The Glow Up: Stop Calling Your Mom - The Entry Level Delusion

Welcome back to the office, buttercups. Today, we’re closing the daycare and opening the boardroom. If you think "Entry-Level" means a four-year paid internship where we teach you how to use a calendar, you are living in a delusion; and your career is paying the price.

In this 50-minute masterclass, your favorite HR professional (that’s me) is peeling back the curtain on the 2026 workforce. We’re deep-diving into the "Expectation Gap", the canyon-sized hole between your degree and the "Plug-and-Play" reality of modern hiring. From why your mom is legally barred from my office line to the "Batman Complex" killing your corporate EQ, we’re covering the hard truths nobody else will tell you.

What we’re breaking down today:

• The Historical Shift: Why companies stopped training you in the 80s and why we now demand ROI by Day 14.
• The "Mama Bear" Pandemic: Why bringing your parents to an interview (yes, it happens) is a terminal nosedive for your professional reputation.
• Experience Inflation: How to hack the "3-5 years of experience" requirement for entry-level roles using the Evidence Portfolio.
• The 10 Shadow Skills: The "Invisible Syllabus" of the modern office; from Digital Sovereignty to the "Google-First" philosophy.
• Corporate EQ & The Batman Complex: Why HR isn't the "Fun Police" and why your "Office Vigilante" energy is getting you fired.
• The Talent Velocity Bomb: Why job titles are dead and why your "Skill Inventory" is the only thing that matters in 2026.

Stop making excuses and start making a salary. Back to work!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back, everybody. Pull up a chair, but maybe don't get too comfortable. Because I know nobody wants to have the conversation that we have to have today. I'm your host, the person who reads the resumes that you lie on, the person who hears you slip bruh into the conversation, and the person who occasionally has to explain to a 23-year-old that a corporate office is in fact not a daycare. This is Lauren Dietz. Welcome back. And before you season pros, turn this off thinking, oh, this is just for the Gen Z interns, I need you to stay right where you are. Because some of you, you've been at your job or working for 20 years, and you're still dragging 11th grade energy into my boardroom. And we're going to have a talk about that too. We're deep diving into the expectation gap, that massive canyon-sized hole between what you think entry level means and the cold hard reality of what it means in 2026. Here's the roadmap for today, just so I can kind of run it through with you. First, we're going to have a massive deep dive into the history and anatomy of entry level. We're peeling back the curtain on the market reality, and I'm going to give you the literal blueprint on how to bridge the gap. Next, we're going to talk about boundaries. Specifically, why your mother is legally and professionally barred from me in my office line in my office. Then we're going to look at the data of experience inflation. LinkedIn tells a story that your university counselor and your teachers definitely didn't. And then finally, we're closing the locker door on high school habits and the Batman Justice complex that a lot of you seem to have. All right, let's get straight to it. We're going to peel back the curtain just a little bit. You want to know why you're struggling to get hired? It's because the definition of entry level has moved and nobody gave you the new dictionary. So I'm going to. Let's look at the history. Because to understand why I'm not hiring you, you need to understand who I used to hire. There was a historical shift from loyalty to plug and play. So in the 1970s and 80s, we were in our training era. If you had a degree or even just a good handshake, companies had massive internal budgets dedicated to teaching you the job from scratch. And I'm talking everything. The social contract was pretty simple. You give us our your loyalty for 40 years, we give you the skills, the pension, and a gold watch. But we fast forward to the 2020s and that contract is shredded. According to the Association for Talent Development, corporate training budgets have been slashed by billions over the last two decades. Companies realize that training green or brand new employees is expensive. And it is, especially when that employee leaves for a better offer in 18 months. So the market shifted to plug and play. We don't want potential, we want proof. We want you to generate ROI on day 14, not month 14. So let's buzz some of the common myths you're hanging on to like a safety blanket. Myth number one, you think entry level means they're gonna train you on everything. And that's false. In 2026, entry level is more like a pay grade, not a vocational school. In fact, data shows that it can cost companies 30% of that employee's first-year earnings for a bad hire. And as an HR manager, I'm just not incentivized to take a risk on someone who doesn't know how to use their calendar. I'm looking for somebody who already mastered workforce entry skills so I can focus on industry entry skills. And here's myth number two: that your degree is your qualification. And your degree is a ticket into a hobby, not a seat at the table. A study by the NACE found that nearly 91% of employers prefer candidates with work experience. And over half of those prefer that that experience be through an internship or a co-op. If your only skill is passing an exam, you're behind the person who spent their summer at a temp agency. And let's talk about shadow skills for a second. And if you don't know what those are, those are the invisible requirements. Those are the things we don't even put on the job description because we just expect everyone to have them. Let's get into it. First and foremost, we're looking for digital skills. Look, it's 2026. If you save every file to your desktop like a digital hoarder, you aren't an employee, you're a liability. I expect you to know file naming and share drive etiquette. I expect you to know how to organize files. If you're one of those people that downloads everything straight into the downloads folder and you don't have organization within them, absolutely not. And next up is the Google First Rule. If the answer to your question can be found on the first page of search results through Google if you typed in that question, do not ask me. Resourcefulness is the difference between an $80,000 salary and a thank you for applying. If you come to me with a problem, you better come to me with the three solutions you already Googled. And then let's talk about your calendar literacy. If I send you an invite, accepting it isn't a suggestion. It's a commitment. If your calendar looks like a