In July, a female-owned marketing agency in the HVAC industry hired me to be their social media specialist. The interview process took around 2-3 weeks, and something felt wrong even then as I was going to be their third social media specialist this year, but the manager hyped not just the position itself up but me and my skills as well. I was eventually offered the job and migrated into the company but Things quickly took a turn for the worse as a lot of false expectations were set.
In the initial interview, I was also told the position itself would be flexible, and I would occasionally have to attend team meetings and monthly social media reportings which was fine but that quickly became micromanaging meetings every Monday - Friday and sometimes multiple meetings in one day that had nothing to do with me or my position.
Not only was I to be their social media specialist for 7+ separate HVAC clients, but I was also expected to be their blog content writer & email specialist while only being paid the salary of a low-tier social media specialist. I accepted that and tried my best to do the position effectively, but I soon realized the manager was an egotistic dictator who always had to be right in every situation. I was told my posts had to be approved before I could submit them which is understandable but the problem became the manager was never available to approve or leave feedback so posts constantly never went out or was very delayed.
I also received very obscure feedback in the form of "You can't use the word rag because that means women being on their period and will offend people" or "You can't say the word blessed because that is religious speak and will offend people" so it was never any actual productive feedback that would help me improve in the position but more so nitpicks.
I suspected something was wrong when I started to see what they were charging their clients for social media. The even scarier part was that they didn't want any contact with their client and would not provide me with any content from them. They acted put off when I told them I would like to interact with the client so I could get additional content from them to use across their social media so everything that was getting posted on their social media was stock imagery which is very sparse in this industry and did not do anything numbers-wise, they wouldn't even let me source UGC from other HVAC companies that were doing social media the right way. They would only put a fire out when it arose with a client and it almost seemed like they enjoyed the fact the client would ask no questions and they could keep billing them.
Fast forward to yesterday, I get pulled into a surprise zoom meeting between the manager and the owner of the company to be told I was being let go, completely without warning two weeks before Christmas and would not even give me an explanation as to why. I soon learned they had a replacement right behind me and they are now on their 4th social media specialist.
So here is to being unemployed again! does anyone else have any agency horror stories like mine?
submitted by
/u/CorpseCollins [link] [comments]
* This article was originally published here
To read more articles like this visit us at yourdigitalmarketingbootcamp.blogspot.com