Quick Update, Avoid Bait-and-Switch Jobs, etc.

The market is crazy. We don't know what will happen in the coming months, so the onus is on you to be careful with prospective jobs or freelancing gigs. If it seems too good to be true or if you're getting sketchy info, BE CAREFUL.

Links:

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2024/08/28/more-intense/

Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/ 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com, and now here's your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in today. I wanted to hop on record a very quick episode with a few brief updates, and then Boogie out of here. Monday in the states will be Labor Day, and I'm glad I am tired, y'all. This 2024 has been something. I feel like I've said this before, but it bears repeating. You have to work twice as hard to make half as much, and then the half as much that you make doesn't go half as far as it ought to. I've had enough of this recession slash silent depression. I'm done. Stick a fork in me. I am done. Things with the book are going well. It's a little bit terrifying. It's like this strange feeling. Those of you listening that have authored a book before, you'll know what I'm talking about, but it's like bliss, terror, fear, panic, pleasure. I really don't even know how else to describe it. It's such a contradictory cauldron of emotions that you feel have this message that is so important to me and to the subject matter that I get it out at the same time. It's completely terrifying, but it's also really wonderful, because it's like, oh my god, I did this. The words are on the paper now, holy smokes. And in thinking back across the summer, it's a little unreal. It was like, I just sat here and wrote like a woman possessed, like it doesn't, it doesn't even feel like it was me, it was me. But I'm like, I just, it's a blur. I sat here in the spirit of the subject matter. I'm writing about listening to classical music and writing away writing and reading and researching and translating. I'm like, oh my god, we did it. We did it. It's crazy to me. So that's been going through the process again. If you authored a book, you'll know what I'm talking about. You got to go through a legal review, and you got to go through editorial reviews, plural. And then you have things that you want to do, and you need to tighten up the language and improve the readability, and have at least a beta reader go through it and say, Yes, I think that this looks good. Or no, I didn't get it, or it got confusing at this point. So there's a lot to do before the baby can come home from the hospital. So to speak, there's a lot that has to happen. So, yeah, that's been taking up a good chunk of time on top of that. All right, I learned it's kind of like the today. I learned thing, I have learned that there's such a thing as the pink eye, Rona pinkeye, if you can freaking believe it, and that's a mess. I don't wish it on any of you listening. I hope that you never find out firsthand what it's like. But I contracted it. I do not know how. I do not know where. All I know is that it visited upon me like the freaking Black Death of Europe, and that's been awful. You can't while you're going through the eye problems, and then the medication for said eye problems and the vision problems that come along with said eye problems, you can't wear your contact lenses, so I'm wearing this old pair of glasses, which isn't helping anything. Forget about the esthetics. Who cares about that? But because they're an older pair, and I really need to get an updated pair that I can see out of better that's had its own set of challenges. So just all you gotta know I can do is laugh like all you can do is laugh, and this is better than crying. So I've been out here, I've been trying to edit this book and shepherd it along and do what the attorney thinks is best practice, and make sure that I'm syncing up with editors that I feel like get my vision and that are on the same page with me, and staying with the integrity of the subject matter who I adore, and dealing with pink eye and these freaking glasses I can't see out of Oh, but then also, I'm already pregnant With a second book, BT Dubs. There was so much material, and my word count, my God, was like 100,000 and there was still more that I could have written that I didn't I'm having to try to edit it down. I mean, realistically, it should probably be somewhere in the 70 to 80,000 range. So there's some real cutting that could be done. I. It, but there was so much material, so I'm in the process of already researching what I want to do next. So I look like some kind of weird mad scientist between the glasses I can't see out of, hold on. I have to cough, excuse me, between the glasses that I can't hardly see out of, and then tons of index cards, because that's how I used to do it. That's taking it back to the old school. That's kicking it back 80s and 90s style on your research methodology. For the first book, I was able to really just fill out an outline in chronological order, and I didn't really need to have an index card bonanza. But for this one, there's going to be so much research and reading that I have to do before I ever even start