Candidates love-bombed and ghosted, the return of bro culture, and volunteering as a wellbeing program

In this episode, we explore the turbulent landscape of modern workplaces, starting with Greenhouse's survey revealing that over half of job seekers experience ghosting or "love-bombing" during the hiring process—creating frustration and mistrust in organizations. What’s driving these behaviors, and how can HR professionals and hiring managers do better?

Next, we delve into the lawsuit against CloudKitchens and its controversial CEO, Travis Kalanick. Allegations of wrongful termination and a return to toxic “bro culture” raise questions about how far workplace culture has—or hasn’t—evolved since the Uber scandals.

Finally, we shift to a brighter topic: the power of volunteer programs. Studies show volunteering as the most impactful workplace wellness initiative. But is the real benefit the program itself or the sense of support employees feel when they’re encouraged to participate? We’ll unpack how organizations can build meaningful well-being into their cultures.

Tune in for insights on the good, the bad, and the transformative potential of today’s workplaces.

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Articles
Most job seekers say they’ve been ghosted or ‘love-bombed’ during interviews—it can make them ‘question their career and sanity’

From dinners with Travis Kalanick to fired after maternity leave: One of CloudKitchens’ earliest employees is suing

Volunteering programs are probably the most powerful well-being benefit in your toolkit

Chapters

• 1:37 Candidates love-bombed and ghosted
• 12:30 The return of bro culture
• 21:27 Volunteering as a wellbeing program

Transcript

Stacey Nordwall (00:00):
Welcome to Toot or Boot, where each week we talk about news related to HR and the world of work. We toot the news we like and boot the news we don't like. I'm your host, Stacy Nordwall, a serial joiner of early stage tech companies as their first in or only HR person. And joining us today, we have the one and only Kate Sergeant. Hey Kate. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. And in case anyone missed you last time, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Kate Sargent (00:29):
Hi. Yeah. So I come from a long history of working in retail, particularly purpose-driven retail, a lot of Bay Area retail and wound up in the recruiting space, head of talent acquisition for a couple of great B Corps. And then most recently was a Head of People. And right now I have my own consulting company called KJS Career Coaching and Consulting that I do, fractional chief people officer work and some other really fun things, random things and projects. And then I also do executive coaching for anybody looking for a new career performance or a leadership support. And I run a collective called the plus one collective that's all about purpose-driven, do more better business model consultants that are really committed to a give back model and doing pro bono and sliding scale work. So yeah, I'm pretty busy right now. I got a lot of really fun stuff going on.

Stacey Nordwall (01:26):
I'm so glad that you had the time to join, particularly because of this first article I've been really wanting to talk to you about it. This article was titled, 'Most Job Seekers Say That They've Been Ghosted or Love Bombed During Interviews.' It can make them question their career and sanity. So the recap here was that based on a survey conducted by Greenhouse, 53% of job seekers said they've been love bombed during the process, meaning given tons of praise and then offered a low salary and title or passed over for the role and 52% said they've been ghosted, some even making it to the final interview rounds and then not hearing anything back, which is clearly causing a lot of frustration. And I know this is something a lot of people have experienced, especially over the last year that the job market has been really, really frustrating. So I really wanted to know what you've been hearing, what you've been telling people, what you thought about this article.

Kate Sargent (02:24):
Yeah, I mean I would call it a toot for being correct, a boot for being miserable, awful and unfortunate. So I mean I think it's correct. And I would say I probably talked to, I don't even know, 60 people a month between my free coaching sessions and my paid coaching sessions. And I would say at least 70% of them have mentioned a situation like this happening to them. And I think love bombing and ghosting just such ridiculous words, but they're so visceral and understandable and how this process kind of plays out. And I think there's a couple of different things at play here. So some of it is recruiters wanting to be people pleasers and say nice things. There are great people on the market even if we don't have jobs for them, we're calling it what the "class of 2024 Unemployed" is such an incredible group of people. So I don't think they're wrong in those love bombs. These people are incredible whether they have a job or not for them. But the disconnect is so disheartening when somebody tells you you're amazing, which is always true and correct, and then you don't get the job or you don't hear back from anyone.

