his company, and he gets 100 resumes for every one qualified applicant. That is a problem that he faces, and it causes him some small level of pain. However, I think that's a first-world problem. When there's people who are struggling with "I've got to pick either taking my meds or eating this week," your 100-resume problem is just not that big of a problem in comparison. I don't want to slam the guy, because he is being honest about the problems that he faces. But there is a lack of sensitivity to the fact that there are a lot of people, even in this country, that have much bigger problems than "oh, too many people want to come work for me."

RYAN: "I don't know what to do with all of these people who want jobs."

RYAN: Let's hit on the real problem. Basically, he's got a shitty intake process in a crappy hiring system. I don't think there's that many people that want to work for him. It's just that they don't have a good process, a good system, and they're getting flooded with applications.

DANIEL: And usually that's because — and I've been guilty of this, so I'm not throwing stones at him, I'm throwing them as much at me — I've been lazy in writing job descriptions and job postings, because I'm trying to just see what's out there. I think I generally know what I want, but I haven't really worked hard to define the job as it needs to be. And so, garbage in, garbage out. You throw a crap job description out there, you're going to get crappy applications. So some of that falls on them to better define the role and better define the process for who would be a good candidate, and how would you self-identify as a good candidate for this role?

DANIEL: I think this is a real struggle in more than just this guy. He kind of rises above the noise as a good example. But I think we're in a time in our society where there are people who have an awful lot — income disparity. I know this is a hot topic, I'm not trying to create some clickbait here, but I don't think we really know what to do with people who have billions and billions of dollars and no way they could ever possibly spend it all. And at the same time, we've got people that are struggling with basic necessities: food, clothing, shelter, basic needs. And unfortunately, I think that gap is getting bigger as time moves on. So the people that are in positions of authority, in positions of power, in positions of influence — it's just harder and harder for them to relate to people who are struggling, and people who don't know where their next paycheck is coming from. I think there needs to be a little sensitivity, especially in that direction, to the fact that there are a lot of problems that people have that those privileged people don't experience. And before they start complaining about their first-world problems, they need to spend a little time thinking about the kind of challenges facing the broader population.

RYAN: I hear you, but I think — and maybe I'm going to be the unpopular opinion here — I think you might be taking this into the extreme, like "woe is the poor person." In general, yes, I agree with you. There are those people that are in those situations, and there's programs, and again, you go to a whole other topic of having better programs and stuff like that to help people out. But let's just talk about the average person that's just pissed off at their job and just mass applying to get the hell out. There's a mass percentage of the population that just hates their job and is just mass applying all over the place, or just looking to see what's out there. So I think you have a mix of both worlds.

RYAN: And remember, there for a while coming out of COVID, it was an employee's market. You had the pick of the litter, and people were just throwing darts out there to see who would pay them the most amount of money, because companies were desperate for help on that resurgence from COVID. Right now, we've definitely balanced back out from there. But I think technology has made this worse, because I, as a job seeker, can be pissed off at my job, sit down at my computer, update my resume, hit a few buttons, and next thing you know I've auto-applied to 5,000 places. So technology is phenomenal, but we might have a little bit of an imbalance.

RYAN: And then the other part of it is, it's just like if you have a shitty web form on your website, you're going to get spam. How many spam leads do companies get on their website because their intake form sucks, or it's too generic, or it's just "give me a name and phone number" and no CAPTCHA?

DANIEL: It's funny — you would take the side of the applicant, because I've seen it from the hiring side, where they've got an AI engine that's reading all of these resumes. And if you don't have the right buzzwords, it doesn't matter how good you are, you're not getting through the process. So it's almost like both the applicants and the companies are shotgunning at each other, and then complaining about the misses.

--- SPICY TAKES: KILL THE JOB BOARD ---

RYAN: Oh, 1,000%. This is a two-way street. And I think part of the thing is, if you don't take the time and energy to build out the job spec and the job requirements for people to self-select, then I agree, if you have a very vague job description you're going to get tons of applicants. We did an episode a few months ago about a gentleman that was applying to sales jobs, and it was extremely hard to get a sales job right now because there's so many people flooding in resumes. So if you're hiring for a sales job and you just say "looking for sales rep, must have five years experience, here's the salary range, and it's selling technology," you're going to get a flood. You just are.

