The Hiring Problem: Nobody Wants to Stay Anymore (And Nobody Wants to Answer the Phone After 5:00pm)

NO BS MARKETER BY AMANTHA PERERA

Let me tell you something that's going to upset a few people, and honestly, good. That's the whole point of this column.  We have a hiring problem in this country. Not a "can't find talent" problem. Not a "salaries are too low" problem, although sure, that's part of every conversation everywhere, always. No, the real problem is this: nobody stays anymore, nobody wants to be uncomfortable anymore, and everybody, and I mean everybody, suddenly thinks they're a marketer. Let's start there, because it's the loudest part of the room right now.

Everyone's a Genius Now. Congratulations.

Somewhere in the last five years, three things happened at the exact same time. Influencer culture exploded. "Model culture" became its own economy. And AI showed up and made everyone feel like they could generate a strategy deck in four seconds flat.

And look, I'm not against any of these things. I built an agency on organic content. I'm not sitting here in a blazer telling you influencers are ruining society, because that would be extremely rich coming from me. AI is a tool I use every single day. This isn't a "back in my day" rant, even though, fair warning, this column is about to sound exactly like that.

Here's my actual issue: everyone's confusing access with skill.

You can post a reel. That doesn't make you a content strategist. You can run a prompt through an AI tool and get a caption out the other end. That doesn't make you a copywriter. You can look good in front of a camera. That doesn't make you a brand. Access to tools that used to be gatekept, cameras, editing software, distribution, AI, is genuinely one of the best things to happen to this industry. It democratized creativity. Good. Great, even. But somewhere along the way, "I have access to the tools" quietly turned into "I don't need to learn the craft." And that's the part that's killing us on the hiring side.

I don't need ten skills on a CV. I need one skill, done properly. Pick a lane, copywriting, editing, strategy, community management, whatever, and actually go deep on it before you tell me you can do "everything." Because when I ask you to show me your editing timeline, or walk me through why you chose that hook, or explain what you'd do if a client's engagement dropped 40% in a week, "everything" evaporates real quick. Master one thing. Then come talk to me about the other nine.

The 9-to-5 Ghost

Now let's talk about the other half of this, because it's connected whether people want to admit it or not. Company culture, these days, apparently has office hours. 9 to 5, and not a minute more. After 5pm, the phone rings out. WhatsApp ticks stay grey. Slack goes quiet like everyone collectively fell into the ocean.

Now, before anyone sharpens their pitchforks; I am not out here advocating for burnout. I'm not saying answer emails at 11pm on a Sunday because "hustle culture" or whatever nonsense phrase we're recycling this year. Boundaries are real. Rest is real. Burnout is real, and I've watched good people get chewed up by agencies that treated "always on" as a personality trait instead of a red flag. But there's a difference between protecting your peace and disappearing the second the clock hits five.

We weren't like that. And I'm not saying that to sound like some old uncle at a wedding reminiscing about walking to school in the rain. I mean it structurally. When we were coming up, if a client had an issue at 6:45pm, you picked up. Not because someone forced you to, but because you understood, instinctively, that the job doesn't punch out just because the clock does. You cared about the outcome, not just the hours logged. Somewhere that got lost. And what replaced it wasn't "healthy boundaries." It was "not my problem." Those are two very different things, and I think we've let them get blurred on purpose because it's more convenient that way.

The Word Nobody Wants to Say: Responsibility

Here's the uncomfortable bit. This isn't really about hours or hustle. It's about responsibility. Somewhere in this new era of instant everything, instant fame, instant content, instant AI-generated answers, we've lost the muscle for sticking with something when it gets hard, boring, or inconvenient. The second a job asks for something outside a rigid box, the reaction isn't "let me figure this out." It's "that's not in my job description." I'm sorry, but marketing has never fit in a job description. Half the reason I love this industry is because no two days look the same. A campaign breaks, a client panics, an algorithm update destroys your reach overnight, and you don't get to say "well, technically, that's not my role." You adapt. You own it. You fix it. That's the job. That's always been the job.

And loyalty, real, boring, unglamorous loyalty, used to be part of that deal too. You stayed somewhere long enough to actually get good at it. You gave a company two, three years before deciding it "wasn't for you." You built something instead of collecting logos on a LinkedIn timeline like Pokémon cards. Now the average tenure feels like it's measured in months, and everyone's already got one foot out the door before they've even learned where the printer is.

So, What Do We Actually Do About It?

I'm not writing this to just complain into the void, so let's be constructive for a second. To the young marketers reading this: the industry is not against you. It's actually wide open right now, more than it's ever been. But "wide open" doesn't mean "easy." Pick your one skill. Get embarrassingly good at it. Show up even when it's inconvenient. Answer the message after 5pm sometimes, not because you have to, but because that's how trust gets built, and trust is the only currency that actually matters in this business.

To the companies and agencies reading this, including, brutally, my own: maybe part of why people don't stay is because we haven't given them a reason to. Loyalty is a two-way street, and if all we offer is "grind now, culture later," we shouldn't be shocked when nobody sticks around to see "later." But to the broader point, yes, people need to change. We need to bring responsibility back into fashion. We need "I'll figure it out" to be cooler than "that's not my job." We need mastery to be sexier than access. And honestly, we need a generation of marketers who understand that answering a client after 5pm once in a while isn't oppression, it's called caring about your work.

That's it. That's the column. No BS, as promised. See you next week.