A Company Accidentally Posted A Hilariously Honest Version Of A Job Listing

Most everyone who’s been engaged in a job search has questioned whether the description listed is a true glimpse at what the job entails. However, when Time Out New York recently posted a job listing, it’s a safe bet that no one questioned its accuracy.

That’s because the job listing, as it went up on Indeed.com, appears not to have been a description of the job at all, but rather a copy/paste job of an internal discussion of why the position is necessary. Photo editors may be crucial to any publication, but Time Out New York gave away more than they realized when the position hit the internet. On Monday, the job was listed as “no longer available,” but remained live on Indeed.com for a bit longer. (It’s since been taken down there too.)

The curious job listing was shared on Twitter by Daily Beast senior reporter and researcher Brandy Zadrozny.

It seems, based on the quick math done in the second sentence of the listing, that the company could also use an accountant or someone with basic math skills to realize that their per-issue budget of $2,200 will afford them 100 hours of work at $22 per hour, rather than the 10 hours stipulated.

Here’s the post Zadrozny shared, including the somewhat curious header of “Full Rationale”:

“The current situation with the Photo team in the US i.e. Melissa Sinclair, is not a long-term solution. Currently, we have an agreed budget of $2,200 per issue for a freelance Photo Editor, 10 hours work at $22 p/h, which would normally be completely fine, however the issue is that Melissa physically cannot find good enough candidates to fill these freelance positions, and at the current rate of magazine production, she needs multiple people available to work on multiple cities, simultaneously. Because she can't find people for these freelance positions, she's been forced to do all of this work herself, and is currently completely swamped and overwhelmed, the design team has had to chip in to help her, which is not ideal, but has been required to get the magazines out the door on time. Joel is in agreement with Tom Hislop that for a considerably smaller amount of money, we could definitely solve this issue by replacing all these freelancers with a single full-time position. Currently, we're spending $48,400 per year on freelance Photo editors for these cities, 22 magazines in total, at $2,200 per issue. We could definitely hire a Photo Editor for 40-45K, and having them full-time in the office would make them a far more valuable asset than relying on Freelancers. Tom would like to address this asap, especially as we have a really busy magazine schedule coming up in October, and our current setup is not a long-term solution, I'm concerned about Melissa getting burnt out and potentially wanting to leave.”

To the firm’s credit, it appears as though they’re sensitive to the stresses that Melissa has undergone, but it’s stated in no uncertain terms that anyone who would have applied shouldn’t imagine this will be a cakewalk. With a busy October ahead at Time Out New York, the situation might get worse before it gets better.

That said, it doesn’t change the fact that Melissa needs help.

The position had been listed as “no longer available,” on Time Out New York’s own website, but now appears to be back up and active — albeit with a more conventional job description. The original Indeed.com posting clearly paints a picture of a company in need of help, so perhaps the right candidate could use the not-at-all-veiled cry for help as leverage to negotiate a bigger compensation package, corner office, or more vacation days. It certainly seems to be a seller’s market for this position, but act now, as the virality of the post likely opened this job up to a wider audience of candidates than the firm would normally see.

Clearly, this is a big gaffe from someone who appeared to not understand the nature of how job postings work, but you can’t blame the company for being anything less than honest with prospective candidates.