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Brands Companies Media

Netflix, what’s happening? (long post)

When Netflix offered itself to BlockBuster in September of 2000 for just $50 million, laughter was the answer from former CEO John Antioco further declining another offer to take BB’s titles online through Netflix. Antioco’s tenure of BB would be short after that moment as the company pitched into a nosedive for obvious reasons bleeding liquidity and popularity, one of them being the pursuit of old business models avoiding any foresight of tomorrow’s changes, but the most important was ignoring how technology had changed society at the turn of the century with internet and its many applications.

On the other hand, Netflix had embarked on a successful journey after that September of twenty two years ago, first with in-mail DVD shipping and then with streaming their content over a computer, until today where any electronic device linked to the web can play what the company has to offer. Success allowed Netflix to produce its own format rather than just publish movies or tv series from other sources, they did so by marketing their IP trying to surf the latest socio-political trends of the last five years, and this allowed their brand to remain relevant across the expanding popularity of social platforms reaching billions of people worldwide. The perfect communication machine.

Growing pains

As the company expanded its roster investing many millions of their own into new productions, prices slowly went up from their original monthly fee of $8 to the $15.49 of its premium streaming quality -almost doubling- but it’s understandable as times do change having inflation playing its part and new content costs quite a bit to make. This left Netflix vulnerable in the last few years with production targeting specific themes of culture, sexuality, ethnicity, politics, making it a risky bet because social issues have been galvanizing left and right the population with a crescendo in recent times. Also, their decision to sever ties with actor Kevin Spacey for his allegations and therefore abruptly ending the hit House Of Cards, have played a major role in the company’s health.

This vulnerability turned the company from being a successful business model to a marketing machine willing to produce fast and loose content trying to please everyone in the audience over the latest trends. While it seemed to have worked in the beginning, now it’s not anymore and Netflix has been pulling the plugs on several projects that didn’t meet their expectations including series amid production, ratings have been dropping and the viewers are not willing to pay for content that caters to a specific niche of society, leaving the largest share of customers questioning recent price changes and subscription plans

About subscription plans, Netflix is introducing a basic one for $6.99/month with ads running inside. Ads? Yes, ads playing while you watch what you just paid and subscribed. Wasn’t the plan to pay for content having ads removed in the first place? Yes, it WAS, now no more. This is setting back Netflix by putting it in par with other solutions hooked to your living room TV set, now there is little difference of choice from your cable provider and a streaming service.

Why all of this? I’m assuming that Netflix is running low on options to fill back its treasure room that has been running low over the last years because of poor decision-making over their productions. Movies and TV series cost a lot, so much they have been bleeding Netflix for sometime without making back what they thought they would; who to blame? We can only blame the pervasive pursuit of marketing strategies and poor numbers that shift like a wind socket in all directions without any prior notice. Marketing departments play their game far from the field, they gather data according to trends with a superficial approach to the user’s needs until it’s too late and “Whoopsie Daisy!” the cookie crumbled.

Do your research

When creating or improving a product/service, the first thing to start with is research to acquire new data discovering the necessary. In User Experience you cannot afford to skip your research process otherwise you don’t have anything to work with, much like bricks when building a house, and you don’t want to deliver something useless that just costed a hefty budget. Netflix should have researched better data over what the users needed without focusing just on trends, and should have listened to paying customers on what they really wanted to consume; instead the company seemed to have audited outside their user base and based their marketing research in an echo chamber. Imagine running a restaurant near a university or college campus, sourcing your recipes to the tune of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green peas; albeit tasty options they don’t reflect your consumers’ wishes and habits. Youngsters don’t want those food options because they’ve been eating them for years at their parents and grandparents house every Sunday meal of their lives. Teenagers and young adults know pretty well they can eat anything without worrying about putting on weight or thinking about health-related issues, so they go ahead and chomp down burgers, fried food, and guzzle down sugars like no tomorrow, so let them be, let them eat like that in their youth because they can only do that once in their lifetime. But Netflix doubled down and insisted on serving youngsters tofu and cold soups telling them they are healthy and that’s what the cool kids eat.

