<p>This young woman posted a scathing letter she received from the local “Communicator of the Year” who runs an Internet job board. It went viral and led to an eventual apology from the letter writer. Both their names are now all over the news and Internet.</p>
<p>I have since heard some statements from the talking heads on the news stating that the young woman has severely hurt her job prospects. </p>
<p>The job applicant was young and naive. Kelly could have simply written to her, asking for her interests, her resume. I don’t see what the girl did initially, besides leaving out her goals and qualifications, that set Kelly off into a tirade. What the girl did afterwards showed her immaturity. I think both people hurt themselves when this went public.</p>
<p>It seems to me that “going public” with things always carries a great risk. I don’t think either of them is helped by this, but the one who feels wronged in the first place is the one who needs a job. You get jobs from people who want to hire you…not from people who sympathize with you. </p>
<p>It could hurt both people… These days when hiring, employers often do at least a cursory search of the top contenders before hiring. it’s so easy to do with internet, google, search engines and services and the capability right in ones phone. I see people fact checking and name searching in course of conversations these days. </p>
<p>So it depends on how the employer perceives all of this. IMO, most people don’t want to do a long search and investigate these things unless the job candidate is such a rare standout that finding another like him/her would be very difficult. You see some flags and you just go to the next candidate, especially in this job market when the stack is high with applicants. So, unless this strikes a positive chord with an employer, any flap, controversy, mixed publicity is likely to be something that strikes you off the list. </p>
<p>I don’t blame Kelly for being annoyed. But obviously she should have expressed it more diplomatically. Her emails were the kind of thing one writes to vent, then erases. There really isn’t any excuse for Diana’s behavior. The smart response would have been an apologetic note giving the needed information.</p>
<p>Nobody wants to hire a whistle-blower, just as no professor wants to teach a student with a reputation for filing complaints and appeals. I don’t mean that doing so is always wrong. But it carries a risk, and young people need to know that. You have to weigh the benefits against the potential losses.</p>
<p>It could hurt her, I am sure there are employers who would look at that and see it as a negative. On the other hand, given how stupid the women who wrote the scathing responses were, it could also touch a chord of sympathy in some hiring managers, given that almost all of us have had to deal with a bully or someone acting inappropriately, so it may not (I suspect it also depends on the hiring managers tolerance of bullying behavior and so forth, if they think this kind of response was okay i.e berating the girl, they might think it was okay and the girl was wrong).</p>
<p>I am sure this Kelly woman gets a lot of stupid requests and such, but her behavior for a ‘seasoned professional’ is idiotic and unprofessional. She could have simply rejected the linked in request, and sent her a note saying “I can’t help you unless you are willing to help me help you…you didn’t mention your experience nor did you mention what you are looking for, and without that I cannot help you. Also importantly, you sent me a request to be connected on Linked In, which was inappropriate on your part, given that I don’t know you and that is a tool for professional connections, not casual connections.” Part of the problem is a lot of young people treat linked in like facebook, on FB having ‘casual’ links is the norm…</p>