blank sheet of paper, you look like you aren't doing anything. Learn how to work your calendar, or rather, have it work for you. And then there's the feedback pivot. In high school, you got a grade and that's just what it was. In the real world, I'm gonna tell you to tweak something. If you take that tweak as a personal attack, you are not ready for a big girl and boy job. Learn to detach your ego from your output. The faster you learn to pivot, the faster you get promoted. And okay, okay, that's probably enough roasting for now. So now I'm gonna tell you how to fix it because I actually do want you to get hired. You have to bridge the gap. And bridging the gap requires a three-step strategy. I like to call it the pro audit. So let's start with step one: the workforce entry audit. I need you to stop looking for an office job and start looking for office skills. If you've never worked a day in your life, you are a massive risk to people looking for skills. Go work retail, go be a server, go to a temp agency. I've said it before, and I'll say it again until my coffee gets called a temp agency is a skill accelerator. They will put you in five different offices in five weeks or five months. You will learn five different software systems and five different ways to handle a boss who's having a bad day. That is the workforce literacy you can't buy in a classroom. And that moves us on to step two, skill stacking. Now, this is for your industry entry experience. Like if you want to get into marketing, you don't just say, well, I'm creative. So is everybody else that applies to those positions. Show me you're an industry pro by stacking a workforce skill with an industry skill. For example, don't just learn how to write a post, learn how to use project management software like Asana or Monday.com. When I see that you can manage a workflow and produce the content, you're bridging the gap. You've moved from I need to be taught to I can manage myself and figure it out. And that's two different kinds of employees. And when we talk about step three, that's where you're gonna build your evidence. In 2026, trust me, is not a strategy. I want proof. If you're in tech, build a GitHub. If you're a creative, build a brand. If you're in HR, start a LinkedIn newsletter talking about workplace trends. You need to show me that you've been doing the industry work so that way I feel comfortable paying you to do it for me. You're basically auditing your own helplessness and replacing it with actual evidence. And that moves us into step four, the shadow skill habit. I need you to start practicing these habits today. So organize your personal Gmail into folders. Organize your own personal desktop. Set a calendar event for your own laundry. If you can't manage your own life, I know you can't manage larger projects. So bridge the gap in a lifestyle shift, not a resume edit. Also, it makes it easier to talk about those programs in the interview because you're actually using them. And okay, we're gonna transition just a little bit. It's time for segment two, and you need to buckle up for this one because we're about to address the most embarrassing trend in modern recruitment. That's right, I'm talking about the parental proxy. Let me set the scene for you. I'm sitting in my office trying to figure out how to allocate a bonus pool, and my phone rings, and I pick it up expecting a vendor or a VP or a current employee. And instead, I hear, Hi, I'm Tyler's mom, and I'm just calling because he's really stressed out about his dental deductible. And in that moment, Tyler's career at this company didn't just stall. It is now in a nosedive. Tyler could be the second coming of Steve Jobs, but if he can't handle a conversation about his own teeth without his mother, he is now a liability to everyone, especially my leadership team. And this isn't just an HR lady rant. This is a measurable shift in the workforce. So let's look at the data because I know you think I'm exaggerating. The interview chaperone problem is so real. And according to a recent survey by Resume Builder, 25% of Gen Z candidates brought a parent to their interview in the last year. That's 25%. I need that to sink in just a little bit. One in four of you thinks it's appropriate to bring a plus one to a professional evaluation. And I don't even know what to do with that information. And then we have the salary surrogate. A study by the Harris Poll found that 15% of Gen Z workers have had a parent negotiate their salary for them. And let me tell you right now how that would work for me is a no, it's a no-go. It's a absolutely not. And then this I'm seeing a lot, not necessarily in like the workforce, but just parenting in general, is the snowplow effect. We seem to have moved on from helicopter parenting who just like watch you all the time, to snowplow parents who clear every obstacle out of the way of their children. And the problem with that is the corporate world is a mountain of snow. And HR can sometimes be the blizzard. We throw a lot at employees. And if you haven't built the muscles to clear your own path, you're gonna freeze. And let's talk like adults for a second. Because why does HR care so much? I know you want to know why I care so much. And it's not just because it's cringy, although it is very deeply. It's because it's a legal and compliance nightmare. Because if you've gone to college, you know what FERPA is. And if you haven't, FERPA is basically a form that parents sign and the kids signs, and it just lets everybody have access to the kids' information. So you signed a FERPA waiver to let your parents see your grades, but that doesn't carry over into the workforce. That's over. There is no such thing as a workplace FERPA. Also, we have to look at HIPAA and privacy protocols. If your mom calls about your dental plan and I tell her anything about your enrollment, your coverage, or your health status, I am potentially violating federal privacy laws. And I'm not risking a lawsuit from the Department of Labor because you're too shy to ask me a question. And then we look at the liability of agency. If your mom negotiates your salary and I agree to it, but you later claim that you like didn't consent to that, we have a contractual nightmare. I can only enter into a legal agreement with a person whose name is on the W-2, like the person who comes in and signs. So if your mom calls me and I do the agreement that way, you can step out later and say that you didn't want that and now I have a problem. And then there's the executive presence. When I see a parent involved, I see a lack of autonomy. In a plug-and-play market, I'm hiring people who can solve problems on their own, not people who are in themselves problems. If you can't navigate a benefits portal, how