Actions and Consequences

Every child learns this lesson early - do something bad, and sooner or later you'll be punished.  You might skate the first time, maybe the second, but eventually your actions catch up with you and you get caught.  That's when the curtain gets lowered and you have to face the music.



Somebody needs to alert the business world about this.

Two things happened last week that made me think of this oh-so-obvious parental lesson that seems to have been forgotten.  The first was a phone call I got from a friend of mine in Florida who wanted to hire an associate for his financial planning office.  To make a long story short, he went to a job fair and spent an evening talking with people and collecting resumes.  Afterward, he spent a few hours sorting the resumes until he had what he thought were fifteen promising candidates.  He then invited them all to an "office open house" to see which might make a good fit for his firm and which might be good fits for people he knew who were also looking for help. 

You know how many people showed up?  Five. 

"I couldn't believe it," he told me.  "I mean, I know the job market is bad, but what kind of world is it where fifteen people RSVP and then only five actually show up?"  I asked him what the ones who did show up had to say.  His answer surprised him but not me.  "That was the really sad part," he said.  "They told me they were so burned out by going to so many events only to be disappointed that they weren't even sure it was worth the effort any more." 

Much to my surprise, I found myself telling him I completely understood their perspective - both those who bothered to show up and those who weren't really sure it would be worth the effort.  Why did I feel this way?  Well, that brings me to the second incident from last week.  Check out this e-mail I received from a prominent local firm that's looking to hire: 

----- Forwarded Message ----

From: XXXXX Human Resources <humanresources@XXXXX.com>
To: John  <jxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com>
Sent: Thu, September 30, 2010 1:58:49 PM
Subject: PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT MANAGER - XXXXX at XXXXX

John,

We appreciate your interest in the PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT MANAGER - XXXXX position. Although this position has been closed or cancelled, we will retain your candidate file in our database and will inform you of job openings that match your profile if you selected this option. Please visit the Career Section on our web site to review our available positions and apply to those of interest.

We thank you for your interest in XXXXX.

Best regards,

XXXXX Recruiting & Workforce Planning
 
 
Notice the bold italics (emphasis mine).  This firm either sends out or posts so many different positions that it later cancels that it's forced to include this wording as part of its automated responses.  This means anyone looking for a job with this company and who carefully crafts a resume - or worse, spends at least an hour or two on the Web site meticulously documenting every job they've ever had, which years they spent at which firm, who they worked for, whom the firm can contact as a reference, etc. - can find that the reward for all this effort is not, "Sorry, we won't be interviewing you" but instead, "Oh, that position?  Yeah, it was canceled.  But thanks for playing!" 
 
Multiply this by dozens of similar experiences and who can blame people for becoming so jaded and burned out that they wonder if it's even worth making the effort any more to lobby for a position?  Much like the child who puts his hand on a hot stove one too many times, sooner or later getting burned gets pretty old. 
 
Except it's not just the out of work employee who suffers, it's businesses like my friend's who actually want to hire people but who find their efforts stymied by the questionable practices of others that leave the workforce burned out and reluctant to make what should be just an honest effort for an honest shot at a job. 
 

Or, to put it another way, actions by some have consequences for others - even those they've never met.