Doubled our Views on Substack, Blacklisted on Indeed
Performing Business: A minor transgression for the greater good, under the shadow of neoliberalism.
At the start of this sprint, we had the idea to leverage non-traditional marketing tactics to increase brand awareness, drive organic traffic, and position the blog as a Thought Leader within its niche demographic.
We conducted a guerrilla marketing campaign through Indeed.
Our publication is ultimately about working past the base desires of neoliberalism, while under it, and even more particularly relevant to this brand of neoliberalism, not following the rules to get ahead.
Problem Statement
Our publications are an acquired taste (re-designing research and design beyond humans and profit maximization alone), yet we seek to do this work with the help of other researchers and designers.
Given the incompatibility of our ambitions with current industry frameworks, we need to garner a lot of attention to stand any chance of attracting even a small yet fervent group of commenters who are interested in contributing to our work.
Objective
Use the demoralization induced by the atrocious job market to run a cheap guerrilla marketing campaign through a job board site to reach those who have the most experience yet ire towards human-centered research and design frameworks to:
Convert them into commentors/contributors (those who push against and push forward our theories) to co-design industry research and design frameworks beyond humans and profit maximization alone.
Equip them with discrete tools and frameworks that they can fold into their next role to further these principles.
Approach
Through a thorough comparative analysis, we identified Indeed as the most suitable job board site for our marketing campaign, as it was free to use and “very oversaturated” according to Reddit users.
Many business owners reported having to “shut down [their] posts” after a couple of hours due to the “overwhelming number of candidates they received.”
Seeing this as a good sign, we edited the AI-generated template that Indeed provides to capture our needs and satisfy Indeed’s Terms of Service.
Final Deliverable: UX/UI Researcher and Designer Job Post
Overview
We are seeking passionate, optimized, and efficient User Experience/User Interface Researchers and Designers to join our dynamic team! Learn more about what our company believes: https://midstlabs.substack.com/about
0-80 hours/week because we encourage rest (!), but we want to be fully transparent: we are a small but mighty team, and sprint deadlines are gospel.
Even with all those extra hours, work is largely directed by profit maximization and gray practices, but we always need people to make pretty designs!
No overtime pay (and no pay at all) because this isn't a job. You love what you do, and this is your chance to show us!
This is an opportunity to have a seat at the table!
In this role, you will be responsible for building better research and design practices through various atypical research methodologies. Your insights and contributions will directly influence the design and development of our product, ensuring they meet the highest standards of care and satisfaction. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in experience research and design.
Duties
Build better research and design practices through qualitative, quantitative, and embodied perspectives.
Collaborate across research, design, and product to expand our product ("Our Expanded Framework")—one that questions both utilitarianism and profit maximization.
Create new personas, journey maps, and other user-centered artifacts around care.
Stay updated and shape emerging UX trends and best practices.
Requirements
Commitment to care through design, persisting through job searches.
Excellent communication skills to present findings clearly to stakeholders.
A passion for enhancing user experiences through thoughtful design and research.
Sense of humor, smile (always!).
At the end of the day, join our loving family in shaping the future of our product!
As a final step, Indeed provided a bulleted list of ways for us to verify the “legitimacy of our Business.”
The cheapest and fastest documentation we could provide was a “Doing Business As” (DBA) certificate.
Through the County Clerk’s office, we filled in four blank lines with our name, address, name of business, and signature. At which point, our certificate was filed for $25, and we were legally recognized as a Business.
For an additional $3, they provided us with a certified copy of our certificate, which we were informed must be stapled at all times. If the staple was removed, the copy would no longer be certified.
Scope
Maurizio Ferraris, a New Realist, argues that there is an objective social reality. A reality not reducible to a matter of perception and opinion. For Ferraris, we can get to this objective reality of facts through documentation.
Put more simply, if something is true, it will be inscribed in a document or artifact. A marriage is real and true through the certificate, a debt is real through the contract, business and law are real through filings.
This claim was attractive at the time of its development in the late 2000s; it was easy and comfortable to hold such a view when institutions seemed guarded. Now, if the government codifies into law “The Gulf of Mexico” as “The Gulf of America,” by Ferraris’s argument, this is objectively real, true, a fact.