are you going to navigate a client crisis? And we have to talk about the hierarchy of communication. That means how you actually talk to us and get things done. If you want the adult glow up, you have to master the communication stack. Level one, the self-search. Check for yourself. Check the handbook, check the portal, check Google. And then you can move on to level two, the professional ask. Send a Slack or an email. Keep it on professional channels. And you can say something like, I'm looking for the policy on X. I checked the handbook. Wanted to clarify why. Then you can move on to level three if that doesn't work. Schedule 10 minutes of that person's time. And here's a note to the whys. If you skip all of these and go straight to calling your mom, you're telling me that you're at a level zero. And level zero employees get level zero raises. So I'm going to give you a word-for-word scripts for the three things you usually call your mom for. I want you to keep this, save it, put it on a sticky note. I don't really care. Just remember it. We're going to start with scenario A, the pay discrepancy. The mom, they shorted me and I don't know what to do about my paycheck call. The mom way is like mom calls HR and says, Well, you didn't pay my baby his overtime. And yes, I've had that actual phone call. And no, I couldn't actually answer her. We're going to do it the adult glow-up way. You're going to say, Hi, whoever you're talking to. I was reviewing my recent paycheck stub and noticed a discrepancy between my logged hours and my final payout based on the policy in the handbook and cite the policy. I calculated X, but this stub shows Y. Could you help me understand why this is calculated so I can adjust my tracking? And here's why that works: you're citing policy. You're asking for understanding, not justice. You're not making demands. You're asking to work together. You look like an auditor, not a victim. So as we move into scenario B, I want you to remember that I don't want your mom to call me at all. But when we talk about caging or managing the mean managers, so that's when you would call your mom and be like, oh my God, my manager is so mean to me. The mom way is mom's gonna call the VAP of the company to complain about office bullying. And I have also seen that happen. And it shouldn't be a shock that it didn't end well for that employee either. But we're gonna do it the adult glow-up way. You're gonna say hi and the manager's name. I wanted to follow up on the feedback you gave me in the meeting earlier. I appreciate the directness. I want to make sure that I'm hitting the mark. Could we clarify the specific metrics for a rewrite so I can ensure the next version exceeds expectations? Do you see what we did there? You turned mean into metrics. You showed that your ego is secondary to the output. Now, I do want to add in a note here that your version of mean of the manager. Now, if they're just blunt, slightly sarcastic, things like that, unless they're actually breaking company policy, there's not much I can do. I am not talking about discriminatory, racist, any of that kind of behavior. That stuff goes straight to my office in HR. But we are gonna move on to scenario C: the benefits confusion. That's the mom, how do I get a feel, a filling in my tooth? How do I go to the doctor? Phone call. The mom way is mom's gonna call to ask about dental networks. And yes, again, real life. The adult glow up way is hey, HR team. I was looking at the dental provider list and wanted to confirm if this provider is in network for our plan. If not, where can I find the most updated list of providers? And that works because you're managing your own life. Welcome to adulthood. And I'm gonna give you one final little bit to roast if I can without hurting your feelings. So glad. It's the mama bear stigma, okay? And nobody wants that because let's be real. In the break room, everyone talks. And if word gets out that your parents are involved in your job, you are now the kid of the office. You won't get invited to high-stakes meetings, you won't be given the lead on projects, and you'll be babied and eventually let go because we need adults in the room. You need to cut the cord. Your mom can help you with your taxes, she can help you pick out your first big kid apartment, but she does not, and I mean does not, have a seat at our table at the company. The adult glow-up requires you to be your own hero in every situation. And moving right along to the mountain everyone is trying to climb. Welcome to segment three: the three-year gap in experience inflation. And if you've been on LinkedIn for more than five minutes, you've seen the post that makes your blood boil. It's an entry-level social media coordinator position. The salary is $42,000. But wait, the requirement says three to five years of experience. You look at that and you want to throw your laptop out the window. How are you supposed to have experience for an entry-level job? Well, let's look at the numbers first. LinkedIn Talent Solutions data shows that over 35% of entry-level positions now require two to three years of experience. And in some industries, like tech and marketing, the number actually jumps to 60%. That's a lot of entry-level jobs. This is what we call experience inflation. Basically, employers have effectively outsourced the learning phase of the careers to your university years. Entry level is now a pay grade, like I said earlier. It's not a tutorial level. We expect you to know how to function in an office so we can focus on making you a pro in the industry. So you basically have to come in with those like entry-level skills already there. So we can train you how to work in this company and further your career development. Now we're going to talk about how to understand the robot, basically, like the ATS nightmare that everybody's talking about. And if you don't know what an ATS is, I posted about it in another podcast episode, but it's an applicant tracking system. It's basically a software that when you submit a resume and an application, it runs through that software before recruiters and hiring managers get to it. And when I have 1,200 applicants for one role, a robot scans them first, aka the ATS system. If I set the filter to three years of experience and you put zero, the robot isn't allowing your resume to get to me. But remember, 70% of requirements, and yes, I'm using air quotes, are a wish list. So to get past the robot and convince the human, you have to move from just trust me to watch me. So let's have a heart to heart. Most of you think a portfolio is something only a graphic designer or a wedding photographer have. It's like you think if you don't have a folder full of logos, you don't have a portfolio. And honey, that