Issues

There are other important issues reaching the core of Netflix business structure that through time did not improve the company’s position, these five points are an influence to their brand name:

1. Netflix thrived when there were no competitors

At the beginning of this post I wrote about the early steps of Netflix and how it was the only company on the market, they did the right thing defying business giants like BlockBuster questioning their very own existence and eventually crushing them; this left a huge void to fill and so they did fill it alone without any metric to test their efforts. However, their rapid success overshadowed some important priorities such as which direction to take, but most importantly the did not establish a focus on a small/specific product line to consolidate and create the business identity, but rather constantly throw things at the wall hoping for something to stick.

2. Netflix thrived thanks to others’ IP

The floodgates of fame and wealth opened thanks to productions crafted by other companies, think about The Office, 30 Rock, The Parenthood, these just from NBC/Universal -going as back as 2011- along with vintage TV series from our youth. It was a major hit for Netflix especially because portable devices like smartphones and tablets were new technologies capable of streaming contents from the web, this helped a lot in their growth process.

3. Others watched and learnt

Disney amid others like Hulu, NBC/Universal, Amazon, silently watched from afar and started taking notes on the future of entertainment away from the traditional TV cable distribution. Star Wars was coming back with three major movies continuing the saga, including season series and minor movies that would connect in between all the lore; so Disney bought all George Lucas Star Wars assets and removed their IP from others platforms and went on their own with their Disney+ streaming service. They’re plan wasn’t a fluke.

4. Others want their IP back

As we mentioned the competition catching up by making their own club house, brands like NBC/Universal want their IP back to be streamed exclusively on their platform. The Office is one of them along with 30 Rock, two very successful series that have been collecting accolades for years and years; now that they’ve departed Netflix the company tried to fill their voids with their own productions without the expected returns.

5. Stranger Things won’t last forever

This show is amazing and nostalgia is always a safe bet for brands, but how long will it last? Titles like Stranger Things have huge success until they don’t have it anymore, because producers push to saturation trying replicating through the seasons what made titles triumphant in the first place; however, the audience can easily catch that drift and there’s the high risk of emulating the many mistake of Game Of Thrones over their lasts three seasons. I assume Netflix has already something in the works to replace Stranger Things in the near future when its magic will eventually fade out, and this big next production should be founded on deep entertainment beliefs to be a worthy title for the company recuperating their wealth back.

Conclusions

I canceled my Netflix subscription in 2018 for lack of quality content and also because having Prime with Amazon was a better deal. I did enjoy streaming movies and TV series I hadn’t watched in a long time, but I grew tired of parsing through Netflix’s catalog where titles of average and low production were the majority, I assumed they belong to some forgotten VHS store placed in a strip mall in the suburbs, something like an old BlockBuster. I thought it was just me believing Netflix would allow you to watch any movie you wanted, working as a library where you will eventually find something to enjoy, unfortunately it wasn’t the case and there were families, friends, colleagues, where they all believed that too when they subscribed for their first time to the platform. Netflix doesn’t work like a library where you pull out of memory lane a title from your childhood; it’s also understandable for technical and practical reasons why this doesn’t happen. My criticism towards Netflix is them caving in too many trends that seem to be deep but are not while trying to cater and please everyone in the audience; the company should roll back at what made them popular  but it’s not possible to set back the clock as competitors have grown through time -so much- Netflix should diversify its business offer by providing something others can’t get their hands on for a while, they should entertain the idea of streaming different live events like e-sports, concerts, creating live shows, because if paying a monthly subscription to watch ads is now the thing for Netflix, they might as well become a TV network and change their format once and for all.

