The Country That Wouldn't Hire Me

I. Smile More, Talk Less

i was twenty-something. a marketing degree in hand, sitting across from an HR woman in buenos aires.

she looked at me and said: if you want the job, smile more and talk less. people will like you more.

i think that is one of the worst things you can tell a young person. smile and be quiet.

because we show up with ideas and energy. still with a lot to learn, sure. but learning does not mean staying quiet while things stay broken.

i did not get that job. i did not get most of them.

II. The Word They Kept Using

the word they kept using was overqualified. sometimes it was “not a cultural fit.” different words, same door closing.

overqualified always felt like a polite way of saying they did not want the questions that come with someone who actually cares. someone who asks why the thing is done this way, and whether it could be done better.

for a while i believed the doors.

when enough people tell you no, you start to think the problem is you.

III. So I Left

so i stopped knocking on doors that kept closing, and i left.

i went somewhere the accent that made me “too much” at home made me interesting instead.

i got into tech sales. i sold across seven countries, in languages that were not my first, to people who had no reason to root for the argentine guy who showed up asking a lot of questions.

the questions that got me rejected at home were the same ones that closed deals abroad. nothing about me had changed, only the room.

IV. The Edge I Didn’t See Coming

i did not see the next part coming. being a foreigner, the outsider, the one who did not grow up inside the system, turned out to be the edge.

when you are from somewhere else, you notice the things locals stopped noticing years ago. you cannot lean on “how it has always been done,” so you actually look.

you adapt, because you have to. you carry more than one way of seeing the same problem, because you have lived in more than one place.

i used to think foreignness was holding me back, when it was the thing making me useful.

V. The Table I Came Back To

six years later i came back to buenos aires. and some of the people who once could not find a place for me were around the table when i signed for my first apartment.

my viejito was there. i grew up watching him work from the couch, caring about the small details like it represented us.

that is where i learned that finishing something well is really about who you become while you do it.

i keep that moment close. it settled something the rejections never could.

VI. What the No Is Really Telling You

so if you are getting the no right now, at home, in your industry, from the room you thought you belonged in, i want to offer you a reframe.

the no is information. sometimes it is telling you to get better, and sometimes it is telling you that you are in the wrong room, measured by people optimizing for fit instead of for what you can actually do.

being underestimated is not fun, but it is a strange kind of gift, because it frees you: nobody watches the person they already counted out, and that is the best position to build from.

i built somewhere else. and the being-from-elsewhere that made me “not a fit” is now the whole thing i build on.

VII. If This Reached You Cold

hi. i am ivan.

i left argentina because nobody would hire me, sold across seven countries as the foreigner, and came back to build the thing i wish someone had built for the version of me sitting in that interview.

Human, see you next week.
Welcome to The Lobby.
Ivan