is 2010 thinking. It's 2026. A resume is basically high-level fan fiction. Everybody lies just a little bit. Everyone embellishes. And as an HR pro, I don't believe your resume anymore. I mean, we do, but we don't. Especially with everybody using AI now, they're plugging everything into AI. We're basically seeing the same resumes over and over again. And while you should match your resume to the job description, a lot of people still don't, though, um, we see a lot of the same exact wording. And I believe receipts. So a portfolio is simply a central location where you prove you can do the things that you said you're gonna do. It's basically like showing me instead of just telling me. Like if you tell me you're detail-oriented, don't just use that word. Show me a spreadsheet you built to track a budget. That shows me. If you tell me you're a problem solver, show me the process you redesigned for a club or a nonprofit. If you're going to look for a job in HR, operations, finance, or admin, here's exactly what I need your profile to look like. First of all, the HR portfolio. I want you to show me a mock onboarding flow. If you were hiring a new employee for a fictional tech company, what does day one look like? Build a checklist, write a mock welcome email, draft a new hire FAQ. This shows me you understand the mechanics of the job, not just the theory. And if you're gonna move into operations or admin, you can still have a portfolio. Show me a standard operating procedure. We call those SOPs. Take something simple like how to organize a digital filing system or how to manage a shared calendar and write a two-page instructional manual. If I see that you can document a process, I know I can trust you with my business operations. Then there's finance and data. Don't just say Excel proficient. Let me tell you right now, I don't think I've seen a resume in 10 years that doesn't have that on there. Download a public data set, they are everywhere. Look up Kaggle. Clean the data, build a pivot table, turn it into a one-page insight report. Show me that you can find the why behind the what. And finally, let's talk a little bit about project management. All of y'all should have a portfolio. Show me a project post-mortem. Like take a project you did in college, yes, even that group project where you did all the work, and map it out. Show me a timeline, risks that you've identified, and final outcomes. Strategy is really important in project management. And if you can show it to me, that's even better than just telling me that you're good at. And I know what you're thinking. What if you have zero internships? What if your university didn't have that? You can kind of make it up. Now, hold on. That doesn't mean bold face lie. But there is something called mock work. That's where you take a couple steps and you can kind of show that you've done something that maybe you didn't necessarily do for school or get paid for. First and foremost, step one. I need you to find a problem. I mean it, find a problem. Look at a local business or nonprofit. Notice something they're doing poorly. Social media, they have a disorganized check-in process, their lack of a newsletter, and then move on to step two. Solve it for free internally. Like you solve it. You should always get paid for your work. You don't have to send it to them. Although, if it is a good nonprofit that's close to your heart, you can. And I've actually seen some of those companies use them. Just build the solution, write the newsletters, redesign the check inflow, create the content calendar. And that'll lastly lead you into step three case study it. Put it in your portfolio under a section called consulting projects or case studies and label it clearly proposed operations. Overhaul for business. When I see this, I don't see someone with zero years of experience anymore. I see a self-starter. I see someone who's already completed their workforce entry experience on their own time. And here's a little bitty tip before we move on to the next segment. Your portfolio can be a simple notion page, a clean PDF, or a featured section on your LinkedIn. It does not have to be fancy. You do not have to hire someone to build you a full website. It just needs to be evidence. Resumes get you to the interview. Portfolios get you salaries. So stop telling me what you can do and start showing me the receipts of what you've done. The entry-level delusion ends the moment you prove you have receipts. And all right, all right, you've hacked the robot, you built your portfolio, you blocked your mom's number so she can't call me, which I love. And now you're in the building. So now comes the hard part. Staying in the building. That's right. Welcome to section four: the 10 shadow skills. In my over a decade of experience, I have never once fired someone for not knowing a tech skill because we can teach those. I actually used to have a saying in my office that said I hire characters so I can train skill. I fire people because they lack the invisible syllabus. Remember, I kind of brought that up earlier. These are the things we assume you know. And when you don't, you aren't just entry-level employees, you're an entry-level burden. So let's break down the 10 commandments of the modern office. The first commandment, digital organization. So here's the reality. In college, if you lost a file, you could email IT, but in the office, if you lose a file, you just cost the company four hours of billable time. And here's the data to back that up. Okay, a report by M Files found that the average employee spends nearly 50% of their day, that's five, zero, searching for information. So if you're a digital hoarder who saves everything to your desktop, you are the reason productivity is dying. So how do you get these skills and how do you make them better? You stop what you're doing and learn shared drive architecture. Understand the difference between a working draft and a client version and an archive. Learn naming conventions. A file named final v2v4 means version two through four, is a firable offense. And it should be. I'm not digging through all those files. It should be year, month, day, project name, draft, initial. And here's a pro tip. If you have to ask someone where's that file, more than once, you failed at commandment one. And here's commandment two: the Google first philosophy. The reality is if you ask me a question that can be found on the first page of Google, I have already decided that you're not promotable because Google exists. And yes, I'm one of those people that Googles absolutely everything because I don't like to waste people's time. And what makes me irritated is a lot of the time, and I'm just gonna tell you, when you ask a manager a question, they're probably