FC Experts Blogs
December 20, 2007
Careers: Personal Branding No Nos
I got stood up this week. My new hire, Chris, left me a voicemail one hour before he was to begin his first day on the job to tell me he wasn’t coming. He had accepted another job for more money and benefits.
It’s not a new story. I’m sure most people in a hiring capacity have similar tales of woe to report. But it’s a good lesson in personal branding. Chris certainly burned his bridges with me besides failing Ethics 101. While it’s certainly important to further your career, there’s no advantage doing it at someone else’s expense. Chris surely didn’t get his offer one hour before he called to kiss me off. No reason he couldn’t have called me the week before. Not that the outcome would have been different in my case; but it would have made a world of difference in my opinion of him.
Rule Number Two in personal branding and career management is not to burn bridges. The person you write off today could be in a position to further your career tomorrow. Rule Number One is to behave ethically. Sure, you can get ahead by stomping on others – and history of course is filled with villians who have profited off of other’s misery. But, in the end, beside behaving like a heel and hurting others, you’ve stained your own good name.
In the spirit of the holidays, let’s remember that in business as in life, giving is what makes us human and enobles our souls.
A warm and wonderful holiday season and a New Year filled with promising new opportunities and the continual joy of self-discovery and helping others.
And much personal branding success!
Wendy Marx, Personal Branding and Public Relations, Marx Communications
Posted by Wendy Marx at December 20, 2007 9:36 AM | Topic: careers |
11 Comments
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Hi Wendy,
I really wanted to show your blog content to my team members. Yes, I did encounter similar problems.
One of my members said something to me while he basically lied to me. What he said was actually an information required by our client personnel, and he lied .....
By doing so he will not basically be able to be part of my next projects anymore.
My boss also experienced the same experience as yours. His new hire, who supposed to join my team, rejected the job offer only at last minute chance (I made some preparation to help him on-board), with the reason that he got a raise in his current post. He did use the job offer to get a raise on his job.... Wow...
I can certainly empathize with your situation. A business needs to run on expectations that hired help will show up and be productive.
On the other hand, companies and corporation wouldn't think twice about canning someone in a heartbeat. I know plenty of people who were passed a pink slip and escorted out of the building within ten minutes.
So, deal with it. He found a better job that pays more. It sounds like you got smacked down. See how it feels? This is why I'm self-employed now. I'm only accountable to one person: myself.
"In the spirit of the holidays, let’s remember that in business as in life, giving is what makes us human and enobles our souls."
Pah-lease. Did you get this off your corporate calender stapled to the wall in your cubicle?
--Steven
Eri,
Thanks for sharing your experience. Unethical behavior unfortunately isn't a rare commodity. Fortunately, there are enough ethical people around, however, to make up for the rotten ones. It's a shame though that we sometimes have to be hurt before we realize whom we can trust.
Correction to my post to Steven above: here by should be hereby. Unfortunately, the FC software doesn't let you change anything once you post.
Let's consider some additional ethical questions:
1. What commitment do you have to protecting the identity of your new hires? I hope his name was changed.
2. Is it ethical to judge the needs and intentions of another individual without opening the lines of communication? Based on the post, we don't know when he received the other job offer...we only have your assumption. Based on this assumption, you made a judgment on a person's character and then painted him in a negative light. There was no follow up to see if there were other reasons he chose not to join your organization. Maybe he had some misgivings about your organization. There may be some valuable lessons that you could learn about your own organization. Instead, conclusions were drawn without communication.
3. If Chris reads this, what bridges have you burned? How has your brand of professional conduct been compromised? I certainly wouldn't want to join your organization. The fear that my actions and statements would be judged, possibly misconstrued, and then shared with a large audience would be frightful. Particularly knowing that prior to posting editorial comments, facts would not be clarified and confirmed.
Ethics is a tricky but important endeavor. Prior to judging the ethics of others, its important to stop and spend time analyzing our own ethics. Sometimes the most important ethical lessons come from our own actions and not from the actions of others.
There is no excuse for "Chris'" actions regardless of what others may think. Based on the post, I'm inclined to think that "Chris" is a very young person, possibly in college or just out of college, with only one thing on his mind...Himself and money.
I'm 28 and I hold a BS in Computer Science and a MBA. I'll be honest and say that I'd leave my current organization without a second thought if I were offered a position that would take me to the next step in my career. I'd do it professionally, though. I would not leave everyone I work with in a bind.
Jeanne,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Regarding your points:
No one's identity was compromised here.