DANIEL: So it's kind of one of those like — your desire to be lazy does not constitute a problem on my part. Which is kind of what the CEO's saying: "Well, can I make my problem your problem by charging you $20, because I'm being lazy?" If his problem really is that he's getting hundreds or thousands of people applying to work for his company, I guarantee you they're growing like crazy, their profits are through the roof, and he could hire people to manage that influx. He's not getting that influx because he's got a high-growth problem. He's getting an influx because he's got a shitty process. Sorry.

DANIEL: I do think it's interesting to look at this from both perspectives, because companies are struggling right now to find good candidates in the context of the noise that the tools have created. You're right, you can apply to 500 jobs in a day. That doesn't mean you're qualified for any of them. It just means you're gumming up the system with random resume applications. So companies are starting to work on how to filter through the noise to find the people that are actually legitimate candidates for this opportunity. And AI is obviously the top of the stack in terms of the tools companies are using to try to filter. I just don't know if I've seen one that's effective.

RYAN: So I'm going to take probably a different approach to this. And I don't think this is entirely the right solution for everybody, and I know there's flaws in what I'm about to say. There's a group that I've been working with. They have done a phenomenal job using AI to find and filter applicants and do the job search. But what they actually start with is the Simplaphi method. They start with defining: what is the vision for the role? What is the journey of the role? What is the culture of the company? They really do go through this whole vetting process, defining what is the job map, what does success look like, what are the qualifications. They really do the HR employee success side of the equation. Then they feed all that into their AI software, and then they go out and start hunting for prospects.

RYAN: Now, the other thing is, they don't post the job on a job board or anything like that. They host the job posting on the company website. So the job description is out there and it's public and people can find it. But there's a lot more to it. It's about the company, the employee success journey, what it means to work for the company. And when they're doing their outreach — predominantly on LinkedIn — they're directing people back to that page that really connects on the expectations of what it is, the successes of it, and the qualifications to be a culture fit for the company. Because the job spec is so well mapped out, what they're getting is top talent. They're recruiting top talent. And never, when they work with a company, do they post a job on a job board.

DANIEL: Yeah, the problem with that — and again, I think this can be solved to some degree — is they're not posting opportunity. Now, you can go to one of their clients' websites, you can find the careers page. But if you don't know to go there, it's not in a public forum.

RYAN: Right. Now don't get me wrong, they work with the marketing teams of the companies they work with, and they'll put something on LinkedIn: "Hey, we're hiring, check out our job posting." So there is some marketing behind it, but it's not a public job board. So automatically a lot of the junk is filtered out, because it's not in a public, easy-apply, mass forum.

DANIEL: So I hear you, and I like that for the companies that that applies to. If you're hiring white-collar professionals, college-educated, these are higher-dollar roles, higher-qualification roles.

RYAN: They're doing it for lower-level jobs too.

DANIEL: The average blue-collar worker? Really?

RYAN: Okay, it's more about the methodology. When I was criticizing the CEO earlier — when he says he has a shitty process — they come in and bring an employee success model to the equation, and it makes it a lot better. It's not that they don't advertise. If you're hiring people for a restaurant, you can still use the same methodology, same process. And you might put a sign in the window, or you might have a big banner outside: "Hiring, taking applications." You still have to advertise the job to a degree. It's not entirely recruiting. But what I'm saying is, you're not putting it out there on the mass market where you get the mass shit.

RYAN: So again, where this falls short is for someone — let's say I'm searching for a job, I'm looking for a remote job, let's say a technology remote job.

DANIEL: Mm-hmm. Well, that's where the job boards come in. They help you find and connect to those companies. So that solution does not really work well for the people that are actually seeking.

RYAN: But this is the catch-22. Most people that are seeking a job — and don't get me wrong, this is not a one-size-fits-all statement. If you've been fired or let go, or the company went out of business, or you may have been one of the most phenomenal people but the owner was a crook and the government came in and shut it down — circumstantially, sure. But I'm talking about most people that are searching for jobs and looking for one right now. They're probably not the person you actually want to hire. They're looking for a job right now. They want a job right now. They're just looking to make a paycheck, make some money. Again, I understand situationally. But oftentimes that's where both the employer and the potential employee have concessions on what they'll stand for, because either A, they need to fill a seat fast, or B, they need a paycheck fast. And so what happens is you end up getting a butt in the seat that doesn't work out long term.

