St. Louis Business Journal
Damage Control an Important Part of Job Hunting Strategy

By Anna Navarro

April 2003 - Legal considerations have zipped the lips of many employers and prevented them from officially giving bad references. But what do you do if you suspect a well connected colleague is quietly saying negative things about you on the informal grapevine?

Andrew was having trouble closing the deal on getting a job. He had been the Vice President of Medical Affairs for a small hospital that had been acquired by a major healthcare system. He lost his job in the re-organization that followed.

The pattern in his job hunt was depressingly clear. Recruiters would get excited about his background and resume. They would tell him that his references sang his praises. He would have a great first round of interviews and get encouraging feedback from the recruiter. He almost always made the final round of interviews. And then the interest in him would inexplicably turn cold.

If this had happened once I would have chalked it up to normal difficulties in a highly competitive market. But it happened several times in such a consistent pattern that it seemed that there must be some other explanation.

Trouble always seemed to surface in the final round of interviews when employers often start checking personally with their peers to get the inside scoop on an applicant. While they may leave earlier reference checks to recruiters or their staff, in the last stage, they are highly motivated to tap into their own information networks on the final few candidates.

Working with that clue, Andrew and I started dissecting his background to see if we could identify any highly connected person with whom he had tangled in the past. A possible suspect surfaced immediately. Prior to his last position Andrew had been chief of the medical staff of a large hospital. In that role, he had spearheaded the rewriting of the medical staff by-laws to respond to the needs of the evolving healthcare market. In doing so he had alienated a particularly powerful and well known physician, who strongly opposed changes that would affect his practice.

The physician in question had never been in Andrew's direct chain of command, but he served on many boards and professional associations, and participated in countless volunteer medical efforts. Many trusted his judgement. He would be a natural part of the informal grapevine for anyone in the medical community wanting to check references for a candidate associated with the hospital where he was affiliated.

If, as we suspected, he was the source of the problem, what could Andrew do about it? I suggested that Andrew call the physician with whom he'd clashed and ask to see him briefly. During the meeting, I recommended that he say the following: "As you may know, I was laid off from my last position due to a re-organization. I am now out on the job market. You and I had some difficult interactions when I was President of the Medical Staff. I would like to know what you would say if someone called and asked your opinion of me?" I advised Andrew to watch the man's non-verbal reactions carefully.

My hope was that the meeting would have the effect of causing this man to tone down or delete any negative comments for fear of running into legal hassles.

The physician was reluctant to meet with him, but when they did and Andrew asked his question, the man stuttered and mumbled uncharacteristically, and finally said he would say that Andrew was a fair-minded person who had handled some difficult situations well as Chief of the Medical Staff.

To cement this response, I suggested that Andrew ask a close friend who also knew this man to call him and ask for a reference, indicating it was an informal inquiry and that he would keep the information in the strictest confidence. The physician repeated what he had said to Andrew, and nothing else.

We will never really know for sure if this man was confidentially blackballing Andrew. What we do know is that Andrew never again got turned down in the last stages of a hiring situation. He was offered two jobs, turned down the first and accepted the second.

The law has been a great help in insuring that official references do not damage reputations unfairly. But sometimes candidates need to take a step further to deal with well-connected individuals with whom they have had negative interactions.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.