Brain Scrapes Sans Offer

Disclaimer: I am aware that the title of this blog sounds like a modern art gallery installation by a German artist.

Brain scraping 🧠 is when a candidate is interviewed when either there is no job or the job had already been filled but the company just wants the candidate’s ideas and for free.

Being a marketer is very tricky.

Interviewing as a marketer can be even trickier.

Companies will sometimes inappropriately request that marketing job interview candidates complete homework for them. Recruiters: do not ask this, and marketers: do not do it.

How do we encapsulate and make tangible, readily understandable, and our bevy of knowledge? How do we convince a hiring manager that the skills we’ve gain ed are legitimate and applicable, that we actually know what we know and that we are the one the company needs to hire?

When a company has its choice of marketing candidates for a role, those stuck not having been a VP yet face a specific kind of problem during the interview process: brain scraping

First, what is a brain scrape?

A meeting that is basically disguised as an interview but its meant to act as a free consulting session for the company.

Example: if you’ve ever been asked the insane question of how would you market this product? during a <1hr interview (esp. w/ a startup) then you know what I’m talking about.

No, I’m not pitching your product/service to you for you. There are too many unseen and opaque factors to me at play and thusly I’m bound to get this wrong and fail. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Recruiters: please don’t ask how would you pitch this service/product?

So, what generally happens afterward?

Supposedly interested parties will review the entirety of one’s portfolio site, possibly yet again,, lending the impression that they are interested in hiring us? Meanwhile, the same parties are making note of what tools etc a candidate has used (along with reading their mission statement) in order to figure out how to position themselves along with mold their protégé/recent hires. AKA not you.

For this reason, brain scrapping can be used by startups with limited funding or by SMB in smaller, less tech savvy towns. The brain scrape tactic is vulture agnostic like that.

While I don’t have a cure for the brain scrape tactic used by companies to pray upon marketers who’re reaching for that next rung in their career, what I can do is validate their experiences with this: You’re not crazy, and I’m sorry this happened to you too.

T-Mobile. E-Pins. Rackets. Opportunities?


“Sadly, I’m so business savvy.” — Kanye

The oatmeal is simmering so I’ve got a few moments…


TL;DR: I use T-Mobile Recently, during an in store visit, I got suckered by my own carrier service of choice into spending money that I didn’t have to? (~$200) The experience left me so ticked off that I reviewed some things and realized they may have several employee fueled rackets going? (See below.)

Sadly, they’re getting us to pay for the wall.

Takeaway: a mobile carrier service (likely newly minted over pre-existing) that offers an almost luxury level of seemingly unprecedented privacy (doesn’t internally readily furbish customers’ IMEI numbers anywhere, uses pseudonyms in-store), sophistication of so by way of knowledgeable staff and elevated branding, suiting in-store service.

Think on it: quiet concierge service on leather loungers with cognac served as you wait for your phone to charge in a WiFi clubhouse or to be repaired (something the Right to Repair laws will help open up) available in select global locations — say, Hong Kong airport — offered to carrier service users who pay for the access via their service plan (helpful for non-miles club members who want lounge access while waiting for a flight) and/or a promo partnership using airline points. Think on it.🤳🏽💰 ✈️

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T-MOBILE 

I was asked for my pin. 

(Their verification link suddenly no longer worked.)

I’m being asked for my pin, on Twitter, via a Support DM by an employee, which, if memory serves, is never supposed to happen this way. The phone number still picks up. Someone is trying to get a free month of service. 


A still operation number which picked up both of my calls, first to VM then a second time with 2+ minutes of silence. This, despite the fact that in days prior I’d said yes 2-3 times to confirm I want it shut off.


Refunds

T-Mobile will try and say but we pay that money to the state of CA. This is not true. A $7.50 surcharge is paid to CA. T-Mobile keeps the rest. (Seriously? How on earth do you think the company makes money?)

This lie is also a racket. 

I imagine it’s easier to go through your bank and ask them to get it back for you for products and services not delivered?

Despite being talked to as if I’d be refunded in store, in store I am then told store credit only. I am shouted at as I leave. 0/10 ⭐️ That one guy can suck it.


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E-pin

An E-Pin is a charge that can be issued for pin code access to the account by t-mobile. What makes this different from a pin code entered into say, your phone is that customers can basically be charged for a privacy bib (if you will) so that T-MOBILE EMPLOYEES cannot access your account without customers issuing their pin code. You, the customer, are essentially paying for T-Mobile employees to not be able to locate, access, nor phaff with your account info. Unreal.

I simply asked to change the name on the account and was instead told to do this (because the could charge me for it). Where in another store that was done, no problem. This is a total racket. 


Oh look, some sign of intelligent life via internal audits.

Coin-age

Update from the future (2024) Here’s me, kvetching about how iOS emojis needed a coin. Now there is one. Apple has had one for a long time at the time of this update. The end.

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Update 6/29/21: While I know that iOS 14 has a coin, a quarter with an eagle on it is US-centric and there’s always room for variety, like an 8-bit game-style coin along or the ever-popular unmarked non-denomination stack of gold coins.

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Mario Bros. is a great place to start design-wise, and most mobile games can offer design insights here. Think, a stack of gold coins with one atop adorably askew?

Blossoming Streets. Pirate Hideouts. + An Bandoned Baby Depot ☁️

I took a walk down an okay looking alley near the ballpark. Offices had once occupied it and older places were under construction.

Seeing that the office buildings now sat empty I cupped my hands around my face and peered in through the window. Awards covered in dust in a cleared out and totally abandoned former office space. There was a skylight that let in sun light that illuminated the office furniture to remind window gawkers like myself that the space had been abandoned not trashed. A minded emptied warehouse. What was left were swivel chairs, those chalky white plaster filler wall panels that every office seems to be made out of, and abandoned awards fashioned from glass and metal. Very prestigious awards? The business was in a baby daycare depot. Totally serious.

I don’t know what awards are given to baby depot SMB’s promising to not accidentally harm your kid but whichever awards such an industry hands out, buddy this place had ‘em. They were supposed to look like flames 🔥 made of glass, or silly-billy contraptions comprised of metal springs adorned with bobbles that look like the planet Saturn. And it’s like…the nicest thing about the place was the skylight?

you see it too 🐲

you see it too 🐲

But I’m glad some people get trophies, they can bust them down for pieces of raw ingredients to be released like herbs into a hearty stew, like nutmeg. 🌰

Social Friday

When you think it’ll be interesting to post from a phone holder’s POV — and you’re right because you have the impeccable taste of a French cinematographer crossed with the magic of a child.

Tiny denizen...

I watched a frown form on the face of a crestfallen elementary school child; the free ice cream cone they'd been handed wasn't the flavor they'd personally requested.

What if someone had handed this unfortunate charity case an iPad that played videos of Syrian refugee children? Videos where fathers cradled the ashen lifeless bodies of their little ones, sobbing repeatedly for them to "Say goodbye!”?

Child, oh child...

Who will share their perspective and grant you the greater context of this careless, chilly place?

Take the free organic ice cream cone, sweet hooman. Say 'thank you' and then smash the cone with your fist to protest it not being vegan.🇺🇸🕊

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Disclaimer from the future ‘21: this stays. No apologies.