After conducting a recent interview, I found myself left with one word from the conversation that my fellow interviewer and I had with this potential candidate.
Stress.
While reflecting on the meeting, I found that we reiterated the stress associated with the potential position close to a dozen times. It felt as though we thought above anything else, we needed to communicate a warning that the job can be stressful and that we often work in a high-stress environment.
Now, we may have scared this person away, and maybe that is for the best if the candidate isn’t motivated by stress. But I don’t think the other interviewer (who worked in TV news for a decade – enough said) or I (who is a bit of a stress addict) even meant for the mentions of stress to be completely negative. To us, a healthy amount of stress means that you give a shit about what you’re doing here.
Working in a media-centric industry means that “work” will never stop and anyone who chooses the PR world knows that, or should know that, before diving in. Newscasts run on a 24-hour cycle, media outlets are constantly pushing out content via social media and everyone has access to news at their fingertips whenever and wherever they want it.
Our goal at No Limit Agency and 1851franchise.com is to tell stories about the people that make brands great; therefore, we have really great storytellers around this office. That also means that stories circulating around the office that might originally be relatively boring turn into more dramatic tales that more often than not, cause unnecessary stress.
After what I perceived as an overly stressful September ended, I declared October the “Month of Zen” and put a sign on my desk that reads “Good Vibes Only.”
Cheesy? Maybe a little. But it worked.
Somewhat in jest (but mostly seriously), anytime someone on our team would start to build up a situation as a stressor, manipulate an easily solvable problem into a disaster or say they were too busy, I reminded them of the “Month of Zen” and worked to diffuse it.
Who knows if this mantra will continue to be a successful for us, but if nothing else the team has had some moments of realization that stress isn’t always bad, that we actually work well under pressure and that we need to learn to maximize the benefits of stress, rather than position it as the enemy.
And if nothing else, the office has a fully stocked bar at our disposal any day of the week.
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After conducting a recent interview, I found myself left with one word from the conversation that my fellow interviewer and I had with this potential candidate.
Stress.
While reflecting on the meeting, I found that we reiterated the stress associated with the potential position close to a dozen times. It felt as though we thought above anything else, we needed to communicate a warning that the job can be stressful and that we often work in a high-stress environment.
Now, we may have scared this person away, and maybe that is for the best if the candidate isn’t motivated by stress. But I don’t think the other interviewer (who worked in TV news for a decade – enough said) or I (who is a bit of a stress addict) even meant for the mentions of stress to be completely negative. To us, a healthy amount of stress means that you give a shit about what you’re doing here.
Working in a media-centric industry means that “work” will never stop and anyone who chooses the PR world knows that, or should know that, before diving in. Newscasts run on a 24-hour cycle, media outlets are constantly pushing out content via social media and everyone has access to news at their fingertips whenever and wherever they want it.
Our goal at No Limit Agency and 1851franchise.com is to tell stories about the people that make brands great; therefore, we have really great storytellers around this office. That also means that stories circulating around the office that might originally be relatively boring turn into more dramatic tales that more often than not, cause unnecessary stress.
After what I perceived as an overly stressful September ended, I declared October the “Month of Zen” and put a sign on my desk that reads “Good Vibes Only.”
Cheesy? Maybe a little. But it worked.
Somewhat in jest (but mostly seriously), anytime someone on our team would start to build up a situation as a stressor, manipulate an easily solvable problem into a disaster or say they were too busy, I reminded them of the “Month of Zen” and worked to diffuse it.
Who knows if this mantra will continue to be a successful for us, but if nothing else the team has had some moments of realization that stress isn’t always bad, that we actually work well under pressure and that we need to learn to maximize the benefits of stress, rather than position it as the enemy.
And if nothing else, the office has a fully stocked bar at our disposal any day of the week.
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