just gonna Google it themselves. Think about it like this. It's like when you go on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram and somebody goes, Hey, where do I get this? Where do they sell this? What's going on here? And you feel that little bit of rage because you think, girl, you just could have Googled that. That's how we feel when you ask us questions that we know are either on the company drive or you could have just Googled it. So here's the ROI of curiosity. I don't pay you for your degree. I pay you for your resourcefulness. So, how do you get this skill if you don't have it? Practice the 15-minute rule. If you're stuck, you have 15 minutes to solve it yourself using Google, YouTube, or AI. If you can't solve it, you can ask. But you must lead with, hey, I've already tried this, that, and this, and I'm still hitting a wall. And here's a little side note asking, how do I BCC someone isn't a question. It's an admission that you've never used the internet before. And that leads us into the next commandment. AI prompting as a baseline. Here's the reality AI is not necessarily cheating, it's a force multiplier. But if I can tell you used it, you're an amateur. You have to learn how to use it properly. And you know me, I'm gonna share the data behind it. So Microsoft's work trend index showed that 70% of people would delegate as much work as possible to AI if they could. And how do you get those skills? So glad you asked. Stop using prompting and start using context engineering. Don't say, hey, write me an email, AI. Say write a professional, concise email to a VP of finance regarding a 5% budget discrepancy using a tone that is firm but collaborative. You see what I did there? It's like giving instructions to five-year-olds on how to accurately make a sandwich. You wouldn't just say, hey, make that sandwich. You're gonna give them a little bit of the how, what, why, who, where. And here's the rule AI builds the skeleton. You build the soul behind whatever you're doing. So if you send me a Slack message that says, I hope this finds you well, uh, no, you're a robot. Stop it. I want to talk to actual people. Also, this leads me into a very random side note, but I'm also a really big fan of when I'm hiring people or working with people. It, whatever your email signature is, make it your own and don't use quotes. That's always weird to me. But use things that that like seem personable. I I've had enough of the sincerely. I don't know why, but it's always driven me nuts. Uh, but that moves us on, okay, into calendar literacy and meeting hygiene. That's your next commitment. All right. Your calendar is a contract. If you're late to a Zoom call, you're telling everyone in that meeting that your time is more valuable than theirs. It's your calendar. You can see it. It doesn't really run away. It's it's there, it's available. Just check it so you're not late to things. And how do you work on these things? You need to RSVP within four hours. If you don't RSVP, I assume you're not coming and I will replace you in that meeting. And get used to setting things in your calendar for personal things. Get used to checking your calendar, set reminders. Tell yourself to check your calendar or remind yourself, set an alarm. To check your calendar at like certain times during the day. I used to set mine to check my calendar every day at 8.30. This is right after I clocked in, and every day at 4:30. So it was towards the end of my day, so I knew to check my calendar for the next day. Like if the meeting ends at 2 and your next one starts at 2, you're gonna be late. So set your default meeting length to 25 or 50 minutes to allow for a humanity break. Like if I'm gonna set a meeting where we're gonna talk about marketing, I don't necessarily set those meetings from two to three. I'll set it for 215 to 245. And let's be honest, the first 15 minutes of meetings are usually awful because people are just, how are you? And I I do enjoy that in meetings sometimes, but I would prefer the buffer time and I always get right to it in meetings. And everyone needs like a bathroom water and mental reset before you jump straight into another one. Also, most email and scheduling settings have a buffer time, so just look into those settings. Because if you schedule also a meeting without an agenda, I will fudge you. I am deleting that meeting. That's just me though. And that's more of like a mid-level kind of senior level thing. But as you kind of move up, especially if someone asks you to call a meeting, when you call that meeting, put in a quick agenda. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to even have by like five minutes, like the first 15 minutes or whatever. Just set some sort of agenda. Like this is what we're discussing today. These are the key players, this is the point of this meeting. It can also prevent rambling from some people because you kind of block the timeout already. There's also a lot of people out there that get really nervous when it comes to meetings because they don't know what's going to be discussed. So realistically, an agenda helps everyone. And we're gonna move on to the next commandment, okay? Feedback resilience. I need you to write this one down and stick it everywhere. Because the reality is in school, feedback was a grade. In the office, feedback is a course correction. Most of the time, I'm not giving feedback to just be like, way to go, you're awesome. Let me grade you on this. And then you don't have to go back and fix it. You have to go back and fix it. Because the psychology is you have to separate your identity from your output. So if I say this report is messy, I'm not saying you're a hot mess, girl, go home. I'm just saying this isn't what I want. You need to fix it. So in school, when you got a C and you thought, well, still passed, moving on. At work, you have to fix it. When you receive feedback, your only response should be thank you for the insight. To ensure I hit the mark next time, can you clarify the changes that need to be made? And we do care a little bit about the speed of that pivot. The faster you can receive a roast and turn it into a result, the faster I'm gonna give you a raise, and I'm not even kidding about that. Next up for the commandments, the bluff method. That is the bottom line up front. Nobody has time to read your five-paragraph essay on why you're late on a deadline. First of all, I'm not reading that entire thing. I got things to do, and I don't care. Past like the first two lines. So the first sentence of your email should be the ask or the update. The rest is just providing context. There is nothing I love more than people who that get straight to the point. Okay. So here's an example of a bluff. The Q3 report will be 24 hours