"Which Kind of Music Do You Like?"

The job interviewer asked me this

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

We had only just met, small talked a bit, and he had said that it was time to move on with the talk. Music? I love music! But I never knew that it could be relevant for a job.

When I applied, I thought that it was just a job — one of many possibles. The job market is full of jobs to apply for, and most of them are announced with just about the same information about the job itself and the company behind it. Just a long list of the same clichés.

Most of what is written in a job announcement is wrong. Or outright a lie. Sometimes this is done on purpose, but most often there are other reasons — especially copying old job announcements when making new ones and then just quickly adjusting it a bit. There is also a lack of knowledge: Those who write the announcement often do not know much about the job or the elements of it, leading to nonsense requirements and promises that will not be kept.

So, I applied, knowing for sure that this was just another one of these. Even though the announcement sounded nice. Something with “We would like to meet you, and hopefully you will like us and want to take part in our wonderful world”. How often do you see that in a job announcement?

A recruiter’s world-view

For every job announcement, there seem to be hundreds or even thousands of applicants. This has always puzzled me: with an unemployment rate of a few percent, and a share of the workforce willing to move that is somewhat higher, there should of course be many people who can apply — but there should also be many vacancies. If unemployment is close to zero, there should be close to 1 applicant for each 1 job. If they would be evenly distributed, of course.

But the companies get so many applications that they cannot reply to them. It’s almost a natural law. From time to time, recruiters claim on social media that this is impossible: “There can be 200 applications, and giving back a response to each one of these could take several minutes for each, that would be… a day or two!”

Well? What else should a recruiter do? How much time have they spent before even putting the announcement up? How much along the way, processing the reception, sorting, and evaluation of the applications? Why cut away that exact part that is the most important for the applicant?

I’ll tell you why: they do not care about the applicants. They care about some internal needs in the company. Applicants are like goods in the supermarket — you do not tell at the check-out which goods you don’t want to buy: you just grab those that you do want to buy, show them at the check-out, and that’s it. All the rest is not interesting for you — until next time when it is expected that the supermarket has an abundance of all kinds of goods to pick, as you wish. Or ignore, as you wish.

Applicants are considered to be goods, SKUs, items. Like you fill up the company with computers, tables, chairs, and coffee machines, you also fill in some applicants.

Back to my interview

Music. Okay, asking about my taste in music was perhaps just some kind of trick? Maybe the interviewer wanted to see if I was capable of focusing on the business needs, despite being shaken a bit by unusual circumstances.

So I quickly said that I do like music but when working, I am focusing on that. I thought that it sounded very business-wise, but he looked disappointed.

“I’m sorry to hear that — if this is really how you feel; because I am not so sure about that” — he said with a mysterious smile, and continued, “This is not an interview, and I am not going to evaluate your skills or anything like that. I just wanted to meet you, to see what kind of person you are, learn what is moving you, what you like — and tell you all the same things about me and the other people here. So that all of us; you, me, our colleagues, can get a feeling of what we can be for each other”.

I looked at him, surprised, but relieved. Of course, people can say a lot of that kind without meaning it, but I felt that it was different this time. He said “what we can be for each other” — not “do”.

I smiled, genuinely, and said that I liked that, and, in fact, I liked music very much, so let’s talk a bit about music.

Flow

As it turned out, both he and the others on the team were all fond of music — and all kinds, just like me. They had not painted themselves into a corner of belonging, they were not listening to a particular kind of music just to be able to feel connected with a particular group or to be talked about as a certain kind of person. They just loved to listen to music, to experience it — discover new music, talk about it, listen to others talking about it…

I was in heaven! For most of my life, I had this relation to music and was turned off by 99% of the people I ever met, because they didn’t feel the music, they didn’t love it — they just accepted it as a social phenomenon, and perhaps they were using it as an occasional wall of noise between them and the world. But they didn’t want to talk about it, and even less share their thoughts — or mine.

My new colleagues also liked arts and nature — many of them were taking part in one or more activities that included being creative and enjoying the world.

Together

During the conversation, I learned that it was really all about “being”, not “doing”. These people were there for each other. Together, they are creating a platform of psychological safety and — friendship. Within this environment of trust and helpfulness, both creative and practical tasks were performed by people who enjoyed it. They did what they wanted, but they naturally wanted to do what was needed by their colleagues. They were often discussing new ideas with open minds and an understanding that no great idea had ever been developed or understood fully in an elevator. It takes time, collaboration, trust, and — open minds.

It worked well. Because people there were so happy to work with each other, it led to their customers feeling the harmony and joy and wanting to be part of it, wanting to work with exactly this company.

So the business model could be said to work well if only there had been a business model — because, what my former interviewer, now friend, could tell me: “It is not important for us if we earn a bit more or less. We do not have KPIs or performance measurements of any kind. The main thing is that we all have the possibility to enjoy being here. We all have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks. We do not produce equally much all the time. But because we support each other, we can maintain a good and stable company that continues working, continues to be the place where we want to be — and each of us then contributes with whatever we contribute with, at any time”.

When we finished our conversation, after talking about all the things in the world that two creative minds, two people who were still able to find passion and emotions deep inside, despite being business people of some kind, could think of talking about…

…his last words stuck in my mind as the most unusual thing I have ever heard in a company, but also one of the most beautiful ways of putting it; this, which is really the main thing of working together:

• We are not slaves. We do not own each other.

• Each of us know and think a lot, is valuable without limits.

• All of us are leaders of our own thoughts and ideas.

• We are all learners — we learn something each day from our many fruitful talks.

• We need no leaders nor any kind of suppression or control.

• We are free people who are happy with what we are.

To sum it all up

We are not slaves. Each of us is valuable without limits. Happy.

We can talk about anything that moves us, inspires us, and drives us  — personally. And this is who we are, so this is what we give and learn from.

My kind of workplace. My kind of friends!