(03:38):
It's like your psyche is already hurt from trying to go through this process, being laid off, not having a job, going through the dehumanizing interview process that we all have to go through to even land a job these days. And then you just add onto that by giving people a false hope. And I think some of it's inexperienced recruiters that don't know how to just say no, it's not going to work out. I think it's an over-reliance on technology that isn't personal kind or generous in any way with the way that we're disposing of people frankly. And then I think it's also just people not being willing to give direct feedback for a number of reasons. And one is candidates reactions. And I get that as a recruiter that worked in spaces where candidates will argue with you if you tell them that they weren't right for something and people just don't want that. It's such an icky heavy market right now. Nobody wants that, but I think we have to do better. My take is people's emotional states are so fragile in this space where they're hardcore competing with so many other people that we have to be extra delicate with their feelings and we need training and we need people to really respect that.

Stacey Nordwall (04:54):
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, especially around the recruiter bit. One of the things that I thought as I was reading this is they talk about recruiters wanting to gas people up and get them excited about jobs. And I understand that. I think you touched on it. I kind of want to hear a little bit more about this as well. That is it that maybe some of this is inexperience on the recruiter front because I always think of it as that recruiters are really meant to help you do the best through the rounds, keep you, keep communicating with you, let you know what's going on, be very transparent, but also just help you do your best. And the article made me wonder, is there an element of the inexperience or is this AI kind of coming to play in? Where is the gap there?

Kate Sargent (05:46):
Yeah, I mean I think there's many gaps and I think this goes back to what we talked about in our last conversation too, of leaders, true leadership, true growth, and people actually being developed in their roles. I think there's this choice for cheaper talent, cheaper, cheaper talent, and you get less and less training as you get cheaper and more junior talent too. It's not their faults necessarily. It's not anyone's fault really, it's just the reality of it. So I think some of it's an experience. Yes, a hundred percent. I think some of it is we've gotten more removed from people too because remote does create that sometimes too. And we do more texting, we do less phone calls, we do more virtual interviews and less so I think there's a hesitancy for negative connection, avoiding conflict, avoiding those kinds of things that's going on in these processes too.

(06:42):
I always try to put myself in the recruiter's position, and if you have 700 people applying and you had to talk to 25 different people versus the market maybe two or three years ago where we had four or five people that were even interested in the role, and most of those had six other job offers where you didn't have to disposition as many people or reject as many people. And it's overwhelming. It's a psyche thing as a recruiter too. We are happy, joyful, we want to get you in the role that's our passion and the amount of rejection that they are having to dish out right now in a market where everybody is very fragile. I mean, I can see why people would want to avoid that conflict, that direct feedback, sending those emails out if they don't have to. So I feel like there's a disconnect there.

(07:25):
I think AI is another disconnect, but I also think just thinking through process doesn't seem to be happening either, right? Because do we need 72 interviews in six months to decide on a person? Because maybe that talent is out there and you have the ability to talk to 400 people, but should you, it's a waste of people's time. It hurts people's feelings. There's 72 more people you have to reject. So I think thinking through what the process looks like is really important. And then lastly, yeah, I think recruiters are meant to be your advocate in a process, whereas an HR manager has a lot more to balance in terms of they have to balance the needs of the company, the needs of the employee, et cetera. The recruiter understands the role, but it's kind of your hype man. If they're moving you forward in a process, they have put their stamp on you. They have opened the gates to say that I think you are the person that could be right for this job. So they are invested. There's an investment level from recruiters that they should be your advocate and helping you through the process. But I don't think that mentality is everywhere. And I particularly don't think it's in the tech world because I think we rely on systems, processes, and performance more than we really rely on that human connection and that human support.

Stacey Nordwall (08:47):
Yeah. Yeah. I think it is interesting as you're saying this, I'm also reflecting on the number of AI recruitment products that I've seen over the last year. And really to your point, it does feel like that distance is growing, that depersonalization is growing, and that exacerbates all of these things that we're talking about and creates a candidate experience that is terrible. And I think one of the things I've seen people bringing up again lately is it matters because if a candidate has a terrible experience interviewing with you that especially if you're a company that they might have been really excited about the product, are they excited about your product anymore? No. Are they telling

Kate Sargent (09:41):
Advocates? Yes.

Stacey Nordwall (09:43):
So there is a word of mouth around that as well that companies are not impervious to the impact of running processes in that way.

Kate Sargent (09:54):
I mean, the tides are going to change. Two years ago, the recruiters had no control. The HR people had no control. The hiring managers had no control. I'm not joking. We would literally have people who would come into these interview processes, particularly in software engineer type roles, and they'd be like, thank you for that offer, but I need 10 days to consider it, three other offers that I'm waiting for right now. And we'd be like, okay, no problem. Let me know. And now it's kind of like the roles are reversed and I feel like there's been some sort of shift in we're in power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely right. I feel like the power is in the other camp right now, but it's going to shift, right? And the companies who have treated people well are going to always have access to great talent. And the companies who have treated people poorly, there's going to be upstart companies that are going to offer their people that have settled to take a job with them during this time period where things are crappy that are going to peace out the second the market's better too.