Some reading about Netflix:

https://about.netflix.com/en/news/announcing-basic-with-ads-us

https://thenextweb.com/news/netflix-subscriber-losses-dont-mean-streaming-is-dying

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/20/netflix-showing-limits-woke-capital-dave-chappelle-special-antiracist-baby/

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Foresight

Neuromarketing, Metaverse, and the UX military applications.

I haven’t heard in a while the term “Neuromarketing” especially since we’ve been under the threat of Covid-19 over the last three years. When combining a medical term with an economical one, brands began investing in this new realm of discovery to better understand the engagement with the user and how to strengthen it. At the same time over the span of five years another term came to prominence spiking up the editorial tech headlines around the world: disruption. This term became the focus of great topics and research driving Silicon Valley onto a journey of constant reinventing.




Worldwide Google Trend search for “Neuromarketing”

In the very same time frame we’ve seen how the trend shifts for “Neuromarketing” having been on a declining rollercoaster in a six-month cycle over the years. This marketing application takes into consideration neuroscience and psychology to analyze the user reactions and the behavior in order to improve product positioning and sales. Users mount eye-tracking devices on helmets bearing sensors so it’s possible to track where the eyes are looking and where the head moves; at the same time heartbeat and brain activities are scanned to understand how the body is reacting. Crossing all this data we learn what product items are transmitting to the user, the reaction to specific colours, shapes, shelf positioning, how easy is to spot these goods, and eventually how to improve their sale. The ultimate mind and body hacking for brands to perfection store design and product placements. Neuromarketing almost stopped becoming relevant since the pandemic lockdowns forbid the user from experiencing traditional store shopping. Online vendors from Walmart, Amazon, Netflix, Deliveroo, Uber, answered the call assisting society in making out for the lockdown restrictions.

THE METAVERSE

The Metaverse is also responsible for the slow disappearing of Neuromarketing as more VR and AR tools don’t require the user to reach a physical store, moreover, the Metaverse will likely be the disappearing of Neuromarketing or at least the removal of interests from brands by removing their interested from investing into it. While people still believe the formula Metaverse=Facebook=bad, this term already existed before Mark Zuckerberg decided to do something about the post FB era; in fact, VR and AR had already found applications within the industry from vehicle production to real estate showcase. The Metaverse is not about avatars and character customization, those are just the first step before entering into a behavioral playground for users and brands to build a whole new digital dimension of business models involving the gamification process.

MILITARY UX

War is bad, war sucks, but unfortunately, it’s here to stay. The market for weapons is growing each time a country is invaded, therefore producers are going after the latest digital miracles that can facilitate the use of missile launchers, tank interfaces, radar UI, to reach their goal, and hopefully it’s against the invader’s forces. UX will be looking after the simplification process of weapon usage with everything having a digital display: an easy use is an easy sale and an easy victory. There’s a realm of radars, control rooms, anti-aircraft, screens being used by resistance forces in Ukrain fighting against the invading Russian forces; so the case for the military forces of the west and their weapon maker is for equipment ready to be used by non-expert ground personnel having only weeks or days of training time. In the near future: a young soldier sealed inside a bunker insulated from the rest of the world while wearing VR equipment, he/she is within the digital environment of a true battlefield happening over the heads, but there aren’t people inside tanks, vehicles, aircraft. Just like a game if you’re defeated you immediately jump inside another land or air unit and continue the fight. No coins required.

IN THE END…

Why have I written about three different topics? They aren’t, they are and they have been connected for a while. Research on human brain activities have been done for decades to understand the depth of our mind, to this, the application towards a profitable result in term of economy or military was just about to be reached. Combining the study of the brain with its reaction and behavior, plunging it into a virtual reality-verse where UX and UI are the assisting technology to craft the next experience, capable to serve a militaristic purpose is the next frontier for the next 10 to 15 years of major governments.

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Senza categoria

The payment standards

Do you remember when you had to go to the bank before the weekend to get enough cash to make it until the next week? Do you remember when they stopped accepting cheques at your local grocery store? Do you remember when ATMs grounded underneath a shady stair of a club were the only method of getting money to pay for your evening?

