Jonathan Pollard – Pollard Media

Millennial Savages Me on Glassdoor for Constructive Feedback

Millennial savages me on Glassdoor for giving her some feedback on her writing.

This is an amazing Glass Door post savaging me as one of the the “rudest and [most] unprofessional hiring managers” a 23 year-old millennial has ever encountered (in her distinguished career):

So, real talk: No; this person didn’t actually get an interview. This person sent an application and bragged about her tremendous writing ability, but submitted writing samples that were riddled with problems. So I workshopped some of her writing. Literally, I spent some time editing it, redlining it, making comments on it, the whole nine. I’m not joking. Here:

Then I wrote this person back. And the first words out of my mouth were: “Thank you for your application. Congratulations on finishing school. I appreciate your enthusiasm and professionalism, but based on the writing samples you provided, I do not believe you are a polished enough writer to work in my organization.” I then gave her some general guidance on her writing; some over-arching problems I see; some basic things she needs to change. And I did – indeed – tell her, that my English and history professors at Cornell would have ripped her writing to shreds. And done exactly what I had done in the sample I edited.

I did not have to write this person back. I could have just ignored her and thrown her application in the trash. But I wrote her back to give her some specific guidance on how to be a better writer. I was trying to help her! And as a result, I apparently infringed on her safe space.

When I was in college, I had the tremendous fortune of studying with the Pulitzer Prize winning historian Michael Kammen. He was my history professor and eventually became a dear friend and advisor from then until the time of his passing. I submitted my first paper in his 400-level history seminar. He absolutely gutted it. He wrote notes all over it. I saw him after class to talk about it, largely because I felt like I really did a terrible job on the paper, wanted to thank him for the feedback and tell him that I would dedicate myself to improving my writing.

He smiled and told me it gets a D+ for everything technical — overall structure, sentence structure, typos, awkward phrases, use of the passive, etc. For goodness sake, look at this absurdly written sentence here on the 3rd page! But it gets an A+ for substance! And that averages out to a B paper. Since it was the first paper, and since Professor Kammen was tough but so magnanimous, he explained that he always gutted everyone’s first paper, and that nobody got better than a B. He let everyone do revisions and re-submit. He also explained that the first paper didn’t count for that much because, after all, it was the first paper and nobody really knew what they were doing (at least not in his eyes). I thanked him. I really appreciated the feedback. But times have changed.

Real talk: There are many wonderful, hard-working, well-adjusted millennials out there. The best lawyers on my team are all millennials. I love them and would trust them with anything. But don’t kid yourself: There has been a dramatic generational shift. I graduated from Cornell in 2004. Back then, college was still a sort of rough and tumble place. You know, people had different ideas and might say stuff that offended you. There weren’t trigger warnings and safe spaces. If you got a bad grade, then you got a bad grade. You couldn’t be all like, “Professor, I demand you change my grade because you didn’t take into account how I’m triggered and in personal turmoil over the riots in Baltimore even though I grew up rich in Fairfax, Virginia and have no real, personal connection to that situation but, like, it really is part of my entire being and I’m woke as F but really triggered too. So this C you gave me is really a microaggression. I deserve an A.”

The evidence is not simply anecdotal. This is not an isolated instance. There’s a trend here. This is an entire culture that some of you folks out there have created by being helicopter parents; hovering around your kids; never letting them fall off their bikes; insisting that they get trophies for everything even when they lose; arguing with their teachers to get them better grades; coddling them and holding their hand through absolutely everything and never letting them sink or swim on their own. This is the monster that you have created.

One final note: I’m not the hiring manager. I’m the owner.

– JP

You Need to do Working Interviews

The point: Working interviews. That’s where it’s at. Invest a little more time and money on the front end and you’ll get a whole lot more in the long run.

Business is a talent arms race. The premise is universal. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you do. Law firm in Miami. Talent arms race. Auto shop in Peoria, Illinois. Talent arms race. Vineyard in Napa Valley. Talent arms race. In every arena, the solution to almost every problem is talent. Almost invariably, talent trumps money. Find a hungry, intelligent, business-minded young attorney and give her $100,000 to launch her own shop. $100k in that person’s hands trumps $2 million in someone else’s hands. Why? Because, in the long run, talent almost always wins.

Think about your business. Think about the problems with your business. I’ll go first: There are lots of problems with my business. I need things to flow smoother. I need to automate numerous processes. I need a better intake process. I need someone to handle hiring. I need to capture more of my billable time (I lose probably $20,000 a month in time I don’t bill). I have multiple website projects that I need developed. I need someone to design a renovation of a 5,000 square foot building I’m buying. I constantly think about all the problems I need to fix. And you know what the answer is? Talent. In business, talent solves almost every problem. A brilliant executive assistant. A top-notch director of operations. Three or four more lawyers who have the raw materials to be world beaters. That’s talent in my world. And that goes a long way toward solving all of my problems.

