Getting the Reference
Jul. 30th, 2008 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Flattery is like friendship in show, but not in fruit."
- Socrates
There has been a great deal of discussion in my household recently about the job-seeking process. There are certain questions of protocol that never really come up in career centers, job fairs or self-help books. For example: Which font is best for composing résumés? Should "distributes hilarious e-mail forwards" be listed under Key Skills or Published Works? Is it appropriate to dress as formally as possible for an interview, even if wearing wool in the summer months makes you sweat like you're in a prison movie?
One issue that may soon come up for me is a product of my long tenure with a single company. In most cases, I would want to avoid the awkward circumstance of my prospective employer contacting my current employer, and most of my prior employment experience is now nearly a decade old. When it comes time for me to list references, many of my former supervisors are departed and/or dead and the current-day personnel might not remember me at all.
So my list of references is imperfectly populated with some folks who are tenuously near retirement/senility and one other guy: my friend ERD, appearing in the role of my editor at the newspaper for which I occasionally write CD reviews.
It's not like I'm trying to pull a scam or anything. If and when he is called upon, I expect him to take off his friend-cap and put on his editor-helmet, confining his remarks exclusively to our professional relationship. Of course, I expect him to say glowingly complimentary things about me, or else I would never have him as a reference.
But can I really expect him to divorce his personal affection from his professional judgment? Should I even be asking him to make such a compromise? What if he gets carried away?*
*I'm not an employment lawyer, so I don't know what liability exposure would be to ERD if he were to go too far, like suggesting that I had single-handedly cured polio or something. From what I understand, a former employer can be sued for giving a negative review to a prospective employer. Should ERD talk trash about me, the legal system will be the least of his brimstone.
All of this calls into question the true utility of recommendations. Of course you're only going to provide the names and numbers of people who like you. You might as well put your best friend (who can refer to your competence as "outside counsel") or your dad (who hires you on an ad-hoc basis as "a technical support provider") or your ex-girlfriend (who can attest to your customer service skills).
And if anyone out there needs a letter of recommendation or a friendly reference, feel free to mark me down. If I can't be honest, I promise to at least be interesting.
- Socrates
There has been a great deal of discussion in my household recently about the job-seeking process. There are certain questions of protocol that never really come up in career centers, job fairs or self-help books. For example: Which font is best for composing résumés? Should "distributes hilarious e-mail forwards" be listed under Key Skills or Published Works? Is it appropriate to dress as formally as possible for an interview, even if wearing wool in the summer months makes you sweat like you're in a prison movie?
One issue that may soon come up for me is a product of my long tenure with a single company. In most cases, I would want to avoid the awkward circumstance of my prospective employer contacting my current employer, and most of my prior employment experience is now nearly a decade old. When it comes time for me to list references, many of my former supervisors are departed and/or dead and the current-day personnel might not remember me at all.
So my list of references is imperfectly populated with some folks who are tenuously near retirement/senility and one other guy: my friend ERD, appearing in the role of my editor at the newspaper for which I occasionally write CD reviews.
It's not like I'm trying to pull a scam or anything. If and when he is called upon, I expect him to take off his friend-cap and put on his editor-helmet, confining his remarks exclusively to our professional relationship. Of course, I expect him to say glowingly complimentary things about me, or else I would never have him as a reference.
But can I really expect him to divorce his personal affection from his professional judgment? Should I even be asking him to make such a compromise? What if he gets carried away?*
*I'm not an employment lawyer, so I don't know what liability exposure would be to ERD if he were to go too far, like suggesting that I had single-handedly cured polio or something. From what I understand, a former employer can be sued for giving a negative review to a prospective employer. Should ERD talk trash about me, the legal system will be the least of his brimstone.
All of this calls into question the true utility of recommendations. Of course you're only going to provide the names and numbers of people who like you. You might as well put your best friend (who can refer to your competence as "outside counsel") or your dad (who hires you on an ad-hoc basis as "a technical support provider") or your ex-girlfriend (who can attest to your customer service skills).
And if anyone out there needs a letter of recommendation or a friendly reference, feel free to mark me down. If I can't be honest, I promise to at least be interesting.