DANIEL: Yeah. Shotgun marriages rarely work out in the long run.

RYAN: Right. And again, I'm not saying this is the right solution or that it works for everything, because there's all these edge cases. I just think with the job boards and technology, we've made the shotgunning a lot easier for both sides. But it doesn't mean it's actually working for either side. Whereas I think making it a bit more difficult and putting more outbound prospects out there — because this group that I work with, they're seriously 10 out of 10 on every hire they brought in. But it's because they're recruiting the sleeper talent. They're finding the talent that is okay with their job. Not content — and they're challenging that. They're challenging the intrinsic side of the job. Are you getting fulfillment in it? You may have a good paycheck, you may have a good boss, but are you getting fulfillment out of your job? And because they show how the job can bring fulfillment to you as an individual, show you the growth path, show you the culture components — all the stuff that most people go, "That's too hard to do, we'll just deal with that in the interview" — they're sucking top talent away from companies left and right.

DANIEL: Are they even able to do this? I mean, this sounds impressive. Are they able to do this with lower-skill, hourly labor, people that are early in their career? I get this if you're talking about a $100,000 engineer or a developer.

RYAN: We're talking $45,000, $50,000 a year jobs.

DANIEL: Wow. Okay.

RYAN: I don't think they've done fast food restaurants in this model. I think a lot of it could still apply from the HR standpoint. But we're talking more blue collar, lower white collar, than upper white collar.

DANIEL: Okay, that's great. Because I'm thinking of a couple of my clients that are more in the trade organizations, and some of them are like, "Look, I've just got to have a warm body in the warehouse." And it would be hard, I think, to convince somebody who has that mentality that no, it's worth building a customer journey — or an employee journey — for somebody who's making 18, 20 bucks an hour. I don't think you're wrong. I just think it's harder to convince them.

--- WORK RECEIPT: GHOSTED BY A CALENDAR INVITE ---

DANIEL: All right, so we're kind of backing into this idea of the cost to employers. Yeah, there's a lot of noise, and there's a lot of garbage in their process. But it almost sounds like we're coming to the conclusion that that's their own fault for not developing a better process. And if they would put a little bit more effort up front in defining the roles and defining the process and defining who they're really looking for, they might have to deal with less garbage coming through the system. What about on the employee or applicant side?

DANIEL: Applying for jobs, while it can be very easy to quick-submit resume, submit resume, submit resume — hunting for jobs is not cheap. It's not easy. It's a full-time job to look for a job. I've got a couple of friends that are in the job hunt right now, and it sounds brutal out there. I'm hearing about organizations just ghosting people, setting up Zoom interviews and then not showing. It sounds like it's a pretty difficult space right now.

RYAN: For both sides. I agree. And honestly, I've heard more applicants ghosting than companies ghosting. But where I can see it — this was another group I work with, the scheduling AI software they rolled out screwed up the invites. So it wasn't so much that the company ghosted the applicant. It was scheduling. We tried to offload and streamline scheduling to avoid that seven-email back-and-forth, and it had an issue with it. It sent the invite but didn't attach the Zoom. And then you've got to do that awkward back-and-forth. I've heard of more people ghosting the interviewer than the other way around.

DANIEL: That's what surprised me as well, because a friend of mine got ghosted by multiple organizations in the span of a couple of weeks.

RYAN: Maybe they're just having some process problems. And I think this is where you mentioned it earlier, where companies may be using AI. Maybe he applied, maybe they auto-set-up an interview, then they used AI to run the profile and said "not a fit." Or — I've seen this one actually, it was kind of a fun "are you serious" moment — where HR did the fulfillment parts of it and scheduled the interview using an applicant tracking system. The hiring manager looked at the resume and said, "No, this person is not a fit," rejected it, but then HR didn't go through and actually cancel the interview.

DANIEL: Ah, okay. Yeah.

RYAN: So again, it's a breakdown in process, not an intentional ghosting of the people. That's just in my limited purview. I have heard of CEOs ghosting people, because a sales call comes up and they just email the person six hours later: "Oh, sorry, I had a call, I couldn't do it." So that one happens every single day. I know that one. But that's because the CEO's too much in the weeds. And that's a different podcast.

