My kid’s school report explains recruitment perfectly

I got my kid’s end-of-year school report this week.

You know the one.

Several pages long.

Impressive formatting.

Lots of boxes.

Ticks.

Warm, polite sentences that sound helpful.

And after reading the whole thing I thought:

Well. That told me absolutely nothing.

Not because my kid isn’t doing fine — he is.

But because the feedback lives entirely in the land of pleasant generalities.

Cool.

Compared to what though?

Is he smashing it?

Coasting?

One poorly timed Lego incident away from chaos?

No idea.

And that’s when it hit me.

This is exactly the same feedback adults get after a job application or interview.

You ask for feedback, hopeful.

You wait patiently.

You brace yourself for insight.

And then you receive:

The corporate equivalent of “Consistently demonstrates effort.”

Not wrong.

Not helpful.

Not actionable.

Just vague enough to sound professional while telling you precisely nothing you can use next time.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth most employers won’t say out loud:

They’re often not set up — or brave enough — to give real feedback.

So you get beige.

Safe.

Unprovable statements that protect everyone except the person who actually wants to improve.

Which is why so many smart, capable people get stuck thinking:

• Is my resume the problem?
• Was it my interview?
• Am I missing something obvious?
• Or am I just… not it anymore?

And this is where people turn to tools like ChatGPT.

Which can be incredibly useful — if you use it properly.

Because if you ask ChatGPT to “review your resume”, it will often behave like an over-encouraging school report:

Lovely.

Useless.

What you actually want is not praise.

You want precision.

If you’re using ChatGPT to assess your resume, your instruction needs to sound less like a supportive parent and more like this:

Because growth doesn’t come from being told you’re “doing fine”.

It comes from knowing:

• what didn’t land
• where the gaps are
• and what to fix before the next application

Whether it’s a Year 2 report card or a six-figure job rejection, vague feedback feels kind… but it leaves you stuck.

Specific feedback?

That’s the stuff that actually changes outcomes.

And frankly — if you’re going to be disappointed anyway — you may as well get something useful out of it.

~Lisa

PS: Thanks Dave for this weeks newsletter idea.

Your Q&A

Last week’s newsletter

It seems last week’s newsletter resonated with the community. I got a bunch of replies. Here’s a few highlights:
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​Well done Lisa & team. You still deserve ‘well done’ Lisa – you’ve fostered an environment whereby your staff are supported and can work and grow without being ‘under your skirt’

Garth

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Got through the full newsletter….

LOVED….

It’s not Highlander — there can be more than one.

Although hoping there’s not too many more Captain Elbows…. Able to make two seats into one with a single flex….

David

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Lisa, You are brilliant! Your use of language and insights are absolutely amazing!!!! CONGRATULATIONS on YOUR award. You do deserve recognition for your work, effort and contribution.

Hugs my friend,

Carrie

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​Workday hates joy

Hi Lisa,

I applied for a strategy job with BP. I had to put my experience into fields. So my question is:

• Why do I have to do that when they have my resume?
• If so how far back should I go in my experience?

Megan

N.B: Original email edited for this specific question. It was too good not to share.

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Hi Megan,

Short answer: because Workday hates joy.

Longer, more useful answer 👇

Yes — BP already has your resume. No — that doesn’t mean they trust it on its own.

Large organisations like BP run their hiring through Workday, which is basically an over-engineered filing cabinet powered by AI and mild indifference to human patience.

The system needs your experience broken into neat little boxes so it can:

• standardise everyone’s background
• compare candidates apples-to-apples
• and feed the algorithm without choking on creative resume layouts

Could they make this easier with proper autofill? Absolutely.

Have they? No.

Welcome to corporate recruitment.

How far back should you go? About 10 years.

The ATS will still read your resume in full, but the manual fields are there to capture recent, relevant, comparable experience — not your entire working life since dial-up internet.

Think of it like this:

Your resume is for humans. The Workday fields are for robots.

Robots don’t appreciate nuance — they appreciate consistency.

This is just the price of admission.

Thanks for writing in,

~Lisa​