late due to a data lag from the vendor. Details below. It's quick, it's fast, and if I don't really care about the details, I don't have to read them. It doesn't tell me anything that I don't already need to know. And also not to mention, sometimes we spread those emails out to give people quick updates about whatever information is in those emails. And different people want different types of information. So while the boss's boss's boss just sees that it's going to be late due to a data lag, the manager above you may want those details. So it's still important to include the details. Just make the actual information quick, fast, and in a hurry at the beginning. And the next commandment: meeting contribution. And I'm talking about active participation. If you attend a meeting and don't say a word, you're a ghost. I might actually just forget that you were even there. And I don't pay ghosts. I mean, not usually well. And they also don't get promoted because I don't even know you're there. Here's actually a quick story. I had a manager tell me their kind of structure was set up, right? So that way they had like one-on-ones, but only if they were requested by the employee because the manager was more like laid back, right? She didn't want to be a micromanager. And so she had a great team. Things got done. They went out well until she got a request for a one-on-one and realized that she had not talked to that employee. That employee had not participated camera on anything in like six months. And she realized that raises were coming up. And so that kind of thing, like things were going pretty well, but she also realized that she was looking for like a very involved like team lead. And that person's not going to get picked because they don't participate. She almost forgot she worked there. So you need to come with at least one question or one insight. And yes, turn your cameras on. Even if you're just an intern, find a moment to say, to build on what Sarah just said, I noticed this at an insight. It signals to everyone that your brain is on. You're participating. And moving on to the next commitment. Okay. Communication mastery. Because the reality is not everybody needs a meeting or a quick call. And there are way too many meetings that people are having or phone calls that people are having. And it could be solved really quickly. So it could be solved in a Slack thread that's a professional communication program. And if it can be solved there, keep it there. If you just need to send somebody a quick message to get things done, that's what you need to do. And also learn how to use screen recording. There's a company called Loom that does it, and there's other places. If you need to show me a bug or a process, I don't need to sit on Zoom with you. Take a short two-minute video. And then trust me on this one, you will be everyone's favorite employee, especially people like IT. A lot of times they don't need to sit with you while you take 45 minutes to explain something. That was a 20-second screen grab. Moving on to the next commandment, okay? The ownership mindset. Results over tasks. I, and this might hurt some feelings, but I'm gonna say it anyway. I don't really care that you worked hard. I care that the project got done. Because, first of all, everybody's definition of worked hard is different, right? So, like what I think is working hard might not be what you think is working hard. What you think is working hard could be considerably harder than somebody else. So stop saying I sent the email and start saying, I'm following up to ensure the vendor responds by Tuesday. So you're explaining results over tasks. And if somebody's like, hey, how's this project going? Be like, I don't know. Or I checked in. Give results of what's coming. Own the outcome of your projects. So if you hit a wall, you don't just stop. Find a way over, around, or through it before you come to me. And when you do send me notifications on it and things like that, you're owning the entire process. It's not like, oh, well, I sent an email to the vendor. What's happening? Because also, if I have no idea what's going on or have 19 other projects, I have no idea what email you're talking about. And I have no idea what vendor that you're talking about. So just make sure you're clear that you're owning your own processes. And this leads us to the last commitment, okay? The boundaries commitment. And this one's important. Hear me and hear me good. We are a team, not a family, unless you plan on writing me into your will. In that case, send me a message. Uh, the second you start oversharing your personal drama, absolutely not. Absolutely not. First of all, I don't want it. I don't want it. I have so many employees, I don't want it. Because I get stuff, I don't know. I don't want it. But I will say too, it can create unconscious bias and discrimination from managers because a lot of times people will share, share, share their personal information. And then let's say two employees are late, right? And the first employee is like, well, I'm late because my daughter was super sick. And you know, it kind of pulls at the heartstrings of that employee, and they go, Well, okay, well, never mind, we won't write it up, get to work. Well, the second employee comes in, they're late, but maybe they're not the kind of person that wants to share their personal information. Now their story could be their parent has cancer or their dog died, or something equally as sad. Well, then that creates an issue because that person didn't feel like sharing. Now they're getting different treatment. So to avoid that, we want to treat everybody the same. So don't overshare. 80% of your interaction should be about the work itself, what you're actually doing. 20% can be about like normal things, but those normal things are not super private. They can be about hobbies, weather, the big game, something like that. And find some neutral territory with those people. We don't need to hear about your rashes and your breakups and your affairs. I hear way too much about those. And here's how to kind of work on that scale before we go anywhere else. If someone starts gossiping, I want you to use the neutral pivot. We talked about that in another podcast episode. But and you can just say things like, Oh, I hadn't noticed that. I've been buried in this report. If you lean everything kind of back to work and out of the drama, people learn where the drama doesn't live. And they will keep their personal information away from you. So the adult glow-up isn't just about what you can do on a computer, right? It's about how you function as a unit in a pressure system. So you need to master those commandments, and you'll be the person that that company can't afford to lose. And I know, I