At the risk of being that cliché person posting about how something personal taught me a professional lesson (like how rolling my ankle and falling into the pool taught me how to be a better leader, or how my dog throwing up on the carpet taught me the key to faster sales cycles,) I’m going to do just that. 😀
As Product Marketers, we live and breathe problem-solution messaging frameworks. It’s foundational for showing buyers we understand their pain and have a remedy. But lately, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend here where the “product” in this formula is the job seeker.
If you’ve been on social media for more than five minutes, you’ve seen the PAS playbook. It looks like this:
The Problem
It starts with a kind offer or suggestion. In this case, a person introduces you to a hiring manager. Or someone in your profession posts about the best resume formatting. It’s designed to identify the most high-intent audience possible: people who are raising their hands to say, “I am unemployed and down on my luck.”
The Agitation
Once they hook you, the messaging shifts to: “I bet you didn’t know this but, the system is rigged. The traditional way is dead. You’re missing the secret sauce.” This person has been posting frequently, creating credibility that may not be reflected in actual experience. You know what I’m talking about… those who can’t do…
The Solve
The solution? An expensive course or super special workshop that will solve all your problems, that you can only get from them. This is value messaging in its most icky version. 🤮 They are banking on people’s logic that “If it’s expensive, this must really be the secret ‘Big Job Board’ has been hiding from me.”
Why this feels off to a seasoned PMM.
As marketers, we know about brand building and the need for lead funneling. However, there is a fine line between empowering a prospect and monetizing their desperation.
When a free offer exists solely to target and funnel vulnerable people into a highly expensive program, we have to ask ourselves: Are they really teaching, or are they just capitalizing on a crisis?
True PMM expertise is built in the trenches of product lifecycles and trust is earned, not exploited.
From networking to nurturing.
There is a certain kind of “aha!” moment that happens during a job search, and it isn’t always a good one. For me, this was the moment I realized a professional connection I valued wasn’t a connection at all.
I started following someone a couple of years ago because I kept seeing their resources shared across my network. This person is brilliant on paper, highly educated and credentialed, and for a while it all felt insightful, genuine and selfless.
Then I hit that landing page. 🤑
Seeing a $1k+ price tag at the end of a “supportive journey” through my unemployment felt like some real BS to me. I’ll be the first to admit I have a low tolerance for fluff, but this was a whole new level. And honestly, it wasn’t even about the money, because I certainly don’t hate capitalism. Capitalism is what allows us to build, innovate, pay our bills, and then do it all again.
It was the bait-and-switch of it all.
When you are in the middle of a job search, your trust is already fragile. You are looking for honesty in a sea of automated rejection emails and late stage ghosting. So, when someone offers what feels like genuine connections and resources, you let your guard down.
Finding out what you thought were real conversations were actually lead magnets designed to funnel vulnerable professionals into a high-ticket sale feels very sneaky. And low.
I still respect the pivot, absolutely admire the hustle. The amount of dedication and follow-through that was required to build this over the last few years is incredible. Truly. But as a marketer, I know the difference between building a community and building a list.
We don’t have to be anti-capitalist to be pro-transparency. You can be smart enough to find a gap in the market without using the heartbreaking stress of a person’s career transition as your way in.
Why I Stay in Marketing Even Though It Sometimes Feels Gross
I spend a lot of time explaining the digital world to my family and my children. I tell them that every click is a breadcrumb. Every decision they make online is quietly curating their next move, whether they realize it or not. I’ve worked with some very political media outlets, where headlines and algorithms, not actual fact and context, drive the most important decisions of our lives.
But lately, I started having a harder conversation with my boys about this type of social engineering. We see it everywhere online: SPIN selling and PAS formulas. It’s used as a system to find people who are stuck, feel worthless, think there is no answer to their problem, and then agitate their pain.
My biggest fear for the next generation isn’t just that they’ll lose money. It’s that when they reach the end of a $1,000 funnel and realize they can’t afford the solution, they walk away thinking they are the problem. That they are unworthy. That the “secret” is real and they just can’t have it.
As a mom, a marketer and a human, this makes my skin crawl and my heart break.
There are days I want to throw my hands up and walk away from this list and spreadsheet approach to human beings.
But then I remember why I pivoted to marketing in the first place.
I didn’t leave the engineering world of “how things work” to join a world of “how to trick people.” I got into marketing because I wanted to solve the problem of “how things work and why it matters to people.” I wanted to understand the depth of a customer’s needs and build bridges that actually lead somewhere. Somewhere genuine.
Throughout my career, I’ve gravitated toward founders with contagious passion. Leaders whose mission is to secure, defend, and protect. When the mission is about safeguarding a person’s life, digital or otherwise, marketing shouldn’t be a trap, it should be a beacon of hope. So, I keep doing this because we need marketers who see the person behind the persona.
At the end of the day, if I can teach my children to spot the tricks and keep their sense of self-worth intact, to know that a price tag is never a measure of their value, that will be the most important GTM strategy I will ever develop. ♥️
#JobSearch #ProductMarketing #MarketingEthics #BeAHuman #SocialEngineering
Erin C. Kennedy 