writing the next book that I'm like, you're going to have to get organized somehow. So I'm going back to the old fashioned write your research down, get your snippets, put information on index cards, get them organized in a way that makes sense to you. So, yeah, I look like a mat some kind of author, mad scientist with glass, ill fitting, ill fitting, old glasses and tons freaking tons of index cards, and this Rona pinkeye mess that I hope to God is going to clear very soon. So it's it's been quite a summer. It's been a weird summer. As summers go, the job market is still a dumpster fire. I published a blog post yesterday because there was this article on social media about, oh, the job market is intense. If someone is hunting for a job, they need to be prepared that the process is going to be intense. And I'm sitting here like, Yeah, I think by intense you mean a complete bleeding nightmare. It really is tough out there. And one of the things that I want to say in terms of keeping this to a business related topic and not just personal updates, although I felt like it was important to share those things because I'm not recording episodes as frequently as I used to, and I felt like you deserve to know why. In terms of job market, I would really just encourage everybody to be smart and to be savvy. I have seen so many bait and switch situations. As of late, I've been a victim of a bait and switch situation in a freelancing opportunity where the person who interviewed me just flat out wide about the circumstances that I would be walking into on the project. And I'm hearing similar things from job seekers that certain HR personnel or hiring managers will tell them A, B and C, but then further into the process, or unfortunately, after they've already taken the job and they feel like it's too late to back out, they find out that A, B and C with Totally false and instead it's G, H, I, instead. So be really careful about bait and switch. We don't know what's getting ready to happen with the market, and we don't know what's getting ready to happen with the upcoming election. I don't get political here on this broadcast, so I don't really want to go there. We know that things are changing rapidly. We know that, and I'm just being necessarily vague here, because I think that's the smartest way to handle this. But you're you're gonna know what I'm talking about. We see alliances changing. We see partnerships that seem awfully odd. Perhaps they're not as odd as we imagine, I shouldn't say anything more than that, but we ultimately don't know what's going to happen with the stonk market, what's going to happen with the job market, because so many of these things are predicated on confidence in the marketplace. And I have to cough again, so many weird symptoms y'all with this Rona pink eye, it is super not fun. So many things are predicated on confidence. And it's funny that we think about con artistry and con games. It's a confidence game. It's a confidence artist. So much of it depends on are investors confident? Are they feeling bullish, or are they feeling bearish? Are companies feeling like it's okay to bring on extra personnel? Do they feel like they need to beef up their staffing, or do they feel like they need to lay off so much is about perception when it comes to what's going to happen with stocks and bonds and what's going to happen with the job market. Would that it were not so, but that's the case, and we just don't know. We don't know what's going to happen in November and then after the election, regardless of who it is that gets elected or elected, wink, we don't know what. What kind again, I'm having to be necessarily vague, because this is a daytime broadcast. We don't know what kind of Fallout or tension or reactions could occur, donkey, elephant, red, blue. It doesn't matter. You really don't know what could happen next, and it could be a very long road from now to November and then from November to January, when the inauguration takes place. And then from there, who knows, the Fed is talking about doing at least one rate cut, potentially they might do two rate cuts to try to be like, Oh, Happy days are here again, easy money, churning and burning. And you can speculate, is that to benefit blue, or is that to benefit red? It doesn't really matter to me. I don't think it I don't really even think that that part's relevant. Will that be enough to gin up some confidence in the market? And companies will feel like, well, maybe we can borrow money easily again. Maybe we feel like it's time to start hiring again. I don't know. I really don't know. In the meantime, I think you have to be very smart. You have to take care of yourself, and you have to look out for yourself. Corporate America, Wall Street, these fat cats and jackals will always take care of themselves, so the onus is on. You be careful of bait and switch situations. Be careful of too good to be true con artist type situations, and just do as much vetting and thinking about an opportunity as you can before you sign on the dotted line. Stay safe. Stay sane if you're here in the US, have an awesome and restful Labor Day, and I will see you in the next episode. 

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