On the hiring front, I cull through thousands of resumes and applications in the hopes of finding the talent. I have no shame in admitting that we’re a small shop. Five lawyers and a couple support people. So I handle the hiring. Why? Because I know what I’m looking for. So I spend several hours a week culling through resumes and screening applicants for multiple positions. In some instances, we will hire people outright based on someone’s word. If a close friend of mine who I hold in high regard says, “Jane is brilliant. I would hire her”— we do. These friends are top-notch law professors. General counsel at Fortune 50 companies. Business owners of substantial companies. To me, their word is bond. We have made a number of hires that way. But outside of the direct referral and golden seal of approval from a trusted source, it’s rough territory.

And you have to pull from both buckets. Because your individual network is only so big. There are literally millions of other potential candidates outside of your network. That’s where (literally) everything else comes into play: Job advertisements; recruiters; LinkedIn; Indeed; college career placement offices; everything. For any candidate who does not come directly from a trusted source, we do a working interview. It is one of our requirements. I’ll explain.

I have made some disastrous hires in my day. I take full responsibility. In sifting through hundreds or thousands of applicants, you have to use various proxies for intelligence and ability. I’ve always done that. But my problem: I’d be working 90 hours a week, in dire need of more manpower, and someone would come along who looked absolutely BRILLIANT on paper. I wouldn’t know this person. There wouldn’t be any mutual connection who I hold in tremendous esteem to warrant that this person was a world beater. But I would look at their resume and credentials and say, “They’ve just got to be a genius!” Then I would hire these people and pay them more than what they were making at their old companies, convinced that they would deliver 110%. And you know what? This repeatedly proved to be an unmitigated disaster.

I remember one instance in particular: A recent hire came into my office at the end of his first week. He looked like death. His hair was a mess. His eyes were bloodshot. He absolutely lost it: “Look at me for God’s sake! I’m sweating buckets! I haven’t slept in days! I feel like I’ve just been thrown off the deep end! I’ve been thrown to the sharks. I’m not ready for this sort of thing! I’m going to have a heart attack!” It’s really not for everyone. I mean, injunctions, emergency hearings, temporary restraining orders, people trying to seize assets and computer servers. This is ugly stuff. It’s stressful. And he wasn’t even the one who had to go into court and argue the ugly stuff (that’s me!).

Eventually, I settled upon working interviews. As in: The firm pays an applicant to spend a day or two working on a project in our office. We throw the person into the mix and see how they do. If they work a full-time job, I’ll make arrangements for them to do a working interview with me over a weekend! If they live in DC, we will fly them to Fort Lauderdale and put them up in a hotel for a couple nights! Some people think this is crazy. But the reality is this: Suppose you come across someone who might be an amazing candidate. They look great on paper. The big question: Can they actually deliver? The only way to find out is to plug them in and give them a shot. If they’re from out of town? So what. If you don’t have $1,000 to (1) pay them for a day or two (2) fly them to town and (3) put them up in a decent hotel, then maybe you are terrible at business and shouldn’t be hiring anyone.

A while back, we brought in this recent law school graduate for a working interview. On paper, he looked great. I said to my team, “This guy is brilliant! Just wait and see!”. In his working interview, he wrote a first draft of jury instructions. He knocked it out of the park. Fast forward: This guy is a huge part of our team and we wouldn’t be where we are without him.

But there’s more: Working interviews also allow us to give someone a shot who might not meet the standard hiring metrics, but who seems like they bring something really exceptional to the table. Everything is just a proxy for ability. Grades, credentials, resumes, recommendations. The only question: Can this person get it done? And if you hire on a working interview model, you can give someone a chance. Maybe their grades aren’t the best. Maybe their resume is a bit spotty. But if we have a good feeling about someone, we give them a shot. And within 2 or 3 days, we have the answer.

The point: Working interviews. That’s where it’s at. Invest a little more time and money on the front end and you’ll get a whole lot more in the long run.

What a Refugee Taught Me About Gratitude

Gratitude is the most profound and powerful emotion. I’ll tell you a story that changed my life.

Perhaps ten years ago, I was living in DC and going to law school at Georgetown. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I was enrolled in law school. But I was poor, worked most of the time and barely went to class. My second year, I got involved in the law school’s asylum clinic. I needed to track down a DC-based Cameroonian ex-pat who could testify in my client’s case. So in order to find this guy, I spent some time going to random African restaurants and talking to random people (including lots of refugees).

At one point, somebody referred me to an Eritrean ex-pat who apparently had a bunch of contacts, including contacts in the DC Cameroonian community. I secured a meeting with this gentleman at a Starbucks.

I walked into the Starbucks on Pennsylvania Avenue. I saw a tall, dark-skinned young man probably in his mid-20’s sitting at a table near the front. He had on a button up shirt and khakis. When I looked in his direction, his face lit up and he smiled at me. He said, “Mr. Jonathan?” He seemed happy to see me. And that struck me as interesting. After all, he wasn’t applying for asylum. He had won asylum a few years back.

