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Would you hire someone who recorded their layoff?

With people recording layoff videos, HR people are in the spotlight and recruiters should help candidates who have been laid off but also be critical of their career history

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The Deputy
January 25, 2024

“Stay calm and serene regardless of what life throws at you.”

Marcus Aurelius

Starbucks is doing its first-ever North America Barista Championship in May of this year. Over 15K baristas, each with a milk frother in one hand and a shot of espresso in the other hand, ready to battle it out in a frothy frenzy. Maybe they are trying to divert attention from their tussles with unions but the winners of this competition get a trip to Starbucks' very own coffee farm in Costa Rica. ☕️

In today’s email:

  • Job News:  Should you record your layoff? 4 questions to ask someone (Brittany) who video recorded their layoff meeting for everyone to see.  💬

  • Overheard at coffee: How do you prepare for your upcoming software engineer interview? 📝

  • Trending AI Tools: Meet AI Steve. He will help you build and scale your product as if Steve Jobs was helping you.🤠

  • Hot Jobs: (keep scrolling down ⬇️)

  • Recruiting Fails: Check out the candidate on X/Twitter who is being ghosted by an employer ❌

Job News

Being fired from a job is probably one of the lowest points in your life. In case you haven’t seen the viral video of Brittany Pietsch, you can watch it HERE. In short - she recorded her termination meeting. 

I have been on both sides of the layoff table multiple times in my career and both sides are terrible in their own ways. 

If you are thinking about recording a layoff meeting, I would recommend that you do not…

First it’s illegal in some states to record something without consent. Second, termination meetings at bigger companies are largely scripted and you are not going to get positive evidence for your case by recording the call. You will walk away with a scripted talk that you can do nothing with…

The only exception to record the call would be if you work at a small company with no HR representative OR you are experiencing extreme harassment issues. 

The meeting they conducted was scripted and the HR person and witness on the zoom call stuck to their script. Having scripted many termination meeting notes over the years AND been a recipient of layoff news…they stuck to the script. 

I don’t know Brittany’s story other than her video of being terminated from Cloudflare but if she’s sharing videos about her termination meeting, then I am going to highlight a few things about her LinkedIn profile. My intentions are to help her or other people in her situation or future employers who might interview someone with a LinkedIn profile like Brittany. 

Looking at Brittany’s LinkedIn profile, this doesn’t look like her first layoff meeting. Previous to her current company who laid her off (Cloudflare), she was with Snowflake for less than one year (10 months to be exact). Snowflake is a HOT company and to leave a job less than a year could be a layoff OR she left to pursue a better opportunity with Cloudflare.

Without talking with Brittany (LinkedIn request pending), it’s hard to speculate. I know that Snowflake was on a BIG hiring spree in 2023 and I am not aware of any mass layoffs. 

As a recruiter, you want to hire salespeople with a history of hitting quota and this usually comes with 2-4 years in a job so you can see a history. NOT short stints of occasional success.

Here are 4 Questions that I would ask if I was going to interview Brittany:

  1. It looks like you made a career switch from a Technician to a Sales career. Can you tell me why you made the switch?

  2. Your first sales role was an IT Recruiter with Insight Global. What were your metrics as a recruiter? What were you hired to do? (I am trying to understand if she understands what her role was and how she moved from recruiter to Account Manager)

    1. Follow-up question: Were you promoted to the Account Manager role with Insight Global? Is that something you wanted to do? (I’m trying to understand her ability to take action for her career). Was she put in that role because nobody else was available? What happened?…

    2. Follow-up question: While you were the Account Manager at Insight Global, I saw you exceeded the yearly quota by Q2 and you were on track to hit 250% of quota expectations. That’s incredible! What did you do to exceed your quota? Why did you leave if you were doing so well?

  3. Tell me about Snowflake. What were you hired to do there?

    1. Follow-up question: It looks like you were a Corporate Account Executive for 6 months, then a Strategic Account Executive for 4 months and then you left. Can you tell me why you left? (I am looking at her motives - it’s okay if she left because of a layoff OR if she left for a better opportunity. But, I see a 3 month employment gap and I would like to know why she left a hot company like Snowflake, took 3 months off before she started at Cloudflare). Working for 10 months at a hot company like Snowflake, then leaving deserves an explanation.  

  4. Now, most recently the public termination of Cloudflare. The entire internet can see you were laid off. What did you learn from working there? Overall - how well do you enjoy working in sales? It seems like you have had a rocky start in your 3.5 year sales career. 

I have a lot of questions to help Brittany and I would work to help her land a job that will not be laying her off anytime soon. I would like to understand her track record of achieving quota and understand why she left her previous positions. I would look past the Cloudflare experience as it sounds like she was part of a mass layoff but I would want to understand what happened with her previous work assignments. 

To all corporate managers. Let Brittany’s video be a reminder that you are messing with people’s dreams and life. Don’t outsource termination meetings to HR or someone not involved in the person’s work. It’s bad for everyone. 

To Brittany. Use this as a time to reflect on your career and what you want to do. If you are going to work in corporate America, you are going to run the risk of being laid off. When a company is not making money or meeting the expectations of their investors, they will cut costs and that means layoffs. Accept this and it will become easier. Do what you can to control your job and performance.

Technology will continue to evolve and firms like Ramp Talent are doing everything they can to invent a better way to hire so companies do not have to do big layoffs. 

Overheard at coffee ☕️

Are you a software engineer who needs help preparing for an interview? Well look no further, there is a GitHub page to help you for any technical interview. Based on the book, “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell who is a former software engineer herself. 

I use the STAR interview method often and I like that she bases a lot of her questions on this method. Good luck!

🚀 Looking to build a product like Steve Jobs? Ask AI Steve (as in Steve Jobs)…

I gave this a test myself for Ramp Talent and Sumato Coffee. It gave some helpful suggestions that I plan to explore further. For Ramp Talent, AI Steve recommended we offer loyalty discounts for repeat customers. We actually already do offer discounts but it got me to think more about this strategy. 

For Sumato Coffee, AI Steve recommended we offer loyalty points for discounts on future orders, good idea and I plan to incorporate this later this year during Sumato’s rebrand. Worth noting, AI Steve recommended personalized coffee recommendations and access to coffee related advice. This is what we are building The Coffee Badger GPT. 

🔥 Hot Jobs - $1K Referral Fee

Recruiting Fails:

Dear Recruiter at this company - Call Joyce ASAP and let her know a status.

Special thanks to Nate the Master Editor for the help on this edition of The Deputy.

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