DANIEL: Yes. And again, goes back to your idea of the applicant journey. Is that really the experience that you want to communicate to people?

DANIEL: I do think, if I can crap on applicants for a second, there are a lot of people who — to your point — hate their job, and they're just applying for anything to get themselves out of the situation. And they'll apply for things they're barely qualified for, or they're not even qualified for. And I have yet to see that really work out for anybody. Certainly the companies need to do their job better. But I think applicants share some of the blame here too, because they're just spamming and praying.

RYAN: So I think there's two components to that, and I agree. Even I've gone on LinkedIn and the easy apply, right? And like, "Okay, that looks like an interesting job, I'm curious." Easy apply — "send your LinkedIn profile as your resume." Okay, click. Two clicks, and I've applied for a job that I'm just doing for the hell of it. So there are ways in which sometimes this is too easy, and it's not forcing people to put a little effort into it. So again, that's not my fault as the applicant.

RYAN: The other side — I do think we'll go a little generational here — I do think some of the younger generation, right, wrong or indifferent, thinks they deserve a higher-caliber job. Or they think because they've got two years of experience they're qualified for a five-year-experience role, because they've done it for six months. So I think you're also seeing the younger generation applying for jobs they're not qualified for. They may be qualified from an intellectual standpoint, but from an experience and emotional standpoint, or professional maturity standpoint, they're not. So I think you do see a lot of that as well: "I think I deserve more, so I'm just going to go apply and see if I can get anything," because they're looking for some level of validation.

RYAN: I've known people that have done this, and not just one or two. Dozens upon dozens of Gen Zs have done this. And what they're doing is they're using the application process as a means for self-validation. If someone looks at their resume and comes back and says, "Hey, we're interested in talking to you," they'll use that as leverage to go negotiate against their current employer. They have no intent — I should say, their intent of leaving their current employer is say 20%. It might go up to 40 to 50% based on this response. But they'll use it as justification to go leverage for a pay raise within their current organization.

DANIEL: Wow. What did you do there? They leverage the system for validation of their existing job, and all it did was fill the hiring company's backlog with waste.

RYAN: Right.

DANIEL: Yeah, but that's kind of one of those — maybe I should side with the CEO. "Hey, if you just want job satisfaction, give us 20 bucks, we'll do an interview, we'll tell you if you're worth the money or not. We'll even give you a recommendation to your boss that you should get it. Pay us 20 bucks, we'll take your application."

DANIEL: I wonder if LinkedIn needs to step their game up and have some sort of an audit function on your profile. Like, if you're 24 years old, I'm sorry, you're not a corporate leadership development expert.

RYAN: "ChatGPT told me I was." Right? Because, you know, I led those campers that one summer, so I've got leadership experience.

DANIEL: I think that there's a lot of inflated resume statements — everywhere, both written resumes and online and LinkedIn. And to an extent it's always been true. I just think that the tools are making it easier to inflate. And then you think you're qualified for a job because you're believing your own hype. To an extent, I kind of side with the CEO: guys, you're just making noise. And you're not really helping anybody. You're certainly not helping yourself. Just stop it.

RYAN: I think LinkedIn might be a current source of that. LinkedIn is designed to be the professional social network, so they want to drive traffic and money and the more value. But you know what's interesting, and this just popped in my head when you were saying it — what happened to Monster.com?

DANIEL: You know what, I actually got my very first job out of college from Monster.com.

RYAN: It was a phenomenal place. I haven't seen anybody recruit from it. Maybe it still exists, maybe it doesn't.

DANIEL: I think it's dead.

RYAN: I think it's dead. This episode brought to you by Monster.com.

DANIEL: Yeah. Don't sue us.

RYAN: Indeed is a big one right now. And then, of course, you've got Glassdoor. And LinkedIn. From my understanding — and I'm trying to go back in my archives from about 10 to 12 years ago — one of the issues with Monster that kind of caused its demise was the flooding of applications. People figured out the system. We always, as humans, we always game the system if there's a faster way to get the result. I'm actually going to say this: we're Americans. And if we can game the system, we're going to game it. The reason I say that is because when I was in Spain, man, there was no hurry to get to any result. Matter of fact, versus us Americans — we've got to be at the result yesterday.

