One of the most annoying work-related conversations I’ve had in the last two years centered on diverse hiring.
An acquaintance – let’s call her Amy – was telling me how her firm was about to promote some colleague of hers for a job. This co-worker was not the best person for the job. In fact, Amy indicated that said colleague was the least-qualified person for the role. Surely, it was not right, she asked in a hush-hush, conspiratorial voice, that this other person – a person of colour – was being hired because of their race?
It was clear that I was supposed to respond with some level of shock and indignation.
I did not. I told her that diverse hiring done well means recruiting the person who belongs to a minority group when faced with two equally strong candidates. I also told her that the firm she worked at – a firm I know very well – was so woefully unrepresentative of the world I see when I step outside my apartment that the company’s management probably felt like they had to take aggressive and quick action to diversify their employee ranks.
The thing that really annoyed me about this conversation was her tacit suggestion that everyone at her firm landed their roles because they were the best person for the job.
But we don’t live in a meritocracy. The idea that hard work and skill makes one naturally rise to the top, like ice cubes in a drink, is something that most of us come to see for what it is – a pretty illusion – as we muddle through the early years of our careers and see peers of the same talents experience wildly different fortunes.
It’s why, as young graduates, we are told over and over again to go out there, network and build those connections at the start of our careers. Success in creative industries – however you choose to define that – is often not about skills or aptitude, which tend to be a given. It’s about who you know.
In an equal world, an ad would be put out for every freelance assignment. But we know how it actually works: a lot of jobs and assignments – again, especially in creative industries – are never advertised and quietly filled through personal networks.
Similarly, gigs can just fall into our laps. We can land our most prestigious or well-paying clients not because we “earned” them but because we happened to know the nephew of the creative director.
It’s equally unhelpful to create smokescreens around what pays our bills. It annoys me when people seem actively invested in keeping up the appearance that they are able to live off a line of creative work that I know pays peanuts. Just be honest.
That doesn’t mean shouting from the rooftops that you’re struggling or disclosing your finances down to the last comma. Of course not. But when people ask me about my finances I explain that the well-paid work I do “funds” some of my other work.
I take every chance I get to explain the financial mechanics of being a creative freelancer to salaried people and freelancers working in other industries. Building more awareness of the low rates that are accepted as normal in so many creative professions seems like the first step to advocating for better rates.
To get back to that annoying conversation. Pearl-clutching Amy herself interned at that company after an older acquaintance of hers – employed by that same company – recommended she get in touch with them.
I have zero doubt that she is qualified for and excels at the full-time job that internship has transformed into.
But it’s deeply disingenuous for her to pretend that she got there because of sheer, raw talent, while others got handouts. Amy, like most of us, landed her gig the way most of us accomplish things – because we worked for it, yes, but also because we happened to know someone and were at the right place at the right time.
Linda
What I’m reading, watching, listening to this week:
This interview with comedian and art critic Christina Catherine Martinez on the Call Your Girlfriend podcast. Aside from a discussion about the difficulty of finding your voice as a creative, it also contained some frank thoughts on everything discussed above.
I was interviewed by Lizzy Dening from the highly recommended Out of Office newsletter about how to work with other people when you’re used to working on your own. Most of our conversation focused on how Selma and I make this newsletter work, so well worth a read if you are curious to get a look behind the scenes of The Friendly Freelancer.