Photo: TikTok
Potential candidates are questioning what these qualities have to do with someone’s performance at work.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Apr 23, 2023
When applying for a job, you expect the job listing to outline the duties and qualifications required. Some are more demanding than others, and companies all have their own ways of communicating their culture into the job listing so as to attract the right candidates. But have you ever seen a job listing that asked for outlandish qualities?
Well, that's a debate waging on TikTok right now after a job opening was shared on the app. The qualities mentioned aren’t exactly outlandish, but they’re not exactly the first thing you’d expect a job listing to ask you for. These qualities should have no bearing on your performance at work, and so people are seeing the requests as a red flag — a signal not to work in that environment.
The Ticketmaster job listing asks for applicants to be ‘brave’ and ‘resilient.’
According to the self-proclaimed “Job Doctor” Tessa on TikTok, this job with Ticketmaster is likely not one you want to be applying for.
The position of the job listing is for the “Director of Social” for Ticketmaster, the popular ticket sales and distribution company that has come under fire recently for its monopolistic practices and critical failures when under duress.
The job is a full-time position and would be on-site at their headquarters in New York City, but among the list of qualifications that the company is asking for, a section for “You (behavioral Skills)” has concerned folks for its strange request.
The listing has your standard, cookie-cutter description — asking that the “ideal candidate” be highly creative, have urgency, think big, and all-around is a real “self-starter.”
However, the first bullet point in the list asks for applicants to be “imaginative. Brave. Resilient.” That’s it. That’s the entire first bullet point. Interesting choice by Ticketmaster to follow up “imaginative” with “brave” and “resilient” — two things I would never quickly relate to one’s imagination.
“Fun job except, not,” Tessa says. “At least they’re honest about it.”
People think that a job listing asking you to be brave is a red flag.
When you think about what it would be like to work for a company as the director of social media, you probably think it would be a fun time — except a job that asks you to be brave and resilient has to be anything but.
“How is that measured?” reads the top comments from a career strategist. “What’s there to be brave for?” someone else asked. A third user simply put the red flag emoji in their comment and called out the job listing for how they saw it.
However, some people claimed that the job listing actually makes sense.
“Social media manager here. Bravery is a very important trait for the role,” one user wrote. “You need body armor to work in [the] service industry [right now],” someone else wrote.
Diving into a deeper explanation, someone else explained why you might need bravery and resilience in order to be the director of social media, saying “HR is non-existent. You will be overworked, underpaid, and yelled at for no reason.”
When you think about the recent scandals that Ticketmaster has been a part of, most notably the Taylor Swift Eras Tour controversy, it’s easy to understand why. People weren’t able to get tickets, and that might have left many people on social media unhappy and yelling at the social media director.
Despite all of that, it still may not be a job that you want to apply for. Who would want to get yelled at for the decisions the brand they represent make?
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.