This happened ten years ago, so I don’t remember everything. But I believe the man went by Samuel. I can’t remember if that was his adopted or given name. I explained to him about the case we were working on. How we were law students and volunteers. How we were trying to find this ex-pat Cameroonian rebel leader. And without any prodding, Samuel offered to help in any way he could. I didn’t want to pry or dig up the past. You never know what’s buried there. But I asked him how long he had been here. Three years he said. Then I asked him how he was doing, if things were going ok for him here.

What this man said next has stuck with me for ten years and will never leave me. He began, “Mr. Jonathan, my life here is better than I could have ever dreamed. Do you want to know how I came here?” I said, “Yes, if you feel comfortable telling me.” Samuel told me the story. He had been in Eritrea. One day, when he was fifteen years old, soldiers came to his house. As a boy, Samuel was always tall for his age. And although thin, he was strong. His mother and father pleaded with the soldiers. They said that Samuel was just a boy. But their pleas fell on deaf ears. The soldiers took him. He had been conscripted into the army to fight against Ethiopia.

He was taken away from his home village and forced to march many miles away to a training camp. There, Samuel and thousands of other boys were trained in combat and often beaten and starved. His training lasted several months. He does not recall exactly how long he was there. Eventually, he was sent to the war. Miraculously, Samuel survived nearly two years of combat against Ethiopia, including battles where the youngest boys were placed on the front lines. Although the war had ended, the army would not let him go.

He was forced to remain in Eritrea’s military. Sometimes, his job was to perform manual labor for the government. He went through many ordeals. At one point, in his quest for solace, he obtained a bible. But when caught reading it, was beaten and then jailed for weeks.

At some point, he found himself not far from his home village. It had been years since he had seen his family. Late one night, with little more than the clothing on his back, he escaped. He walked away into the pitch black darkness. He walked nearly twenty miles back to his home village. Upon arriving there in the early morning, he came to learn that his entire family was gone, some of them dead. His brothers and sisters, too, had been conscripted. One solider took a particular liking to his youngest sister, who was then no more than 12 or 13. Samuel’s father had begged them not to hurt the girl. Somehow, the situation escalated into a skirmish. One of the soldiers shot his father. He had bled to death. Some folks in the village had heard that at least one of his brothers had died in the war. His other siblings were in the military, but nobody had heard from them in more than a year. Nobody knew what had happened to his mother.

Samuel spent a day in his home village talking to people and hoping to learn something more about his family’s fate. But then, he received word that soldiers were headed toward the village. He would be forced back into the service, beaten, tortured and possibly killed. He fled.

I didn’t understand all of the details of his journey. Somehow, he got to Libya. Then he paid a smuggler to take him by boat from Libya to Italy. Miraculously, he survived this journey. Eventually he made it to Paris. And with the help of a refugee aid group, he few from Paris to DC. Upon landing at Reagan National, he went to immigration and begged them for asylum. They referred him to a lawyer. After less than a year, he had won his case.

Samuel, intelligent and hard-working, had dived into studying English and building a new life for himself in DC. He attended English classes five nights a week. He went to Meet-Up groups for people learning English. After two years of this, he was already conversing easily. He got a job at a restaurant. He got involved in the DC community of Eritrean ex-pats and the African ex-pat community more broadly. And one day, the most amazing thing happened. He was having lunch one day with some friends. A man approached him and said he looked familiar. As it turned out, the man was from his home village. The man had known Samuel’s family and remembered him from when he was a boy. The man says that Samuel’s cousin has also made it here, to DC.

Samuel was overjoyed. He worked through multiple connections in the local Eritrean community to find not only that his cousin had recently arrived, but that his cousin was not alone. An uncle had made it, too. After a few day, Samuel was reunited with both of them.

Samuel was one of the most genuinely happy people I ever met. He said that he had a new chance at life. He had a job. He planned to attend college and possibly medical school. And he was beyond grateful for the family he still had. He said, “I have family. I thought I had lost everyone. But now, I find my cousin. And now I have family here.” As Samuel saw it, for all that he had lost, all the tragedy and sorrow he had endured, he was still grateful for what he had. And in his mind, he had so much.

Samuel gave me some possible Cameroonian contacts. I thanked him profusely. And then I went home to the house near Logan Circle where I rented a room. I remember riding the Metro in a sort of daze. I couldn’t stop thinking about this young man’s ordeal. I sat in my room for probably an hour, until it got dark. I just sat there thinking about my life. I was running out of money. I’d be broke before the summer hit and my truck would probably get repossessed (it did). But my problems paled in comparison to real problems. Everything was relative. And in the vast scheme of things, I have lived a charmed life.

I am struck by how often people in our society complain. I am struck by how miserable so many people are. I am struck by an overwhelming lack of gratitude. I am struck by a growing trend toward aggressive fragility and constant outrage. I am struck by how many people who have lived blessed, charmed lives are simply too foolish to realize it and appreciate it. Before you complain about your struggles, perhaps you should consider your good fortunes and count your blessings. The odds are that your life has been better than you think.