Bloggers disadvantaged in the hiring process?
We’ve previously covered many blogger-termination stories.
Now we’ve run across an interesting and very controversial opinion about how blogging may harm one’s future employment prospects, as well as a couple of more fired-blogger stories to add to the opus.
Start here: “Bloggers Need Not Apply,” by Ivan Tribble in Chronicle Careers, a feature of the online Chronicle of Higher Education.
Tribble describes a college faculty search at “Quaint Old College” in which some bloggers were among the semifinalists — until the search committee saw their blogs, which were “as eye-opening as a train wreck.”
Tribble says:
The pertinent question for bloggers is simply, Why? What is the purpose of broadcasting one’s unfiltered thoughts to the whole wired world? It’s not hard to imagine legitimate, constructive applications for such a forum. But it’s also not hard to find examples of the worst kinds of uses.
He points out potential blog misuses such as allowing the blog to become “a therapeutic outlet, a place to vent petty gripes and frustrations stemming from congested traffic, rude sales clerks, or unpleasant national news.”
Worst of all, for professional academics, it’s a publishing medium with no vetting process, no review board, and no editor. The author is the sole judge of what constitutes publishable material, and the medium allows for instantaneous distribution. After wrapping up a juicy rant at 3 a.m., it only takes a few clicks to put it into global circulation.
Tribble goes on to discuss three job seekers whose blogs were their undoing:
1) “Professor Turbo Geek”: Whose blog “quickly revealed that the true passion of [his] life was not academe at all, but the minutiae of software systems, server hardware, and other tech exotica.” The committee’s view: “It’s one thing to be proficient in Microsoft Office applications or HTML, but we can’t afford to have our new hire ditching us to hang out in computer science.”
(George asks the committee: If you think that’s what he really wants to do, why do you suppose he applied for the academic job? Why don’t you just ask him how he sees his blog and tech interests relating to the job?)
“Professor Shrill”: Whose “strictly personal blog . . . scrupulously avoided comment about the writer’s current job, coworkers, or place of employment,” but mentioned personal matters and opinions about which the committee would never ask a candidate. Since Professor Shrill volunteered this information on the blog, instead of in response to improper questioning, the committee was “all ears.” It concluded: “a little therapy . . . might be in order.”
(George asks the committee: If you recognize certain information is irrelevant and therefore would never dream of asking about it, why would you base a decision on it when you stumble across it in the blog?)
“Professor Bagged Cat”: Who had already “royally bombed” his interview, when the committee discovered in the blog of a close associate that his “research was not as independent or relevant as he had made it seem.”
Some concluding “lessons” from Tribble:
Job seekers who are also bloggers may have a tough road ahead, if our committee’s experience is any indication.You may think your blog is a harmless outlet. You may use the faulty logic of the blogger, “Oh, no one will see it anyway.” Don’t count on it. . .
The content of the blog may be less worrisome than the fact of the blog itself. Several committee members expressed concern that a blogger . . . might air departmental dirty laundry . . . on the cyber clothesline for the world to see. Past good behavior is no guarantee against future lapses of professional decorum. . . .
More often than not, . . . the blog was a negative, and job seekers need to eliminate as many negatives as possible.
We all have quirks. In a traditional interview process, we try our best to stifle them, or keep them below the threshold of annoyance and distraction. . . It’s in your interest, as an applicant, for them to stay hidden, not laid out in exquisite detail for all the world to read. . .
Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we . . . called up their blogs, we got to know “the real them” – better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn’t want to know more.
Ironically (or perhaps not), the author writes pseudonymously, identifying himself only as “a humanities professor at a small liberal-arts college in the Midwest.”
As one might expect, this article made a loud splash in the blogosphere, particularly among blogging professors and graduate students.
A Google search for the article title yields at least 9 pages of relevant results commenting on it.
Here are a few I liked:
My favorite, from Stephen Downes of Stephen’s Web:
It’s ironic to see this author warning about your blog making you look like an idiot without any warning about doing the same in a column for the Chronicle. That is probably why the article is published under a pseudonym. The real miscreants are the editors of the Chronicle for publishing this drivel, a screed based neither in an understanding of blogging nor in sound advice for applicants and potential employers. Yes, let’s keep our lives secret before we take a new position; that will make it much more certain the job will be a good fit. Rubbish.
Professional-Lurker blog, recipient of Best Research Based Blog High Esteem ranking in the 2004 EduBlog Awards, and a co-author on the winning paper Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs in the 2004 EduBlog Awards, writes: “Bloggers need not apply…interesting.”
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum explains: “Why I Blog Under My Own Name (and a Modest Proposal)” and draws comments with many examples of positive connections forged through blogging, including some job opportunities.
tygar-blog.com suggests the whole piece was bogus.
Timeline, a grad student’s blog, has this: “Bloggers Need Not Apply?!”
Planned Obsolescence draws good comments from this post: “Bloggers Need Not Apply”
The days and nights (well, some nights) of Terri Senft has this post and lots of comments: “Re: Bloggers Need Not Apply”
accidentals and substantives: “stigma of new media”
Metafilter has this thread: “Bloggers Need not Apply”
Conglomerate asks dramatically: “Is Blogging Career Suicide?”
Anne Galloway writes in purse lip square jaw: “Got blog? No job!”
apophenia :: making connections where none previously existed writes: “‘bloggers need not apply’: maintaining status quo in academia”
Law Professor Ann Althouse headlines her comments: “Academic appointments committees that fear the blogger.”
As with the fired blogger stories, I have sympathies on both sides.
As a blogger, I would encourage prospective employers to be more open-minded than the fictitious Professor Tribble. On the other hand, I would also encourage fellow bloggers (and myself) to always write with some care. You never know who may read your blog. That does not mean you can’t be yourself, though.
