Would You Botox Your CV?
Your weekly round up of what's going on in the Admin world
Hello and welcome to The Admin Wrap this Friday!
This week I read some pretty concerning stories from women in their 50s who are being shut out of roles that they are clearly qualified for. With the growing use of AI for applicant management, could it be built-in discrimination?
Also this week, Radisson are taking on AirBnB; when should you take a pay cut; and I read a great example of how not to turn a survey into an article.
I’ll be away for the next two weeks so I’ll be putting a pause on The Admin Wrap. However, you can still get The Extra Wrap on a Monday, and I might be seeing some of you in San Francisco!! I can’t wait!
If you’re not signed up to get The Extra Wrap yet, you can get a discount while I’m away:
Yvette 🌴
NewsWrap
It’s a pretty privileged position to be in to be able to entertain the idea of taking a pay cut. But sometimes you have little choice - having to decide to accept the offer or continue your job search. We all have our bottom line - we have bills to pay and mouths to feed - so when should you drop to it, and when should you hold out? That’s not something I’m going to try to answer - everyone’s situation is different. Whilst this article is, I’m not sure that using LeBron James’ recent drop to just $3.8m per year is going to win much empathy.
Nominations are open for the 2026 Australian Institute of Office Professionals Awards. They close on 31st August, so there’s plenty of time to get your nomination in. If you are off on holiday over the coming weeks, set your self a reminder to fill it out when you get back.
I said this with the last administrative awards I mentioned on the Admin Wrap - it is ALWAYS ok to nominate yourself. Blow your own trumpet, people! Chances are no-one else is going to do it for you.This week Radisson launched Long Stays - a competitor to AirBnB if you ask me. If you’ve had a traveler needing to stay somewhere for a prolonged period of time (perhaps a secondment, or a relocation) then you’d probably avoid hotels. If cost were the reason, then this might change things. It seems like this is being offered by hotels with apartment units (because who wants to eat hotel food for two weeks straight?). Not a bad idea if they are trying to win back some of the customers who go elsewhere as soon as their stay is longer than about a week.
Workers who have experience which spans decades are reportedly being advised - by career coaches - to take some of their early experience off their CV to avoid coming across “too old”. This is shocking to me (albeit sadly unsurprising) in this new trend of “CV Botox”. Whilst it will certainly cross genders, apparently AI has been trained to filter out older women, with some using the age old rejection favourite of “too experienced”. This is nothing new, although it’s pretty scary that AI is being trained on the misogynist views I started experiencing years ago.
Knowing who has been surveyed in a report is critical to your understanding of the results. Take this article - the headline saying that “overseas staff feel under supported” yet the people surveyed were only the employers. The article then goes onto encourage caution that the care we give overseas employees isn’t too much! The headline suggests thoughtfulness and compassion. The article is warning against overcompensating and translating employer observations to employee feelings. Don’t blindly believe every headline you see!
The Weight of Your Words
There’s a familiar kind of email that we have all received. The kind which will send shivers up the spine of someone less experienced.
By referring your friends and colleagues to The Admin Wrap, you can earn yourself free access to The Extra Wrap - our in depth thought leadership pieces which are sent out every Monday. Can you make it to the top of the leader board?
🔎 RealityWrap:
Your Exec’s Panic Is Not an Emergency
Your exec walks over - or worse, Slacks in all lowercase, which somehow makes it scarier - and says they need this “right now.” You drop everything. Heart rate up. Brain in triage mode. You have, in fact, just become a paramedic for a paper cut.
What nobody tells you when you take this job is that executives are (mostly) very good at their actual work and (frequently) toddlers about everything else. Their nervous system does not distinguish between “the deal is collapsing” and “I spilt coffee down my shirt” Both come out the same way. Both come out as YOUR problem, delivered at the same volume level.
Of course, you deal with it. Every time. Because that’s the job, right? Except somewhere along the way, “responsive” turned into “on call for other people’s drama,” and you’re not quite sure how to make it stop.
You’ve ended up with an entire internal alarm system around their urgency, and the annoying part is - it works. You’re fast, and you’re calm-looking under pressure, even when you’re not calm at all. Congratulations, you’ve become excellent at responding to a crisis that, on closer inspection, was just a regular Tuesday afternoon with a slice of melodramatic.
Here’s the tell: real emergencies are rare and they look different. They’re specific, and usually don’t involve someone hovering at your desk narrating their own stress. The “right now” ones are almost always “right now for them,” which is a completely different category of problem, and not automatically yours to solve at the same speed.
The move isn’t to care less, or to start ignoring things - that’ll just get you a worse reputation and the same workload. It’s to stop outsourcing your definition of “emergency” to someone who’s never once paused to check whether it was real before reacting to it.
Next time it happens, take three seconds before you sprint to them. Just wait a tiny moment to see what’s actually on fire and what you actually have to deal with.
(Usually: nothing. Occasionally: everything, and now you know the difference.)
EventWrap
Have you tried vibe coding? Do you even know what it is? We can all do it - you can quite literally build whatever your imagination can think of. EA How To are hosting a 90-min session to take away any uncertainty you might have. A word of caution though - only join if you can handle your mind being blown. Sign up here
The Global PA Association have their Global PA Conference and Awards in November, and you can still get early bird tickets if you are planning on going. Being held at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms, London on 4th November. Get your tickets here
ES Tech is back with another 24 hours of training on 10-11th September about all the new tech and tech advances that have come out in the last 12 months. There is a whole host of amazing trainers plus 30 days to watch the recordings. Book your place here.
For a list of Conferences, head over to the Conferences section in our Ultimate Assistant’s Toolbox.
If you are running an event aimed at administrative professionals, please send me an email and let me know all about it - hello@theadminwrap.com
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