I do remember those days and thankfully they are gone. The “Cash Only” sign has been placed across countless venues both downtown and uptown when banknotes were essential customers’ financial trading. Then the age of digital trading came through the internet and the gig was up and done.

In the last ten years paying the bills has drastically changed, we don’t carry staches of $100 bill in our pocket to make it through the day, and we don’t need to stand in line at our local teller to get some cash for our shopping needs.

Along came the age of online payments in different forms to free us from the necessity of having our wallet robbed while going back home from work during the evening. We now have the chance of making our finance dues only through the use of our smartphones.

Facebook Messenger has added a feature to split the bill when paying for the tab. This means social platforms have absorbed the need to improve their users’ experience by providing the necessary tools from their devices.

Smartphones technology will continue to host more and more alternative ways to promote digital payment systems, along with bill and purchasing offers in order to maximize the user’s experience.

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Brands Foresight

Metaverse

Facebook has changed its company name into Meta and established a network of platforms and services to leap forward into more innovation. FB, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Quest, are part of this digital realm and are the backbone of Mark Zuckerberg’s new project called the Metaverse.

What is the Metaverse? This has been a common question posted and asked throughout the web from articles to videos, many don’t know and many others don’t want to guess because are biased towards FB and its founder. The Metaverse is a digital realm made of virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain, cryptocurrency, together hosting a new entertainment/commercial/financial environment.

The Metaverse will play a crucial role attracting different brand areas to invest in new forms of business. Four major areas were found to be suitable for Meta to open up to new opportunities:
–entertainment
– social
– banking
– commerce

Let’s enter the Metaverse by taking ‘entertainment’ as an example. Here we have a wide corridor for brands to invest by creating fresh products/services or simply transferring in the Metaverse what’s already available. Videogames, movies, shows, gambling, will play an important role in shaping this virtual world by connecting with e-commerce platforms and various payment systems, this will create a whole new digital economy reforming the markets.

Here we can see an in-depth view of how videogames will change the markets once they enter the Metaverse. The user will play a significant role competing in the market of digital content making, this will prompt new methods of commerce and money-transferring and for many users it will open to professional opportunities to explore.

A more structured view of the Metaverse can be seen here below with the user at the center of everything. The closer elements and brands move towards the user, the more personalized the experience will be and at the same time its digital factor will increase.

What we can expect from the Metaverse is a multi-layered digital reality that will span across different forms of communication, content, devices, and Meta will use the already existing owned platforms to build and connect both vertically and horizontally. However, we should be aware that much like the internet in its early commercial days, the Metaverse will begin resembling the Web 1.0 in its initial stages and progressively have its users build by taking the shape they want.

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Brands Companies Foresight

The Covid-19 and the infinite retail sadness

On the question “Should my company be on Tik Tok?” the answer is pretty clear “Who knows?”, this is because there are several business practices that are layered according to market needs. A fancy word to state that not all businesses are the same.

Over the last ten or so years the retail sector across Canada and the US has suffered plenty of setbacks due to two major changes that even large brands cannot control: people and technology. As shopping centers have seen drops in foot traffic, new generations with new wishes came along moving away from the suburbs into the city. Online shopping has happened and it fortified its position during the pandemic.

The death of Block Buster, Sears, and other big brands, was one important alarm that retail points were about to enter a long period of suffering. Some like Cadillac Fairview mall in Toronto wants its shoppers to come back and they are using the social platform Tik Tok as marketing tool to lure back people, and especially their young ones since it’s a platform with a specific demographic, therefore not the consumer segment with disposable income ready to spend.

The third element that has recently added to the uncontrollable element is the disruptive nature of Covid-19 and everything related. Most likely we won’t go back to pre-pandemic normality until 2025, the reason is the general and ambiguous nature of politics and its self-preservation nature of keeping parties’ popularity as priority number 1, while people’s safety is at number 2 with catastrophic consequences on vaccination delays and digital traveling passes.

