Are you a jobseeker? A candidate? Maybe a recruiter or hiring manager? How about a consumer, or a subscriber, or a customer? Do you ever get tired of all the labels people slap on you when you're not looking? Denuo's Rishad Tobaccowala, speaking at OMMA in New York, cuts through the jargon with an important reminder (via Scott Karp):
Please let’s talk about people and not consumer or user.Target Audience: Do I need to be hunted?
360 Surround: Don’t you feel trapped when people talk about 360 marketing?
User Generated Content: Since when did I become a heroin addict?
Consumer: I create, I retransmit, I edit, I share—I’m not defined by your stupid brand.
People, that’s what we need to think about.
People, person, human.
I know, labels serve a purpose. We use terms like consumer to focus our attention on their role in our business. We talk about candidates, recruiters and hiring managers because it's relevant to the hiring process. But it also complicates our interactions. The person sitting across from you is probably a lot easier to talk to than the adversarial role that the interview process can impose.
It won't necessarily help with employers (there's that labelling thing again!) who want to play games, but remember the person when you're talking with potential employers. If things go well, that interviewer is a potential colleague, too.