The issue is not when he or she received the job offer but when I was told. I had had previous conversations with "Chris" up until the Friday before he was to report to work. I don't think someone should tell someone one hour before he is to show up for work that he isn't coming. That to me is akin to being stood up at the altar. I do fully support your point about continually evaluating one's own organization and searching for ways to improve it.
In this case, the post was delivered anonymously and was meant to illustrate a larger point, not to embarrass or harm anyone. No offense can be taken with an anonymous post.
I certainly agree that we need to examine our own ethics.
...and then there's those of us (myself included) who were promised a job offer (in writing - though, informally via email) only to have the hiring manager change their minds two weeks later. Because I believed this person to be good good for their word, I put other opportunities on the backburner. Or, on a similar note, a year ago I took a "contract to hire" job only to later find out that the company never had any intention of hiring me and had misled to me about the status of a major contract I was brought on to support.
So, I agree with the other posters - the reason for this person's behavior is a direct result of lack of professionalism coming from the other side. Not to mention today's "at will" employee policies. Personally, I still try to adibe by what I perceive to be professional standards, but now that this behavior of mine has been taken advantage of on more than one occassion - I'm beginning to think that I'm a sucker for doing so.
Sorry to hear about your misfortune regarding job offers. Unfortunately, there is a lack of professionalism, as your experience demonstrates, on both sides of the equation -- the hiring manager and the person being hired.
The only thing we can do is protect ourselves. On the hiring side that means having back up candidates lined up; and on the employee's side have other job possibilities in reserve. And, in today's "who can you trust?" environment, get an employment contract.
Steven K (at #2) has a point.
Remember what those fad-ish layoffs in the '80s and '90s did to employee loyalty? -- i.e., it doesn't exist anymore. Many business owners are simply reaping what they've sewn. And anyone who has personally, or had a family member/friend who has been abruptly let go will always -- always -- remember it.
I've always tried to make a point of not to burning any bridges on my end -- and as a result, I've sometimes been in a position where I could help, or benefit from, a former employer/employee's network.
However, this is also a result of my long-standing practice of simply not working with people I can stand, or don't/can't respect.
I WANT to help those I respect. And putting talented people in touch with one another offers a kind of rush all of its own.
Just curios, what if Chris somehow received an offer of say $20k more after he had accepted your offer. Perhaps he even milled it over some time before eventually deciding.
I’ll share something similar that happened to me during the dot com boom. After graduate school I had just returned from Europe, was newly engaged and had just started looking for a job. Within two weeks I had no less than three offers, all at various stages.
One week before this I had also interviewed at GE. I had been interested in the position, and had run an all day gauntlet interview with 8 or so interviews. My recruiter told me that they would not extend an offer.
Interestingly the recruiter called back the following week and said there had been an error, GE wanted me. Apparently one of the lower level managers had voted against me, but the head of this particular new department clearly felt I was right for the job.
I now had 4 choices, GE and three somewhat smaller companies. I was able to eliminate two of the options rather quickly but found choosing between GE and the other smaller more exciting companies more difficult.
The independent recruiter who had introduced me to GE was immediately putting pressure on me to choose. She actually said that “GE expects a decision within 24 hours; they want to hire people who know what they want…” I’m not sure whether the recruiter was lying to me or if this is really GE practice, either way, I think it’s pretty stupid.
I told her I needed at least 48 hours, when she called back I had been in discussions with the smaller more exciting co. and they were willing to offer me a significantly larger sign on bonus as well as larger salary, however I had not yet gotten a contract from them. My only choice was to say yes to GE, “after all it was GE”.
Later the smaller company got back to me with a contract for the larger sum. I apologized and said that I had already accepted an offer from GE. The hiring manager at the smaller co. said, “Wow, I really didn’t think you were the type to go for GE”, meaning that I would prefer the excitement and opportunity in his company over the plutocracy at GE. His words festered in my head the next couple days, and I decided to cancel my commitment to GE.
When I told the recruiter she exploded with anger. She probably already had plans for the commission she thought she had earned. I’ve got to say I wasn’t too sorry. After all, not only would I be working for more money at a more exciting company, but in a way I had done to GE exactly what they had done to me.
Just another perspective on the above. In the end I hope we all want employees working for us who really want to be there and not employees who somehow feel obligated to do so. As someone above pointed out, the old contract between management and employees on lifelong employment possibilities are extinct. So you can’t expect employees not to put their best interests first either. This doesn’t mean that I’m not trustworthy or loyal. I would say that anyone who knows me either personally or professionally would tell you that I am one of the most dependable people they know.