know I've been rambling on for about 37 minutes now, but this is the final lap, everyone, okay? If you're still with me, you've already outlasted probably 90% of your competition who turned this off when I told them to stop calling their moms to ask questions. So, congratulations. Welcome to the final boss of the professional world. That's right, segment five corporate EQ and the Batman myth. You can be a genius. You can have a portfolio that makes Elon Musk weep. But if you walk into my office with the emotional maturity of a high school sophomore, I will manage you right out of this company so fast your head will spin. You won't even know what just happened. So let's start with the hard truth. Okay, most people don't like HR because they don't understand HR. They don't actually know what we do. And that could be a whole other podcast episode now that I mention it. It might be. Because y'all think we're the fun police or the office mom or the principal's office. You think our job is to listen to your feelings and make sure that everybody's playing nice in the sandbox. And I want you to listen to me carefully. HR is risk management. We are business strategy, we are legal compliance. So what you think we provide is a shoulder to cry on and a timeout chair for your annoying coworker. But what we actually provide is organizational stability, litigation defense, and a workforce optimization strategy. So when you come to me because Mark used a sarcastic tone in an email and you didn't like it, you're not bringing me a business problem. You're bringing me a playground problem. And when I don't fire Mark on the spot, you say, oh my gosh, HR is useless. No, no, I'm not useless. I'm just busy making sure the company's 401k match is funded and the CEO doesn't actually violate a EO law. We are here to protect the enterprise, not your feelings. So that brings us a little bit more into the Batman complex. That's what I'm gonna start calling it. You see a villain at work. Maybe it's a lazy manager or a coworker who took credit for your idea. You come to HR with your air quotes, evidence, and you expect a public execution. You want to see them marched out of the building with their belongings in a cardboard box while everyone claps, like 80 movies montage style. But here's the HR reality check. Okay, it's not gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen. And even if I do discipline Mark, even if I do put him on a performance enhancement plan, right? Like whatever he did was so bad, he gets a plan. And even if I fire him, I'm never going to tell you. And if you do have an HR department that is telling you what they're doing to other people, they are the problem. Okay? Confidentiality isn't a suggestion, it's a legal requirement and the hallmark of a professional integrity. I told y'all I can't talk today. I think I need more coffee. But if I told you that Mark was being disciplined, I'm creating him a massive liability for the company because that's Mark's information, not your information. It has to be separate. So when you see Mark still sitting in his desk the day after you reported him and you think HR didn't do anything, sometimes you're gonna be wrong. We might be building a three-month paper trail to ensure his termination is unsueable. But because you didn't get your public stoning moment, you decide HR is the enemy. That's not a bad HR problem. That's a lack of corporate IQ problem on your part and everybody else who blames HR because we didn't do anything. So let me tell you a little story. Okay. I once had an entry-level employee, let's call her justice-seeking Jessica. Jessica decided that her supervisor wasn't following the standard operating procedure for filing expense reports, right? So instead of just doing her job, Jessica spent her weekend auditing her supervisor's old files. And no, I'm not kidding. She made the time. She came to my office with a 20-page binder of evidence. I still remember it in my head. It was purple, stickers on it. And a spark because she thought she just caught Al Capone, apparently. She expected a promotion and her boss's head on a platter, like a shiny one. But do you know what I saw? I saw an employee who was spending 15 hours a week of company time doing work she wasn't assigned. She was violating privacy protocols by digging through files that weren't hers. And she was creating a toxic paranoid culture in her department. So, how did that story end? We didn't fire her supervisor. We fired Jessica because the supervisor making a minor filing error is a training issue, which we did also cover. But an entry-level employee acting as an unauthorized secret police weapon is a cultural killer. The manager wasn't doing anything necessarily to Jessica specifically. Jessica just thought she would Batman save the day like Bruce Wayne. So we don't actually want Bruce Wayne. No, we don't. In fact, HR, no one at the company is Bruce Wayne. Okay, let's no, no Bruce Wayne. But what we do want, okay, is emotional intelligence. And when we ask for that, we're not saying that you have to be nice because you don't. If you've seen anything or heard anything I've ever done, I'm definitely not the nicest person, but I am blunt and to the point, and I get things done, and I do have emotional intelligence. So let me break it down for you. First up, okay, you need to use a pause. When you get a frustrating email, you could reply all in the heat of the moment and get yourself fired. I've seen that happen in timer two. Or you could wait 20 minutes, breathe, and send a neutral solution-oriented response. That pause is emotional intelligence. You're not automatically responding, you're taking your time and thinking. Okay. And then I need you to do a little ego detachment. When I give you feedback, you don't have to say, oh, I'm sorry, I'm such a failure. Oh my gosh, or that lady hates me. HR is the worst. Emotional intelligence is saying, I see the gap in this draft. I'll adjust the data. I'll have it back to you by four. Results over ego is emotional intelligence. And then there's always the professional filter. Knowing what not to say is more important than knowing what to say. If you sit through a meeting with a difficult client without rolling your eyes or sighing or making faces, my face has subtitles. It's a work in progress. And it is a skill I have worked on since I entered the workforce. You have emotional intelligence. If you can keep it together while people are obviously doing things that drive you crazy, you got this. And lastly, you kind of have to learn how to read the room. And that can be hard for a lot of people. But if the VP is stressed because the quarterly numbers are down, that is not the time to ask about the holiday party. Okay. Timing is emotional