While we largely disagreed with Ferraris’s philosophy, as the fabric of our life has always exceeded what is captured by institutions, Ferraris does get at something true about reality, even if that truth is malleable. Ferraris never specified what documentation was sufficient, but it seemed to lean towards those who held positions of power within institutions. If it was not officially filed, it was not recognized. Now, however, acceptance criteria for documentation is far less official, and social power is far more distributed, with even tweets regarded as official government statements.
Results
Indeed accepted this documentation [after some confusion with the staple].
And, we subsequently doubled our 30 day views,
before our post was taken down.
Indeed refused to respond to our repeated requests for guidance on how to rectify the situation. We think it may have had something to do with the language of the post.1 But by our internal success metrics, the campaign met expectations.
Key Takeaways
While there is no reported data on the number of fake job postings on Indeed, “4 in 10 companies say they’ve posted a ‘fake job listing’” in 2024, with ‘7 in 10, hiring managers [claiming the] practice of posting fake job listings is ‘morally acceptable.’”2 The cited reasons for posting fake jobs range from bolstering the appearance of the Business to pacifying or seemingly subtly threatening employees.3
Feminist technoscientists often stress that applying certain processes can rarely be done in ways that are wholly good (nor bad, for that matter). There is no objective, safe distance at which we can interact with the world.
It often feels that when we are confronted with an overwhelming number of problems, our instincts seem to point us toward rationality.
There is no room for feeling, as it’s a betting game.
Solutions that are easily computable are more predictable, and to remedy the situation, there must be strict adherence to processes.
At the very least, rationality seems to be the antithesis of apathy.
Our publications, while offering another way, require inspection without absorption, care without being repelled by the closeness.
Problems must come into view, become present within your hands, without plunging a researcher or designer fully into disillusionment, fruitlessness, contempt for the world.
Critical theory ripped through it all. Opening eyes for some, finally satisfying what even more felt—it was not a vision forward but a death to what was.
There is nothing wrong with industry tools ready in our hands; industry frameworks can seemingly continue indefinitely.
But, unemployment seems to grant a temporary position on the periphery. Once there is a break from business as usual, there is an opportunity to stop and a reason to question. This, coupled with the know-how to fix the tools, well positions researchers and designers.
“Advertising on job postings for the blog, free advertising, many eyes, many disillusioned researchers and designers.”4
Our work only requires a commitment to care that supersedes the impermeant mindset granted by unemployment.
Outside of institutions, there is no real infrastructure to co-design for these ends. While social networks seemed to offer some promise of decentralized, collective knowledge building, the potential was squandered as platforms increasingly sought sustainable revenue models.
Without adequate UIs to handle our world building, we are repurposing what exists, in the true spirit of UX/UI/Service Design.
Commenters and contributions, even those that are dissenting, are essential to our project. We don’t seek subscribers but to co-build theory, Co-Design at Scale.
Cite this publication
APA
MIdST LABS. (2025, June 26). Doubled our Views on Substack, Blacklisted on Indeed. MIdST LABS. https://midstlabs.substack.com/doubled-our-views-on-substack
Chicago
MIdST LABS. "Doubled our Views on Substack, Blacklisted on Indeed." MIdST LABS, June 26, 2025. https://midstlabs.substack.com/doubled-our-views-on-substack
MLA
MIdST LABS. "Doubled our Views on Substack, Blacklisted on Indeed." MIdST LABS, 26 June 2025. https://midstlabs.substack.com/doubled-our-views-on-substack
It may also be worth noting that the first reported post was for the role of “Product Manager,” so (assumption) self-identified Product Designers and Managers, which ___.
Liu, J. (2024, June 27). 4 in 10 companies say they’ve posted a fake job this year—what that actually means. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/27/4-in-10-companies-say-theyve-posted-a-fake-job-this-year-what-that-means.html
Liu, J. (2024, June 27). 4 in 10 companies say they’ve posted a fake job this year—what that actually means. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/27/4-in-10-companies-say-theyve-posted-a-fake-job-this-year-what-that-means.html
MIdST LABS Miro whiteboard.
We invite you to share your insights and further develop these ideas, especially to meet your contextual needs; we value multiplicities, context, and nuance. Your feedback is a valuable part of this project, and we are excited to collaborate with you.
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