A Change In Tone

By Jillian O'Malior, Founder & CEO, New World Labs

PUBLISHED: December 2, 2025

Just shy of a year ago, I started my content journey on Substack and on social media. I had been laid off after 7 1/2 years with a recruitment marketing agency, something that was both a shock but not a surprise given the constant chaos surrounding their perpetual realigning and reorganizing. And my goal here was simple: to talk about employer brand, culture, and leadership without the red tape and constraints of aligning to another agency’s voice and perspective. I wanted to be bolder, push the envelope a bit more, and clear out all the unnecessary fluff that typically comes with too many cooks in the brand kitchen.

I had another goal too: while I wanted to take charge of my own consultancy, I also wanted a full-time position somewhere. I wanted to get back to being a brand and culture leader, back to leading a team of creatives and strategists. I wanted to get back to financial stability and growth, and to find a new home for my ideas and my experience.

So I applied. And I networked. And I connected, and I schmoozed, and I extended myself. And I wrote and delivered content, here and on LinkedIn and TikTok, that I thought would position me in the best possible light: bold, sure, but in a palatable, corporate-friendly way. Thinking a few inches outside the box, still close enough to be appealing. Because ultimately, I wanted to show that I’m best when I don’t conform, but I figured I needed to conform a little bit, just to be sure that I was still seen in a sparkling light. That combination would be the winning combination, right?

A year later: no job to be seen, 600+ applications completely rejected or unanswered, 4 final round interviews with zero offers. Some consultancy clients, yes, with good and interesting work, but nothing too steady. And a sinking feeling that my “bold but safe” voice, the voice that ultimately didn’t feel entirely like myself, was just getting lost among the corporate intellectual inbreeding of LinkedIn. Not dry necessarily, but ultimately just serving another version of “good corporate girl.”

And then a couple months ago, something inside me broke.

I. Was. Done.

I couldn’t play the game anymore, not the way I had been. I was giving #girlboss energy, something I have despised my entire career. I had the right insights, I had the right point of view, but the voice was disconnected. I went back and reread all of my content and I couldn’t see myself in it. My thoughts, sure. My experience. But not me.

So I took to TikTok. And I did a video about that exact sentiment; how just a year out of the corporate world had turned me into a nihilist; someone who no longer wanted to participate in a game that seemingly didn’t even want her to play it. I didn’t want to redye my peachy-pink hair, I didn’t want to cover up my tattoos, I didn’t want to stop saying “f*ck” in all my content once I got passionate. I didn’t want to feel like the only version of me that could even make her way to the gameboard was to be a shell of herself in some way.

I was sick of it. Sick of smiling or gently redirecting the bullshit jokes from male leaders. Sick of making sure I delivered critical feedback softly and sweetly. Sick of avoiding topics I was incredibly passionate about, just because it was more important to make the receivers more comfortable than it was to talk about them at all (hello, microaggressions in the workplace). I was sick of making my corporate identity my core identity, since she was just a watered-down version of myself. Here to appease, here to push things a bit, but never to truly step into who she is. I decided that I now refuse to contort myself to be merely tolerated by a system that has proven over the past year that it doesn’t want me.

The response was immediate, and it was incredible. People agreeing with me. People believing in me. People saying “thank god, someone is talking about this.” Because playing the good corporate player game while struggling THIS hard to just find employment feels dystopian. Appealing to a master who leaves you locked outside the gate.

So I kept going. On TikTok, then LinkedIn. I got invited to podcasts, to interviews. To have conversations about doing brand work for people and companies that wanted something that felt more raw, more real, more grounded.

I talked about the job market. About ghost jobs and the mining and selling of candidate data. I challenged other HR leaders creating content about “how to find a job” with stats on just how many jobs they’re ACTUALLY hiring for (spoiler alert: none of them responded). I got myself blocked by LinkedIn influencers and career coaches for challenging their toxic and rage-baiting content. I talked about white women in leadership and the role they’ve played in the erasure of black women in the workplace. I made jokes about Marxism, I compared the Twilight Zone and Groundhog Day to the job seekers’ experience, I exposed scammers and phishing attempts publicly.

I got trolled. I got told to become an escort or an OF creator since “that was the only real value I might bring.” I got called publicly on LinkedIn a “miserable c*nt” just for challenging a guy’s condescending response to a post. I was told I was desperate, pathetic, a “middle age, ugly b*tch who no one in their right mind would want to hire.” I got told to k*ll myself, because that’s what I deserved. I questioned whether I had even a large enough audience for that level of hate; then I remembered that I am a woman using her voice, and incels are gonna incel.

And I got thank yous. I got encouragement. I got people DMing me saying that my content has helped them feel so much less alone in their job search. I heard from my former CEO, my former managers, telling me “keep going, this is great.” For every horrifying, hurtful message, I had dozens of people supporting me. Which made those trolls a lot easier to ignore.

So all of this said: this is the new voice. It’s not going to be corporate-friendly. It’s not going to be appeasing. It’s not meant to please whatever generic leader might want to consider giving me a job.

Moving forward, consider this all a filter: this is me. Jillian.

I am incredibly smart.

I am incredibly talented.

I have a clear and direct point of view on how companies need to operate when it comes to their employees, and I am not going to be shy to tell you about it. I advocate for the people in every way I can. I don’t give a f*ck about making rich people richer, about pleasing shareholders. I respect the companies that invest back in their people and their company. I respect leaders that don’t act like little sheep, following whatever the “cool” tech bro on Bloomberg tells them to do. I respect AI as a tool, but am disgusted with the way companies are worshipping it. I am watching the devaluation of human labor happening in real time, and I am raging as a result.

And I firmly believe there are far more people in corporate America who think like me than not. Far more companies that want to take care of their people before they take care of their board. They just haven’t felt brave enough to say it.

So I’ll say it. I’ll voice it. I’m not scared anymore. The mask is off, and here I am: fully myself, fully owning my voice. Ready, willing, and able to make a change.

Welcome to New World Labs. Let’s f*cking go.