RYAN: So I think if you look back, I think that was one of the demises of Monster. It was gamified, the shortcuts, it became noise, too much influx. And then the new tool came out: Indeed.

DANIEL: Well, remember, there for a while everybody was using Craigslist. That was fun.

RYAN: Yeah, that didn't work well. But then Indeed came out and it was the new one. It had these cool features, it had better ways of doing it. But then as Indeed evolved and more flooded into the market, it just became noise again. So I think it's just the human nature of, we can just come in and destroy. And this is our current version of it.

DANIEL: Well, I think what you're talking about here is just multiple iterations of the breakdown of the employer-employee contract. It reminds me a little bit of the episode we did a while back about dating, and how dating has gone digital, but it's an awful experience. The whole swipe right, swipe left. There's a lot of parallels to dating and job hunting. And it's not working for anybody. Whether you're trying to find a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or your next job, all of these digital tools that are supposed to make it easy are actually making it harder to find what you're really looking for. And I wonder at what point we just give up and we go back to doing it the old-fashioned way — which is being honest about what the job really is, who's going to succeed here, doing some internal work to understand who we are and why we're hiring this person. And you as the applicant need to be doing some work to understand what you're actually good at. Know you're not a 23-year-old executive coach. I'm sorry, you don't have enough experience to call yourself an executive coach. Take that off of your resume. Be honest about what you're good at. And that level of honesty is, I think, what's missing in that unspoken agreement between employers and employees.

--- MONDAY MORNING FIX ---

RYAN: And I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier. Go on the offensive, if you will. Do more outreach. Stop posting on the job boards. It's kind of one of those — if you don't want to get contaminated by the cesspool, don't get into the cesspool. I know people need employees, but you will always find people. So if you don't want to deal with the things that come with using a mass public resource, don't use it. Then do the hard work. Go through, find the vision, define the culture, define the journey, to get to the result. And you will then find the talent in a more natural way. If you're going to take the shortcut you want to take and go from the vision into the result, then you're letting society determine the journey for you.

DANIEL: Yeah. And the odds of you being happy with that result are slim to none.

RYAN: I would say maybe both the employer and the applicant need to go through that vision, journey, culture, result. We've talked about the company side: Why does this job exist? What is it that you want this person to do? How will they fit in culturally, and how are they going to be measured and evaluated in that role? That's hard work that most people haven't done. I think employees and applicants need to do the same work as well. Why are you applying for this job? What have you done in the past that makes you think you're going to be good at it? Values-wise, what kinds of organizations are you most effective in? And results — what have you delivered in the past? Show me your accomplishments, not just your responsibilities, but what you've actually achieved, the points you've put on the board. And if you can't do that, you shouldn't be applying for the job in the first place.

DANIEL: I think it's the same thing we just said in reverse. If you're going to shotgun your resume all over the place, don't expect the job hunt to be smooth and fast.

RYAN: Or expect a lot of noise. If you're contributing to the noise, then expect to have to deal with the noise. And if you want a good experience — I've had people do this, and this is a couple years ago — asking what our values are and asking clarifying questions. "Hey, I'm potentially interested in applying for this job, but here's my questions. I did not glean this from the job description. Can you clarify?" Well, one, you just showed me you're seeking to understand. Two, you're being proactive and you've got the guts to reach out. You're probably more likely to get exposure to the role, because you've already showed initiative.

DANIEL: Right.

RYAN: But that's not for everybody. That doesn't mean everybody has to do that. But if the company is not providing what the employee success looks like, the employee experience — I think it's so funny, and I'm on a rabbit trail here — we spend so much time and energy defining the customer journey. And we put our customer journey out on the website. We want the customers to know what they're going to experience when they work with us. We want to give them a world-class experience, and we're going to take you to this step and this step. Why the hell do you not do that for your employees, or your prospective and future employees? Because they should know. If you want good talent, if you want people to be successful, you have to define what the path looks like.

RYAN: So if you are an applicant looking for a job and the company is not being upfront about what the job is, and what the culture is, and what working there looks like — run.

