Awfully Honest Job Ad Receives Complaints, Applicants

Maybe you’ve already seen this internship/job posting by Dalkey Irish Press which horrified a lot of people because of how abrasively honest it was about expectations from applicants. The ad included “start[ing] off at a low-level salary,” not having much of a life outside of work “(family obligations, writing, involvement with other organizations, degrees to be finished, holidays to be taken, weddings to attend in Rio, etc.),” and “being unavailable at night or on the weekends” as a reason to be immediately fired.

After seeing the Internet outrage and receiving many angry emails (and applicants!), John O’Brien, the American director of Dalkey Archive Press, wrote a response posted in The Irish Times that basically said: You guys, I was making a joke, but also, it’s sort of true that we want applicants who will put their blood, sweat and tears into the job because we’ll probably hire them if they do?

…the tongue-in-cheek advertisement was a call to apply for the internships (and the two possible positions) if you’re going to be serious and are ready; if not, then let’s not waste each other’s time. Usually this is couched in the sanitised language of ‘must be deadline-oriented, well-organised, ambitious’, etc. But as I think we’ve known for a long time, the age of irony is dead, and I’m a fossil.

It’s all very Devil-Wears-Prada-y I suppose. [via]

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