(10:57):
So I kind of feel like not to be like, oh, circle of life lion king, but the circle of life is everything cycles back eventually. And if you keep an even keel and you do things the right way and you create the right type of process and the right type of mentality, you'll have people who care about your brand want to continue working there. And you continue to have the employer brand where people want to stay even when the market rights itself. So I do think you're going to lose, you're going to lose if you create that kind of thing and that kind of process because a lot of high level people out there on the market right now that are going to remember people have elephants memories about interview processes. I still remember SurveyMonkey, I'm going to call you all out here, who did not give me a bathroom break for seven interviews in a row.

(11:45):
This was like 10 years ago, and it was the worst experience of my entire life. And I got asked same question over and over, they were new at the time, it was fine, whatever. I've gotten over it. But every time I think of the worst experience I've ever had, I think of them. And when people ask me my worst experience, I tell them, I've probably told thousands, maybe more than thousands of people about this. So they always said in retail to you, a detractor is worth 15 people versus a promoter is only worth three or five. So think about that in your interview processes, people.

Stacey Nordwall (12:19):
Yeah. Well, speaking of employer brand and cycle of life, let's going to this next article. The title is, 'From Dinners with Travis Kalanick to Fired After Maternity Leave, One of Cloud Kitchen's Earliest Employees is Suing.' So this one is a little bit old at this point, but I wanted to really talk about this. So Isabella Vincenza was an early employee of CloudKitchens whose CEO is former Uber, CEO, Travis Kalanick. Isabella is suing alleging wrongful termination, sex discrimination, hostile work environment and more. This is not the first lawsuits for CloudKitchens, not the first lawsuits for dear Travis either. And so yeah, I wanted to talk about this because it did feel like here we are again, we're back to the boys club, the bro culture, the things that were happening at Uber back in the day seemed to be happening again. And it's just a big groan for me because I feel like this is happening in tech. It feels like it's happening more and more. But what did you think reading this?

Kate Sargent (13:43):
I just was grossed out by it kind of in general. And my first, this is a toot for calling it out, a boot for it being terrible again. But I feel like why don't we get so many chances for these people? I feel like I am all about restorative justice and doing better the next time, but I feel like the situation and I have people who work directly for him at Uber that I know, and it was awful from what I've heard, really, truly awful. And it's pretty well documented that that was not just people's opinions, that this was a legitimately bad corporate environment. And it feels like that's been somewhat recreated. And I am wondering what guardrails do we put in place for these leaders that have had these problems before that are going into these new situations, these new circumstances? This one felt a little ambiguous though, because when I read the article, I was like, I want to dig more into this though, because some of the points on their side, some of the points on her side, it felt like there's a big disconnect between what she said, what they said.

(14:55):
So certainly don't want to make huge judgements about what actually happened. But my question here is when this has happened before and you put somebody like this into a new environment, who's fixing it? Who's making sure that this person went through the right programs or therapy or whatever it is so that this doesn't happen again? Where are the guardrails around this person and this boys club mentality? I'm so effing over it, I'm so over it. I've worked in it, I've seen it, I've felt it. But why are we allowing it to keep going? Why are we continuing to put leaders who've already demonstrated this problem back into the same positions of power without anything changing?

Stacey Nordwall (15:41):
And that's really why I wanted to talk about it too and really surface it because I think exactly that we know this has happened before. The culture, as you said at Uber was well documented to be terrible, terrible. And then here we go, 2.0 doing the same thing. I think when we're seeing other, this is not the only example within Silicon Valley of this kind of thing happening of leaders, senior leaders like him getting second chances. And I think if we pull out to a much broader context when we're seeing what's happening within the us, these trends of VCs really pushing people to vote for the Trump administration, all of these kinds of things. And when I see all of that, and then I also think about my journey in HR where I felt like we were kind of coming out of that and we realized that there was this need for really strategic HR and to focus on employee experience and engagement and all of that. And it feels like I'm being dragged back into the hell hole of compliance and all of these things. It's like, damn man, I thought we were getting out of it. Yeah,

