If It’s Sales, Call It Sales — Stop Gaslighting Job Seekers

Let’s have a little chat about honesty, job titles, and the ongoing epidemic of mislabeled job descriptions.

I’ve spent weeks combing through listings for Customer Advocate, Customer Success, and Service Representative roles — only to open them and find phrases like “must meet monthly sales goals,” “required to upsell,” or my personal favorite, “incentivized by conversions.”

Excuse me, but if the job comes with a quota, that’s not advocacy - that’s sales in a polite hat.

There’s a massive difference between helping customers solve problems and helping the company hit quarterly revenue targets. Both are valid professions. Both require skill. But they are not the same thing - and calling one the other helps exactly no one.

When I apply for a Customer Advocacy role, I expect to be advocating — not ambushing. I’m looking to build relationships, solve issues, and improve systems that actually serve people. If I wanted to push product bundles or chase commission bonuses, I’d go back to selling Girl Scout cookies in 1989 — and trust me, I was good at it.

Here’s the thing: words matter. When you label a sales position as advocacy or support, you waste the time of qualified applicants who genuinely want to serve customers — not sell to them. You also set up future employees for frustration when they realize the job description was written by someone who clearly doesn’t understand the role.

So please, hiring teams of the world:
If your “Customer Care” position involves a sales quota, label it Sales.
If it involves supporting clients, label it Service.
And if it involves standing up for customers inside your company, that’s Advocacy and some of us are out here looking for exactly that.

Because nothing says “we care about accuracy and transparency” like a company that… actually practices accuracy and transparency.

Until then, I’ll be over here, free-range and caffeine-fueled, hunting for job descriptions that tell the truth.