The infinite sadness of retail continues because people have changed the way they shop, they do it by browsing comments and product ratings to see what the community has to say about your next hair drier or pair of sneakers. But also, Consumers have been hit with a slap at their face by the 2008 financial crisis significantly weakening its ability to spend without worries; now we count pennies in the jar.

So, let’s briefly recap the situation:

  • shopping malls are vanishing because new generations cannot afford to live like their parents in suburbia with a McMansion and three cars; they moved downtown spending more of their money and quality goods.
  • the real estate market for important cities like New York and Toronto is on a nose dive, after having gentrified old ‘mom and pop’ shops on a crusade to tear down and rebuild entire city blocks we found out large brand have left.

Vacant premises are left without commercial tenants due to the expensive leases building owners are asking. E-commerce platforms like Amazon have grown like never before during the last two years because of lock downs and social restrictions; everything is digital but large retail brands still struggle to acknowledge it and adapt.

To the question “Should my company be on Tik Tok?” the only answer is another question “Are you digital?” to which any decent and smart CEO can answer him/her self. Time is running out, but hope is eternal; I read somewhere.

Categories
Companies

The post pandemic strategy

Vaccines are working, cities are full again, the dust is settling, or is it? Over the last six months the press and the media have emphasized furthermore the problem of empty cities due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the need for shops, restaurants, and venues to reopen.

Despite the great hopes of going back to our 2019 life and routine, we have to be honest with ourselves and admit the post-pandemic reality won’t be the same as yesterday. Too much has changed and this whole terrible period is now a trauma on our body and soul.

But how are we going to fend the next six months and eventually the whole 2022? Do we have a strategy beyond what governments and health experts have already told us? Apparently not. We are scrambling amidst the lack of exit plan from the pandemic, masks will continue to be part of our lives, hand sanitizers will be everywhere like smartphones, but what about people and their workplace?

I’ve seen a struggle of public relations coming from politicians and CEOs on the topic of working from home, or working away from within the walls of their companies both in the public and private sector. Smart working saved countless lives and brands were praised for the effort taken by their workers staying away from their offices, finding the living room environment more productive than their cubicle.

Let’s not just make smart working a publicity stunt by rushing workers to immediately go back to their desks or else. It already happened at the Washingtonian Media where employees stopped publishing for a day in protest of their CEO’s message on the consequence of not coming back to the office.

The worst strategy leaders can pull off is to publicly threaten their employees. Threatening workers to remove their healthcare, 401k, and other fundamental benefits that are essential to any individual is as cheap as it sounds. A shot below the belt that will cripple the fragile situation many are still facing due to the effects of Covid-19.

So what can companies do to facilitate the transition to “normality”? CEOs should first admit to themselves the world has drastically changed. We cannot turn back the clock just like it was two years ago. The post-summer period will be chaotic as flu season will cycle back threatening the global healthcare, offices will risk to become again hot spots for any disease to spread.

Employees who are threatened to go back to work from the office will look at their leaders under a whole new different light, CEOs will lose that precious trust from their workers that allows performance and confidence to strengthen their success, and trust has become a rare commodity to treasure. Many will leave and seek new and more hospitable companies to work for, places that can offer even better conditions by hiring talented professionals from high-ranking companies.

Brands should talk to their employees by offering options to keep work schedules flexible. Let workers give back by extending that trust that was placed on them when working remotely and keep it that way, allow them to choose by not forcing on them. This will create even stronger bonds between the management and employees, many will choose on their own will to work again from the office.