Kate Sargent (17:10):
Well, and I feel like there was a time period where there was so much, what it made me think of when I was reading it actually is, I don't even know, I'm probably going to be wrong about how long ago this was, but five or six years ago where it was the restaurant industry had all of these issues. It was like all the leaders in the restaurants were having all these issues with women and just this really inappropriate behavior. I'm trying to remember who it was in San Francisco, but there was a couple of groups and I was just like, okay, cool. And then we had Uber, and I mean women are not immune to this as well. There was the whole away scandal with the leader of Away that was really big and deep. And I think it's just about accountability though. Why do we keep giving people so many chances? There's so many brilliant leaders out there. Are these the only ones that we can seemingly find are the ones who've already had problems? I mean, there's women waiting in the C-suite right now that are phenomenal. I coach them that have never even had a chance to be a CEO or somebody in charge or a board member or whatever the thing may be. And yet Uber dude has two chances and he screwed both of them up.

(18:24):
It's like where are we going somewhere else for talent? And to your point, the boys club is strong, the networks are strong. They know each other, they've worked with each other. And I think did we stop holding them accountable? It did feel like we were in a good trajectory there. And then we elected Trump and we can talk about that another day. And we're like, okay, so we just forgive them for anything. So they do what they do and we just forgive men and put them into these giant positions of power over and over again, even though they've proven isn't situational and behavioral interviewing all about in the past being indicative of what you're going to do in the future. And it's frankly the only way to actually evaluate talent that has any sort of real science behind it. And yet in the leadership level, this seems to be mute. There is no conversation going on about what is the qualification for somebody who goes into these roles. And your situational history probably should be something we evaluate for how you're going to behave in your next role. But I don't know, I feel like it's like there's different rules up there.

Stacey Nordwall (19:36):
Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why I think as HR folks, it's like, okay, great, but what are we going to end up dealing with as if this is the trajectory that now we're headed back this way again. What are we going to be dealing with in terms of discrimination, harassment, and really being, instead of where we've been trying to push in this more strategic role where we are sitting in the C-suite and helping really create healthy organizations. Instead, we're going to be in the dumpster fire trying to fight it more than ever. And that's the thing that,

Kate Sargent (20:18):
Or the opposite side will be the allowers and the enablers

Stacey Nordwall (20:22):
And

Kate Sargent (20:22):
The apologists that we used to be, right. I can't do that. I won't go back to the enabling, apologizing and allowing

Stacey Nordwall (20:34):
No, absolutely not. Absolutely

Kate Sargent (20:35):
Right. I mean, because that's the direction that it feels like we're headed in if we continue to allow this kind of stuff to happen. And I think he does become ripe for people making claims after he's already something like this too. So I do recognize that innocent till proven guilty in all of those spaces. But again, where there's smoke, there's fire. Sometimes you did it before, it would be not shocking that you would do it again.

Stacey Nordwall (21:03):
Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's move to something. Let's end on a higher note.

Kate Sargent (21:09):
I'm like, yeah, I'm fired up now. Give me something positive to talk about. I'll throw the energy in there.

Stacey Nordwall (21:16):
There was an article, the title is, 'Volunteering Programs are Probably the Most Powerful Wellbeing Benefit in Your Toolkit. And the recap here is that of all the wellbeing and fitness programs, volunteering programs may be the ones that have the most impact. They cite a study published by the University of Oxford's Wellbeing Research Center this year that found that volunteering was the only wellness intervention that made a difference for workers. What did you think?

Kate Sargent (21:41):
I mean, okay, well, first of all, if anyone's ever followed me on LinkedIn or anywhere in my world, I talk all the time about the benefit of doing free work and volunteering and how it both creates meaning, helps you do something good, sharpens your skills, and also builds your business and your network and all of the things that you do. So creating meaning is tremendously important to me in what I do and the people that I surround myself with. And volunteering makes you feel good. So much of this world right now feels bad. Work is hard. There's too much of it. There's not enough people. I'm scared I'm going to be laid off tomorrow. Volunteering is something that you can only feel good about. It's a true good that you're doing. And I think it can remind you that people are in worse circumstances, it can remind you that you have value outside of your job, your life, whatever crap is going on. So to me, this makes perfect sense to me. I mean, gym, health, all of those kind of things, those are all great wellbeing things, whatever, but they're all individualized versus community. And I think that's the difference here is people are saying that article we were talking about before, the five things that people want, it's like meaning community communication, volunteering provides all of those things.