DANIEL: Right. If they don't have the time and energy to do that, then they're probably not going to take the time and energy to invest in you.

RYAN: So don't contribute to the noise.

DANIEL: True. All right, so how do we make this better? How do we make applying for jobs not suck?

RYAN: Do what I just said. Do that. Well, I think it honestly starts at the company side. Companies, if they stop putting crappy job descriptions out there and start focusing on employee success, then it's going to change the behavior of — I wouldn't say the industry, but the space, if you will. The employers are in the driver's seat to a degree. And I will say this: the companies that always get top talent are the ones that do this hard work.

DANIEL: From the applicant side, I would say: you do not want a job. You want a good job. It's like dating. I've got a buddy who's like, "I just want a girlfriend." It's like, no, you don't. I promise you, there are girlfriend scenarios that are way worse than being single. You don't want it. There are some very toxic situations that you would be much better staying away from than checking the result box of "I've got a girlfriend, check." I think jobs are the same way. "I've got a job, check." Not what you want.

RYAN: In that case, I think there are platforms for things like that. If you just want a job, do Uber Eats, or get on Fiverr or Upwork. That is a means of finding work if you're skilled and talented in any number of things — you can just get work to get work and get paid.

DANIEL: That's fair. That's actually a really good point. But I would say that no matter how bad your job situation or your unemployment situation is, there are worse scenarios. So don't just spray and pray that your resume gets picked up by somebody. Do the hard work to understand yourself. Where have you been successful? What have you enjoyed? What are you good at? What has been affirmed by coworkers in the past — "man, you're really good at that"? Do the hard work to understand what you're bringing to the table. And then go find the roles where that is going to be valued, and the companies where your skills and experiences are going to be valued. Just hitting apply to everything you can find doesn't work. And even if you do get an interview, you're going to hate the job, because it's not a fit for you. And if you don't know who you are, you're not going to know that it's not a fit until you're stuck in it.

RYAN: The other thing is, recruiters are always looking for good candidates. Two things you can do if you want to avoid the spray-and-pray and just mass application with no reply: get your profile on LinkedIn and your social presence good, mark yourself open to work, and get in front of a recruiter. Now, you don't want to get in front of any recruiter. You want to vet the recruiter. And again, this is the hard part. You want to work with a recruiter that has a track record of placing people that is qualified for your space. Don't try to get in front of a recruiter that recruits doctors for practices when you're a developer. That's not going to make sense. So get in front of recruiters, connect with recruiters, get your resume to recruiters — and again, find one that works for you. I think that's another means of getting above the noise.

RYAN: And then on the employer side: recruiters are expensive, don't get me wrong, but suck it up. Because I guarantee you, you spent more money — probably exponentially more money — trying to do it yourself and failing. You may have put a butt in a seat, but I guarantee you there's a level of turnover that's happened, because you're trying to be cheap and do it yourself. I'm not saying recruiters are the only way to go. If you're not going to invest in in-house recruitment, then find a good, credible recruiter that has a fair fee and a track record of finding the talent you're looking for, and let them go hunt on the outbound. You need outbound recruitment. Inbound is just noise.

DANIEL: Yeah. And you're going to pay for that one way or the other. You're going to pay for it directly by getting a recruiter, or you're going to pay for it indirectly by hiring the wrong person, limping along for 12 months before you fire them, then the role sits empty for another three months. You're going to pay for it one way or the other. Pay for it up front and get a better return.

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RYAN: Yes. You just said something that's our red line, green line. If you do the hard work and pay the price up front, it's going to be far cheaper, far less time, far less energy than paying the price down the road. It's that good old thing of half-assing it. When you half-ass something, it costs you twice as much. So bite the bullet, do the hard work up front, receive the dividends — or keep making it suck. I guess if you like the waste of time, waste of money, stress — if you love living in that environment. I don't know anybody that does, but if you love it, then I guess you do.

DANIEL: Yeah. If you keep doing what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always got. And I think both employers and applicants are sick of the process. It's not working for anybody. Let's change the game and do something better, because this whole process is making work suck for both sides.

ANNOUNCER: Make Work Not Suck — our podcast that talks about exactly that. Our process: vision, journey, culture and results. We present real-world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steer. Join us each episode and make work not suck.

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