Workers have faced traumatic experiences getting ill or having a loved one becoming affected by the pandemic. Stressing this scenario will backfire immediately upon companies ignoring this element. People want normality back and working with less stress as possible will help them through the transition, many will take longer to adapt and that’s fine, we can’t rush certain things especially since their lives have been touched forever and companies are not today what they were yesterday. –

Categories
Foresight

A problem from the source

Millions and millions of plastic containers that each day are purchased and discarded for single-use are polluting the planet. We are overwhelmed by petrol-based byproducts within the food industry, we grew accustom to them and many generations don’t know any better or can’t imagine any alternatives.

Over the last twenty years countries across the globe managed to change their attitude on plastic waste and other forms, by enacting recycling programs from their municipalities to reduce garbage disposal as a whole singular entity. We are reaching optimal levels of recycled materials from our household usage, but at the same time we are constantly purchasing plastic to wrap our food and meals, turning our homes into busy disposal urban centers that have little power to stop plastic pollution.

The problem is at the source and it’s there it must be tackled first. Food and beverage companies directly affect the production of plastic containers with their high demands. Each time you cross a vending machine there’s plastic, each time you go groceries the majority of the isles shelves are topped with plastic bottles or plastic containers.

Imagine tenfolding the daily quantities of these bottles for each city and nation.

Each time we buy plastic we dispose it in the correct bin where that object will get recycled but at a cost: more energy required and more pollutant in the environment. It’s a dog chasing its own tail without an end to the problem. What alternatives do we have? But most importantly, why do we hope change will come from buyers and not from producers?

It’s no secret customers wants their product in better and less polluting containers, we all know this is what too many businesses have ignored in order to keep making profits by using cheaper materials. Yet we all desire glass to make a come back as container for our food items like milk bottles and soft drinks, their unit consumption are a significant influence in the production of plastic and derivatives.

Mushrooms can be turned into biodegradable packaging and containers.

Alternatives are out there to assist the environment. We have several options to choose and implement for packaging instead of plastics:
-cloth made of natural fibers;
-platinum silicon;
-stainless steel;
-beeswax-clothed cloth;
-recycled paper;
-wood;
-bamboo;
-mushrooms;
-pots.

The majority of these materials have been used for ages to wrap food and other items, until the ready availability of cheap plastics of the mid 20th century became popular beyond believe amidst a surge in oil production in the west. These products are not meant to fully remove plastic from our existence, but they can gradually be used starting from food production to reduce waste and especially plastic pollution.

“One word… plastic!” The mantra of the 20th century embodied in one single frame.

Behavior is key to a successful environmental change, we need to sacrifice the comfort of single-use plastics in order to use containers made of sustainable materials until it becomes natural for us to do so. However, major shifts must happen from the source rethinking their business and environmental strategy for a cleaner future.

How to achieve this? Government bodies ought to directly interact with businesses consortium and large-scale producers/distributors to address the change. Large corporations producing soft drinks and bottled water should be involved into opting out of plastic through quota, this in exchange of tax cuts or government financing to shift from plastic use onto more sustainable manufacturing options while training or retraining their work force and minimize negative social impacts.

Categories
Media

Facebook into publishing

After a long period of slow morphing from social platform to market place, Facebook has set a new course towards publishing by developing tools for independent writers that will allow them creating contents and have them ready on the platform.

The project will start in the US with the possibility for small businesses to expand their reach through new channels and media formats. This will highlight furthermore the importance of content-creation as the main tool to move information and reach users.

It’s an important move by FB especially since Twitter leaped towards newsletters by acquiring Revue, a service similar to Substack, going beyond the boundaries of their platform and reaching new audience segments.

FB will likely face new challenges in terms of online debating and censorship now the company fully steered into publishing. Users subscribing to this type of service can expect topic limitations on what they can publish if FB policies are included, so we can anticipate the online debate to expand furthermore into a micro galaxy of its own.

Publishing has moved from mainstream realms onto smaller and more successful authors/creators over the last ten years, this thanks to internet and the wide availability of electronic devices that allow for a better variety of content browsing.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea to improve how businesses can connect to their audience and customer base. Fresh new approaches are essential to create new curiosity by developing ways to understand social behavior especially in these pandemic times.

