“Am I insensitive?”: Grow Sciences CEO floats charging job hunters to apply

Mike Cuthriell, CEO at the Arizona based cannabis company Grow Sciences, has copped the ire of the LinkedIn community after floating the idea of having job applicants pay a small fee to apply.

“Am I insensitive to the world”, he asked, “if I think people should pay a small fee ($20?) to apply for a job, as a means to prevent an overwhelming quantity of under qualified or mismatched submissions?”

To sum it up, ‘Yes’ was the response.

“Well insensitive isn’t the first word that comes to mind but yeah sure let’s go with that”, said one response.

Many others accused Cuthriell of simply trying to generate more revenue off job hunters or reminding those in the thread that people seeking roles, particularly those who are unemployed, apply for many jobs at a time and would find the prices would add up.

After the response, Cuthriell added an ‘Edit’ to his original post, assuring all that it was a “thought exercise” and not a practice or consideration. He has also closed the comments.

Cuthriell, who co-founded Grow Sciences, used one response in the thread to assure his audience that he is no stranger to the hard yards and the founder’s struggle.

“Been out of work, lived paycheck to paycheck, and comp has been 100% variable for a decade due to being an owner/founder. When there’s profit, I eat. When there’s loss, I scramble. Invested many of my limited dollars, and thousands of hours trying to make it on my own b/c it motivated me. Many risks, seeking rewards.”

Grow Sciences was founded in 2017 and according to its LinkedIn page, now has 24 employees. It currently has positions open for a marketing manager and a cultivation technician. Many suggested he employ a hiring manager in the comments under his post.

Do CEO faux pas come in twos?

In April, MillerKnoll CEO Andi Owen‘s ‘leave pity city’ rant went viral then Clearlink CEO James Clarke took potshots at working mothers and praised an employee who sold the family dog so he could return to the office (that one‘s still the high watermark for out-of-touch, entitled, and frankly unusual CEO-thought, if you ask me).

This season it was AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes, who posted a photo of himself receiving a topless massage mid-meeting, then Cuthriell’s post two days ago.

Although Optus CEO’s statements yesterday in response to one barber’s experiences due to the mass outage could suggest that this time around, it’s come in threes.