Disappointment and shady corporate operations
Some of you may have been following my story over the last several weeks about how I was encouraged to apply for the Creative Director position at my company, where, for the last four years, I have been the only designer covering 145 locations and completed nearly 800 projects last year alone.
When I came on board in 2022, I built their entire intake process and creative board. It was able to cut turnaround times by 50% and quadruple productivity for our locations.
From the start, I had been promised lots of growth opportunities and for the last four years have been begging for extra help, and an expanded creative department, expanded tools, etc., only to be given the corporate party line that there was no budget for it.
We recently had a major restructuring at the hands of a new Head of Growth who was brought on, where the majority of my team was let go. I was spared and told that, finally, I was getting extra help!
The new head of growth hired a designer whom he was familiar from his previous company. Great, right?
I interviewed for the Creative Director position, finally, and had three interviews in one day; they were very short. General questions....Suspiciously so.
I didn't think much about it at the time; I was anxious to be offered the opportunity. I had put together a 12-page PowerPoint showing all the ways I thought we could improve and scale our marketing better to serve our locations more efficiently.
I waited for a couple of weeks to hear the answer, and still wasn't hearing back, only to finally be told that we are in a hiring freeze and the Creative Director position was on hold. To solve the need for a creative Director, the new head of growth was going to bring in a "consultant".
Only to find out today that this "consultant" was offered the creative director position over a month ago and had carelessly posted about it on LinkedIn. It was discovered by another employee.
Now they are creating templates for a lot of our printed materials, which is smart, but unfortunately, there isn't any staff on the ground at our locations who really know how to use Canva, and I see this becoming a logistical nightmare.
Once all of those templates are built, there really isn't room for two designers, and since the head of growth brought in his own people, snuck them in the back door, from his previous company. I'm pretty sure my job is going to be on the line.
And the fact that my current manager lied to my face and said that they were bringing in a consultant and not hiring for the Creative Director position when that had been done a month ago...
To say my feelings are hurt is an understatement. I've worked my ass off for this company, I realize that I should have a thicker skin and probably shouldn't be taking it personally because it is "just business," but to me, it's just a really shady way of doing business, and I'm so sick of companies getting away with treating people like they are disposable.
Now I'm terrified because in this job market, it's going to be really difficult, especially since I'm a self-taught designer with no bachelor's. There's a lot of competition out there.
Mostly, I'm just venting, not really looking for advice in a sense, but thinking it might be time for me to pivot. I'm 50 years old, I want to get settled at a place and stay there until I retire, if I'm ever able to retire…
Just licking my wounds, I guess. Super disappointed in how underhanded and duplicitous it all is. Why even bother interviewing me? Why not just tell me that he already had someone in mind? I certainly wouldn't have gotten through the trouble of doing all the market research and putting together the PowerPoint only to be made a fool. It's annoying, and it's why people get burnt out on this industry.