Categories
Foresight

Tricks of the trader: being “overqualified” and the tale of two interviews

During a hot July in Milan in 2009 I was scheduled for two job interviews in one afternoon three hours apart. I still remember that day because of the heat exhaustion I got along with the stress of performance for trying to land a job, those types of meetings can really dissect you on the spot giving you no room for poor choice of words when asked a question. 

You are nervous and afraid of making a bad impression because in the back of your head you know the person interviewing is x-raying you, paying a lot of attention to your speech and the way you sit and move. They want to know how you behave under certain quality of questions, there’s a script they are following to obtain specific answers and reactions from you for their right profile to hire.

The first interview took place downtown Milan in a very fancy and historical building, one of those places that are a few hundred meters away from the Duomo cathedral, near pricey lawyers studios that only assist large corporations and bill by the thousand per hour. I was around 25 years old at the time and without the confidence I have today at 39.

I sat in front of this lady who was in charge of interviewing candidates for a sales position and foreign client relations. One of the major requirements beside the standard ones for the position was good written and spoken English and I knew I had it, I also fit the profile. So I sat in this large office with a tall ceiling and the interview began with the usual questions: my education background, my previous job experiences, and so on.

As the interview developed I managed to catch a glimpse of the time gone by through the clock on the wall without looking at my wrist watch for obvious reasons. We were twenty minutes in and yet no questions to test my English proficiency, the set of questions of the interview was more of an interrogation than anything else, there was no goal to what I was supposed to work for if hired and the lady wasn’t interested in understanding my skills but rather to let me know the terms of the contract weren’t flexible, the pay for a full-time job was €800 gross per month. Gross.

Such nefarious low wage has been proposed in Italy fifteen-something years ago when government implemented new rules and new contracts under the false pretense of “contract flexibility”. A whole new ‘rebate strategy’ had been used to save money by hiring overqualified candidates willing to accept full time positions for a part time salary. No holidays and no benefits of any kind. Recruiters would prey on the candidates’ desperate conditions of being unemployed for long times or being their first job, so they would sign these type of below minimum wage contracts out of desperation.

Somehow I knew there was a trap along this meeting like there always are. With that salary I wasn’t able to cover any rent and so I had to delay moving out from my parents’ home. That sum didn’t reflect any of my skills, time spent learning them, commuting costs, and so on. I politely made the case for a higher salary highlighting my experience abroad, my high level English, to no avail, the recruiter was impassable and I knew that moment they were hiring on rebate to save money rather than investing on their employees to grow.

I thought they would invest in me, or at least partially, to build the skills they required in order to have the right candidate by training. I was wrong, they were looking for some ‘pick and choose’ candidate as if they were choosing a product off the shelves, as if they were selecting their snack in front of the cold glass of a vending machine.

The second interview was more disappointing with the recruiter in front of me asking generic questions and eventually closing the meeting in the most unprofessional way: he admitted he didn’t have any opening available yet they were setting up interviews yet I was there investing my time in the hope for a position. I went back home tired, almost getting a heat stroke and while sitting on the train thinking about the day, I felt disappointed because of the poor quality of job recruiting done by people who had no idea how to invest in candidates to improve their companies. It wasn’t the first time I sat through that kind of interviews and my fear was that this had become the new norm, the new standard, the way things are after the 2008 financial crisis struck and that’s how it was going to be.

I had the hunch things weren’t going to get better from there on with companies posting constant losses throughout Europe, and an unstable political landscape that gave little hope for the job market to get back on its tracks in the best of shape. However a bad day has always something to teach you, it was clear I had to shake the disappointment off quickly and focus back on the next interviews. I didn’t mind not getting the job, but it would have been worse getting it with a bad company who is there to exploit you asking you way more than they’re paying you without leading or inspiring their workforce in the wight direction.