intelligence. Know when and where to bring up certain things. And if you want the full adult glow up, you have to stop treating HR like the police and start treating us like strategic resources. Because that's what they are. So if you do have a problem and you come into HR, you're not gonna say something like, Well, Mark is mean. Well, everybody's definition of mean is different. A lot of people think I'm mean, a lot of people think I'm not mean. It just depends on their experience. So instead of saying Mark is mean and he's hurting my feelings, which is subjective, and I don't know what that actually means because everybody has a different definition. You can say something like, Hey, I'm experiencing a communication bottleneck that is delaying this project. I've attempted to resolve this directly, but the workflow is being stalled. How does the company suggest we navigate interdepartmental friction to meet the deadline? First of all, that is how adults talk. And second of all, it's gonna send up red flags because now you're not saying, well, Mark is mean. You're telling me he is creating boundaries to results and HR and leadership and management, and everybody, none of us want that. So if you are explaining to me in like the like best, most professional way possible, Mark is in the way. We are going to fix that. That's how you show me you understand the business partner reality. You're helping me manage risk. And when you help me, I help you. And okay, that's it, y'all, for today. We're at the finish line. You survived what looks like 45 minutes of HR tough love. But I'm not letting you go without a final data-heavy reality check. Congratulations, you've entered the tip of the week. And if you're still putting proficient in Microsoft Word on your resume, you haven't been listening. So we're gonna talk about the market shift, the death of the job title. Here's the data point that is gonna change how you look at the 2026 job market. According to the 2026 LinkedIn Talent Velocity Report, that was a mouthful. 90% of organizations are moving away from hiring based on job title. That's where you come in and on your resume is a job title and we're hiring for a certain job title. Instead, we're hiring based on skill inventories. So like the job titles don't necessarily have to match anymore. And what does that mean for you? It means the marketing associate title you've been chasing is now kind of a ghost. So it's kind of a good thing, but kind of a bad thing. In 2026, companies aren't looking for a marketing associate, they're looking for a human AI hybrid, content strategist with data fluency. So you can kind of see why we're steering away from typical job titles. Because with AI and the internet and everything kind of moving and shaking, traditional job titles just don't work the same anymore. So it's kind of like a mesh of different things. So traditional job titles kind of get confusing or they don't mean the right thing. So here's the tip: the certification trap and mock work mandate. And don't you worry, I'm gonna explain what I just said because I understand that some of you probably don't know what I just said. It basically means I see a lot of you treating LinkedIn learning and Coursera and places like that, like you're collecting Pokemon cards. Okay. You've got your Excel Expert badge, you've got the Python for beginners badge, you've got your digital marking badge, and you're pinning them to your profile like badges of honor. And I'm gonna be blunt for just a second. A certification without a project is like a colorful receipt. It's pretty, it sure looks good. But the the big problem with that is y'all get into the interview and then I ask you about that certification. And because you spent that whole time you're supposed to be watching the video playing on your phone and you don't actually know what it is, you look like a deer in headlights. That certification becomes a negative asset. It tells me you're a passive learner, someone who wants the credit without the work. So here's your accident items, okay? The one-for-one rule for every single certification you add for your resume is you have a professional obligation to build one piece of mock work. Remember in the title, I said mock work. If you took an Excel course, I don't want to see the certificate of completion. I want to see a complex, multi-tab, color-coded budget you built for a fictional startup company. I want to see that you've actually broken down the software and fixed it. Because a lot of people say that they're proficient in Excel, and I don't think they've opened a spreadsheet ever. And if you took project management courses, show me a chart. Make up an event or a project, but show me that you know how to do life cycle management. And if you took a data analytics course, show me a dashboard. Show me that you can do these things. And I know you're thinking, but why does that matter? Well, when you hands-on a skill, right? Like use the skill, you almost develop like muscle memory. In the real world, you don't get a next video button, right? So you don't get, you get like a deadline. So you're not just like next, next, next. You actually have to use these things practically. If you've never actually applied the skill, you're probably gonna fold under pressure. And I see that a lot. People with a lot of certifications get thrown into the fire after training and after everything. And it turns out they don't actually know how to use that program. But building mock work moves you from I think I know how to do that to I have documented proof I can do it. So it turns your skill inventory from a list of wishes into a list of proven capabilities. And that's what we want to see. So here's the final of the final, because I already said this was ending twice, but don't worry, we're getting there. If you want to be unfirable, learn data visualization. The World Economic Forum identifies analytical thinking as the number one core skill for 2026. If you can take a mess of numbers, the kind that make most people's eyes glaze over, and that's me. I'm not great with numbers, but I'm learning. And if you can turn those numbers into a visual story that saves this company 50 grand, I will fight for your raise myself. So the bottom line is the job market isn't necessarily as hard as a lot of people want to make it sound. It's just precise. It's looking for adults who have a specific set of tools and the emotional maturity to use them without calling their parents. Master being a professional human on your own time. So that way when you're on our clock, I can focus on your career and so can you. And all right, that's it for real. Y'all get out of here. Go be a professional. And for the love of everything, get back to work. Y'all get it together.