Stacey Nordwall (23:11):
Yeah, yeah. No, I think I was thinking exactly what you were thinking in terms of it is individual versus community. And so especially if an organization is able to build the program that they do around something that matches their vision, their mission, their values, you get people who actually want, they're already bought into that. So then give them an opportunity in a more concrete way in their own communities to enact that and to give their time to that. And also, I think as an organization, if you are showing that you value that and you're actually supporting people in doing it, because I think plenty of organizations will be like, okay, well you have a day every quarter to go volunteer. That still makes it individual in a way. It is not necessarily as based. And then also it's really like if you feel that your manager supports you in doing that. So it has to be a broader thing where the organization is really actually supporting people to be able to do that. That creates a whole different vibe, a whole different experience that is clearly going to be good for wellbeing, right?

Kate Sargent (24:29):
And it's alignment too. I think the gold standard of that is aligning it to whatever your company mission is too. This is why I've chosen purpose-driven companies. This is why I've created a consulting community that's about this. And it's all about aligning it to the thing that makes sense to you. To your point, you can have three volunteer days a year that you never get to take that just feel like they're looming over your head. And HR has a disparate kind of verbiage versus your boss who tells you you're too busy. HR is get out there and volunteer. And that just feels icky, right? That's not the kind of thing that's helpful. But for example, when I used to work at the North Face, we were great at this. We did volunteer days, we had bring your child to Work day, that was like everyone volunteered.

(25:16):
It was all hands on deck. It was like a giant carnival and we would have beach cleanups and we would go do the Alameda shoreline, which was our community. We lived in that space. We sat outside on that shoreline every day. We had this beautiful campus and our company was about getting people outdoors. So the connection, the alignment was there. It was always there. But I've worked in organizations where volunteering feels performative too, where it's like I go because I have to and because the rest of my team is there, but we're not really connected to the mission. Everyone's just bitching and complaining about it. But I think that's communication again too. How do you communicate your volunteer programs? How do you coordinate them? How do you celebrate them, recognize them? Because if people aren't getting recognition for things and people aren't connecting to the thing that you're doing and how it makes sense together, I mean, it's still great.

(26:12):
Volunteering is generally a good thing, unless you're a terrible human, but being connected and building it into your workplace, it feels so good in a world where there's so many things that feel bad, I think that's a, I'm a toot all to the heavens for this one. I'm like more volunteer work, more connection to the community, more giving back more things that make people feel connected. Not physically having to be in work to be connected, but doing things that connect you to the community and connect you to your peers. I mean all about that.

Stacey Nordwall (26:50):
All the toots,

Kate Sargent (26:52):
All the volunteer toots in the world for this one. And I think it's easy too. It's a really easy thing to do. I mean, it's not easy to coordinate, sorry, HR teams, it's not, it's hard to coordinate, just to be clear. It's a pain in the ass to coordinate. But if you do it, I think that it keeps people going. It's similar to me, like conferences, when people do conferences in retail, we used to do conferences in September to gear people up for the holiday season. I think strategic business driving through volunteerism too is like when people start to feel disconnected, giving them something to connect back to motivates them to work more too. And I think we don't ever put enough value on that.

Stacey Nordwall (27:37):
Yeah, that is a great point. Well, I know that we have reached the end of our time, so I want to make sure, keep me here for three more hours. I want to hang out with you forever. So fun. We have to do this again. Yes, I am so, so glad that you were able to join and take time to connect with me and to everyone who is listening, if they want to connect to you, how can they do that? And if there's any other projects you want to promote, I want to give you a chance to do that too.

Kate Sargent (28:09):
Well, thank you. Always appreciate the self-promotion, like I said. So for me, you can find me on LinkedIn giving a bunch of advice all the time. You can find me on KJS Consulting, which is my consulting company. If you're looking for fractional work, executive fractional HR work, executive coaching, or I offer these free 20 minute LinkedIn profile review sessions for anyone who signs up for one. They do book out pretty far, so sometimes you got to wait a little bit. But I'm always happy to help and give a quick overview and help somebody kind of pep their day if they're feeling like they're not doing things right. And then I have the plus one collective, which is our consultants with a give back model consultants that are giving back into the community that's actually officially launching, I think in January. And come support us, hire people from our consulting group for any of your purpose-driven or mission-driven work or join us if you're one of those consultants. And you're excited about that kind of thing. But just you can kind of find me anywhere on LinkedIn. I'm on all the time. Usually 11 o'clock at night is a good time to find me on there, or six o'clock in the morning when my children have just woken me up. Thank you for having me. This has been so amazing. I love that you do this and these topics were so much

Stacey Nordwall (29:28):
Fun. Alright, awesome. Thank you so much Kate, and thanks everyone for listening.