Can You Say No to a Hiring Manager?
I was back at it again.
I had hopped on the job hunt hamster wheel, and finally, after six weeks of emailing back and forth about a strategist role, I got a response from the hiring manager at an up-and-coming digital agency.
When the email popped up in my inbox, my heartbeat quickened with excitement. Would this be the job that would make a Peggy Olson out of me? Would I finally have my basket full of kisses moment?
Okay, maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I was hoping it would be an invite to at least a phone interview. Instead, they were asking for something different. Mike forwarded me your resume and I wanted to know if you could complete a quick writing test for us.
My heart sank. A writing test before the interview? I was already side-eyeing the fuck out of this whole situation. But I thought if this was a job I really wanted, then I would have to go through with it. Isn’t that what Peggy Olson would do? “Sure! I have time,” I wrote back in a cheery tone. I figured, they couldn’t be asking for too much, right? How bad could it be? They sent me the details of the test and told me they would need it completed by the next day. Cool, I thought. Let’s do this thing.
I was wrong. It turned out there really was such a thing as asking for too much.
You see, the writing test required me to write six campaign emails. Then, I was instructed to edit a seventh. I was used to having to write perhaps two out of six email prompts given for other jobs, but never in my Black Ass Life ™ had I been asked to write six whole emails even before being invited in for an interview. It seemed egregious. It made me feel like they were exploiting my labor and taking advantage of how much I seemed to want the job.
So I did what I knew how to do in these situations: I hit up my homegirl, Kat, on iMessage. I told her what they were asking me to do. She gave a two-word response:
“Hell no.”
I put down my phone and went back to the computer screen, the blank test staring me in the face. Then, it hit me. I didn’t want to take this stupid test. I didn’t want to work for free, and I didn’t like how it made me feel knowing that my resume alone couldn’t prove to them that I was worth talking to before making me do this work.
I knew what I had to do.
I had to say no.
And I had to say no, even despite my fear that I wouldn’t have an opportunity to say “yes” to for a long time after that. I essentially had to tell a job that I thought I wanted to kiss my Black ass.
And it was terrifying.
Then I remembered Ashley Ford writing a mantra that stays with me: “Stop saying ‘yes’ to things that you actually don’t want to do.” If I agreed to complete this test and jump through hoops just to be deemed worthy of a conversation, that’s what would be happening.
I closed the Google Docs tab the test sat in, and instead replied to the hiring manager’s email. “I have decided to pursue some other opportunities,” I wrote. “Thank you for your time.”
I texted Kat again. “It’s done. I told their ass no.”
“Good for you,” she replied.
The hiring manager at the agency didn’t respond to my email after that, but she didn’t have to. What mattered was that for the first time in my job hunt, my “no” meant more to me than their “yes.”
Find more of Loryn’s writing here.
