Addressing the past:
Previous actions, relationships can hurt your job chances
That monster underneath your bed? He’s no longer a huge, Sasquatch-like creature sporting mangy fur and pointy teeth. Instead, he’s Jonah from marketing, the guy you continually insult and cut off during meetings. Or she’s Barbara from sales, the woman you undermined while stealing her client. Or maybe he’s Joe from accounting at your previous job, the guy who that one time, made you so angry that you told him to go … well, you get the point.
“The boogeymen in our adult lives are usually the people we’ve wronged in the past,” says Brian Young, a career consultant in New York. “They’re the ones hiding in the closet, waiting to pop out at you at any second. They’re the one who can provide just enough negative goods on you to make an employer move on to the next candidate.”
Young, who is also an attorney, says he used to represent clients who would try to sue former employers or co-workers for slander. “This was before HR departments told their employees to keep their mouths shut when it came to providing references for their former co-workers,” he says. “Now you say ‘yes, she used to work here’ and leave it at that. Before, you could talk someone’s ear off about why a person would be a terrible employee.”
Jason, who doesn’t want his last name used, says he played both sides of the bad-reference coin. “I used to manage this guy who was completely unmotivated. In hindsight, it probably had a lot to do with how I was managing him but at the time, I just wrote him off as a lazy waste of space,” says Jason. “He found a new job, eventually, and a couple of years later, I got a call asking about him as an employee. I basically told the woman on the phone he was awful—lazy, unmotivated, you name it. She said that the info was helpful, thanked me and hung up.”
Fast-forward a few months and Jason sees his former employee, along with his wife and three kids, at Taste of Chicago. They enjoy some small talk and then the employee drops the bomb. “He said something like ‘you kept me from getting a job.’ I don’t know how he knew but he knew.”
At the time, Jason was interviewing for a director position with a large Midwestern bank but didn’t get hired. He later learned through the friend who recommended him
for the position that the bank’s HR department spoke to a few of Jason’s current and former co-workers based on his LinkedIn contact list. One of those contacts referred the caller to Jason’s disgruntled employee and just like that, Jason’s potential as an employee was tarnished by an episode from his past. “It doesn’t have to be a body blow,” says Young. “But a few good jabs are going to leave some
marks. And those marks will be reason enough to offer the job to someone else.”
Making things right
Is it possible to reach back into your past to right a few wrongs and get yourself back in the good graces of the hiring gods. Dr. Steven Horst, a psychologist based in Boston, says you can try to make amends with people in your past but don’t expect too much. “There isn’t a 12-step program for this but you are certainly welcome to call or email someone just to let them know that you feel badly about some of your actions or words from the past and would like to apologize,” Horst says. “In some cases, you’ll hear back from someone but don’t count on it. And if you’re only reaching out because you know that person can do some damage to your career down the road, then it’s going to be pretty obvious. In some ways, that can make the situation worse, so don’t wait until you’re looking for a job to reach out to someone. It’s actually more ideal to reach out when things are going well.”
Still, Horst says instead of looking back, job seekers who regret past behavior should focus on the future. “Learn from your mistakes and move ahead,” he says. “Treat others respectfully and remember that your professional self is a reflection of your personal self. People think they can separate the two, that they can be a ruthless businessman or woman and still maintain a moral center in their personal lives. That’s disingenuous and practically impossible. You’re who you are 24 hours a day, despite your outside appearance. If you can’t reconcile the two, you’ll end up having the same issues with current and future employees.”
Message sent
Alison Herbert says she recently contacted a former boss that she criticized in an email to a prospective manager, a mutual contact who worked at a former competing company. “I basically said I was reaching out as a friend to let her know that the woman she was thinking about hiring was clueless and had set our department back a few years in terms of clients and technology,” Herbert says. “Turns out she read that email to my old boss during the interview and basically gave my boss a chance to turn it around. She didn’t know who sent the email but there were things in that email that could only come from me.”