As an advisor to employers, I see a potentially valuable — but also potentially dangerous — opportunity for obtaining additional prehire information on prospective employees.
Valuable because a blog may disclose facts that are clearly disqualifying, such as the misrepresentation by Tribble’s “Professor Bagged Cat.” One might find, for example, that an applicant falsely claims to have a college degree, having blogged about the events leading up to dropping out prior to graduation.
Dangerous because a blog may disclose information an employer may not lawfully rely upon in a hiring decision. One might find, for example, that an applicant blogged about being pregnant and planning to stay home with the baby, about having a disability, or about using much FMLA time to care for a terminally ill family member.
And the applicant may be able to determine from activity logs — and document for litigation purposes — that the employer viewed the blog shortly before the negative hiring decision.
One more point. I see a strange analogy to another topic that’s been popular on this Blawg: tatoos and body piercings.
With blogs as with body art, older and more conservative managers may harbor strong and somewhat irrational prejudices, as Tribble expressed.
With blogs as with body art, the distasteful phenomenon will become increasingly difficult to avoid, and increasing numbers of otherwise desirable applicants will be bloggers, even bloggers who may have said some controversial or personal things.
With blogs as with body art, employers hiring members of the younger generation — who are quite likely to be blogged and body arted — will have to learn to deal with it, or risk losing out on needed talent.
On to two more actual controversies between employers and bloggers.
American Lawyer Media’s Daily Business Review has this: “Nasty times at New Times”
Blogging employees are reported to have caused “major turmoil” at the Miami New Times, “the alternative weekly newspaper . . . known for exposing seamy doings elsewhere, . . . generat[ing] weeklong, unpaid suspensions of the two editors and the paper’s star columnist, . . .who had confronted the editors over their blogs earlier this month.”
An employer-side employment attorney commented that the blogged comments were legally actionable [as defamation?], and “[i]f management did not take action to stop such conduct, . . . the company could face liability on a vicarious liability theory.”
One of the objectionable blog postings was in repsonse to a gender discrimination EEOC charge by a former subordinate of the blogger. It involved “a series of derogatory remarks” and “expressed jealousy over the former reporter’s possible romantic relationship with a former . . . staffer with whom [the blogger] also had a relationship.” The “most strident post” “criticized the former reporter’s appearance, professional skills, sexual conduct, and mental stability.” Other present and former employees were referred to by name as “totally nasty, mean, classless girls.”
The other blog, subtitled “Sex and the Single Librarian” (the blogger was a former librarian) “made nasty comments about [a former staffer's] physical appearance, weight, and sexual morals.”
More bad examples. You would think that professional journalists, like most blogging lawyers and other professionals, would find plenty to blog about without turning their blog into a forum for personal vendettas. I’d fire them.
Note I said “most blogging lawyers.” Next is an exception.
Earlier this month, All Deliberate Speed posted: “Ohio Prosecutor Fired for Blogging,” linking the blog post that caused the problem (”I Hate Cowardice”). Did this fellow run down his colleagues by name? No. He led off somewhat cautiously:
I am so angry that I can’t sleep. My anger is leftover from an incident at work that, for work-related reasons, I can’t get into here. Suffice to say, I have never been so incensed and angry at work before today. My sleepless angst comes down to one word: cowardice. It makes me want to be ill to see Evil win battles large and small because the people who are in a position to fight Evil retreat out of fear of failure.
Now, despite his delicate attempt to stay out of trouble by leaving out details, he clearly did say this much: he considers someone in this prosecutor’s office a coward for not fighting harder against evil, presumably by deciding not to prosecute a tough case or pleading it out too easy.
And the people to whom he refers, though not identified by name, probably recall the disagreement that made this blogger so angry. Moreover, regardless of whom he calls a coward, this is still public disparagement of his superiors.
Having said that, differences of opinion are probably not that uncommon in prosecutors’ offices. On the other hand, “evil” and “cowardice” is strong language.
Finding good lawyers willing to work for the low pay in prosecutors’ offices is always a challenge. Turnover is high. A guy or gal who demonstrates they have this kind of fire in their belly — being morally motivated to go to trial against evil criminals — could be a real asset to such an office. Even a quick look at his blog shows he’s not motivated by money, but by a vision of being a crimefighter.
One more point. Check out the termination letter (.pdf). Notice anything? Where’s the reason for termination? (It’s not there.)
A bit of advice to employers: avoid such “plain vanilla” termination letters. Commit your reason for termination to writing, not in infinite detail, but in a few very carefully chosen words or sentences. This vague reference to a “meeting and conversations” just invites suspicion and trouble.
The fired employee may suspect that reasons other than those given orally were the true reason, because it’s suspicious that the employer wouldn’t put the stated reasons in writing (inviting a “pretext” discrimination case).
Also, the employee is free to later describe what was said in the meeting and conversations very diferently than what really happened (wilfully or due to selective or distorted memory).
For the former prosecutor’s life after termination, read his continuing blog, Ragged Edges. One of his projects is participating in a Christian group blog. Perhaps a safer forum for discussions of Good and Evil?
Additional detail just discovered: this blogging prosecutor had just taken a 10-week paterntiy leave, and written this in the baby blog:
Turned out that my brain actually worked harder during my time off than before it, largely due to doing a lot of thinking and writing on a wide variety of issues on my blog. By comparison, my job can be quite mundane when I’m not in trial. . . . It’s not that I dread going back to work - I don’t. I’m just not excited or anxious at all at the prospect, and that surprises me a great deal. I didn’t think I’d feel this way about going back to work when I last was at work.
This sort of candor doesn’t make employers feel like they have an employee with fire in his belly. Mom and baby are cute as pie, and I certainly wish all three the best as they respond to the challenge of this job loss.
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