So COVID really fucked up the job-seeking market. Because you can work anything remote (pretend with me here), and because you need to apply for three jobs to maintain your bennies, and because there's no way to really thin out a credible candidate from a noncredible candidate, any job posting is going to be a hive of bullshit. We had people applying for in-person work from a thousand miles away. We had people show up to interviews with their mom. We had people accept positions and not fucking show up on the first day. I've got not one, not two, but five employees who have said "I'm never leaving this place" in the past three months and we work really hard to do right by the people who trust us to keep them working and I gotta say - fucking applicants are bullshit now. I can honestly say that the human race would improve if I could euthanize every single person who applied to our lowly little receptionist position.

But our receptionist is awesome, and she's been with us like two and a half years now, and she's one of the "I'm never leaving this place" people (we've learned not to ask 'where do you see yourself five years from now' during reviews because it spooks them). And that's because WE hunted HER.

We evaluated back in 2022 that job postings are fucking bullshit now. You won't get a single qualified candidate. At this point a job posting is a drunk frat boy on the dance floor fifteen minutes before closing time, his fly open, swinging his dick around. If you're a girl you might think this is his extremely terrible way to demonstrate his manhood and virility. It's not. It's him swinging his dick around because he wants to swing his dick around. He's too drunk for sex and even if you make it all the way to the car with him he's going to vomit on your shoulder and pass out. He is not in the dating pool. Stop pretending he is.

The last four students we've gotten have been people cold-calling us. The last three naturopaths we've gotten have been people cold-calling us. You want to figure out where you want to work, you want to figure out who you'd be working for there, and you want to ask them for a job. You want to bypass this entire miasma of makework we've created that basically serves the purpose of frustrating unemployment benefits departments and absolutely nothing else. You want to get to know every shop that might be an interesting place to work, you want to make yourself known to them and you want to completely bypass any hiring process. Trust me - if they've got work and they like you, it's your job to lose. Hiring fucking sucks.

And if they don't have work and they like you, they'll tell you about their friends, or they'll tell their friends about you. Resumes have been completely fucking pointless since 2020 or before.