"Difficult to manage" is rarely about your work. It's about how much energy you cost the person responsible for you — and almost no one will say that to your face.

Nobody is going to tell you this. So I will.

Two-thirds of managers avoid or delay giving critical feedback. So the odds that anyone has told you this directly — whatever "this" is for you — are low. Not because it isn't true. Because saying it out loud costs them something too.

I'm Deepali Vyas, your Elite Recruiter. Over 25 years of sitting on both sides of the hiring table, I've watched the same pattern play out again and again: talented people quietly get labeled "difficult to manage," nobody ever says it to them, and it shapes every decision made about their career from that point forward — who gets the stretch project, who gets defended in the room, who gets let go first when things get tight.

None of this is about being good at your job. Every person I've watched get stuck on this was competent, which is exactly why nobody wanted the conversation. "Difficult to manage" is rarely about performance. It's about how much energy you cost the person responsible for you, and that number gets weighed every time your name comes up for something.

Seven is where to start. Next time you get feedback — any feedback, even feedback you disagree with — say nothing except thank you and one clarifying question. Then take a week before you push back or explain yourself.

I use a few different AI tools depending on the job, but ChatGPT is where almost everything starts. Before it's a newsletter section, a script, or a client email — it's a messy conversation with ChatGPT where I'm still figuring out what I actually think.

That's the role it plays for me: first-draft thinking. Not the polished version. The version where I'm talking something out, testing an angle, seeing what holds up. It's fast enough and unstructured enough to keep up with how my brain actually works before an idea is ready to be organized.

The bigger shift for me this year has been connecting ChatGPT directly to my Gmail. Once it's connected, it can read context from my actual threads — who I'm talking to, what was already said, what's still open — and draft a reply that isn't generic, because it knows what it's replying to.

1 It drafts. It does not send. That's the rule I keep, on purpose. Every email it writes sits in draft form until I've read it, edited it, and decided it actually sounds like me. AI-written tone mistakes in a client or candidate email cost more than the time I save skipping the review.

2 It clears the backlog faster. Instead of staring at 40 unread emails and drafting each reply from a blank line, I open each one to a draft that's already 80% of the way there. I'm editing, not generating — which is a much faster place to start from.

3 It keeps my tone consistent when I'm moving fast. On the days I'm bouncing between a dozen different conversations, having a first draft that already reflects how I usually write means I'm not accidentally sending something clipped or off-tone because I was rushing.

ChatGPT's Gmail connector can technically send an email on your behalf with your approval, but you don't have to use that setting. I keep mine in draft-only mode: it writes, I review, I hit send myself, every time. If you connect any AI tool to your inbox, know exactly what permission you're giving it before you turn it on.

Next week: Claude — and how I'm using it differently for the research and long-form side of putting this newsletter together.

Parents... We Need to Talk.

Calling the recruiter. Showing up at the job fair. Sitting off camera during the interview. Calling after they get fired to ask for another chance. That's not support. That's sabotage.

I read something this week that stopped me mid-scroll. The Wall Street Journal reported on a trend that's become common enough to have its own name in recruiting circles: "co-piloting" — parents actively managing their adult children's job searches and early careers. Not advice over dinner. Active management.

Calling recruiters to ask why their kid didn't get the job. Showing up at job fairs and handing out the résumé themselves. Sitting off-camera during a Zoom interview. Calling an employer hours after their 24-year-old gets fired, pleading for a second chance.

As an executive recruiter, I can tell you this with complete confidence: the workplace rewards independence, accountability, and resilience. Those qualities aren't developed when someone else is fighting your battles for you.

Here's my honest question, and I mean it: if a candidate's parent called you after the interview, would you still hire them?

I'm genuinely so proud of this one. It's called Corporate Confessions, and the first episode is live — real, unfiltered stories from inside the corporate world that I haven't been able to tell in a newsletter format.

This is just the start. There's a lot more coming — deeper dives, longer conversations, more of the stuff that doesn't fit into a five-minute read. If this newsletter is useful to you, I'd love for you to subscribe to the podcast too — we go even further on the same topics you're already reading here.

You can subscribe and watch on YouTube or listen to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, etc…👇🏼

Until next week,

You’ve got the Edge. Now sharpen it.

Until next week,

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