20180606233152coutu_we_googled_you
STEP 1: Complete the reading: Coutu, D. (2007).
We Googled You
. Harvard Business Review, 85, 37-41. Reference key ideas in this journal article as you complete the activity.
STEP 2: Conduct Google searches on ONE of the high-profile contemporary individuals listed below.
TIP! Searching the individual’s name in different ways (e.g., first + last name, last name only, nickname, using quotation marks around the individual’s name, etc.) will produce different results. Scroll through the results to see which ones have to do with your selected individual, as opposed to someone who shares that name but is not a high-profile persona.
- Jaron Lanier
- Antonio Garcia Martinez
- Tim Berners-Lee
- Ellen Pao
- Can Duruk
- Kate Losse
- Tristan Harris
- Rich Kyanka
- Sheryl Sandberg
- Ethan Zuckerman
- Pierre Omidyar
- Dan McComas
- Sandy Parakilas
- Guillaume Chaslot
- Tim Cook (CEO of Apple)
- Roger McNamee
- Richard Stallman
- Sean Parker (first president of Apple Corp.)
- Chamath Palihapitiya
- Marc Benioff
STEP 3: As you search and view information on the individual you have selected, take pertinent notes that address the questions below.
STEP 4a (Your Initial Post) directions:
The total word count (your answers to questions 1-8) is around 800-1,000 words.
TIP! Copy-and-paste the questions below and respond to them in your initial posting to make sure that you answer all eight questions.
- Who is the person you selected for the ‘Google Gotcha!’ Activity?
- What does the Internet say about your selected individual generally speaking? Does the person seem to have a positive, negative, or mixed presence on the web?
- What types of information have been collected and/or shared about this individual (e.g., birth date, photos, phone number, address, websites, blogs, social media pages, etc.)?
- Does the information collected about this person and his/her online presence benefit this individual? Does the individual use an “Online Reputation Firm” to promote a positive image (or to downplay negative publicity)? Be specific and give examples.
- Does the information collected about this person and his/her online presence hurt this individual (even for someone with nothing to hide)? Be specific and give examples.
- Does information collected on this individual benefit the search company (i.e., Google)? If yes, in what way? Why would search companies want to collect this information? Again, give concrete examples.
- What advice would you give to this individual about their online presence?
- In addition to searching for the selected individual, do a Google search on your own name. DO NOT WRITE WHAT YOU FIND ABOUT YOURSELF IN THE ASSIGNMENT. Given what you find through the Google search, reflect upon the following questions: What are the implications and ramifications of having private and sensitive information about individuals – and about personally having information (and pictures) about YOU! – readily available on the web for all to see? What are the risks? Do you think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? Why or why not?
Important!: To receive a good grade, you must incorporate concepts presented in the Coutu (2007) – We Googled You article (above) into your initial posting and follow-up postings!
PLEASE REMEMBER TO READ THE ATTACHED FILE
hbr.org | June 2007 | Harvard Business Review 37
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HBR CASE STUDY
HE WIND WAS HOWLING and relentless as Fred Westen
opened the door and called upstairs to tell his wife that
he was home. While he waited for her to come down,
he poured himself a shot of whiskey, tilting the decanter
with his left hand. In his right he grasped the morning’s Wall
Street Journal. The CEO of the luxury apparel retailer Hathaway
Jones wanted to hear his wife’s reaction to a story.
Martha Westen walked almost languorously down the stairs.
She went to the kitchen, poured herself a cup of tea, strolled
into the living room, and nestled in her favorite chair by the fi re.
Fred handed her the paper and directed her attention to the
front page. There she found an article about how an insurer had
rejected a woman’s claim for disability because of chronic back
pain, based on information the company had obtained from her
psychologist’s notes.
Martha shook her head. “It gets worse every day,” she shud-
dered as she envisioned a future in which everyone’s medical
records were posted online. “Even our thoughts aren’t private
anymore.” At 58, Martha didn’t pretend to be an expert on shared
We Googled You
Hathaway Jones’s CEO has found a promising candidate to open the company’s fl agship
store in Shanghai. Should a revelation on the Internet disqualify her now?
by Diane Coutu
T
HBR’s cases, which are fi ctional, present common managerial
dilemmas and offer concrete solutions from experts.
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38 Harvard Business Review | June 2007 | hbr.org
online content or anything else to do
with the Internet. All her information
was limited to what she read in the
popular press.
Which was just enough to keep her
up at night.
“It’s what I keep on telling you, Fred.
There are no secrets now, and we’re
just going to have to learn how to live
with that.”
Martha fell silent, staring moodily
at the fl ickering fi re. Fred was almost
relieved when the telephone rang. He
jumped up to grab the receiver.
At the other end of the line was
John Brewster, Fred’s old roommate at
Andover and now a stringer for a num-
ber of U.S. newspapers in Shanghai.
Although the two had not stayed close
after prep school, they still exchanged
Christmas letters and called each other
occasionally. The men spent a few min-
utes catching up and then John eased
the conversation around to his daugh-
ter, Mimi.
Now in San Francisco, Mimi had
heard that Fred planned to expand
the Philadelphia-based Hathaway Jones
into China, and she wanted to be part
of the move. Fred hadn’t seen her since
she was a teenager, but he remembered
her as poised and precocious in the
way that expatriate kids often are. John
asked Fred if he would meet with her.
“She’s a terrifi c gal,” his old friend prom-
ised, “a real mover and shaker.”
“I look forward to seeing her again,”
Fred said honestly. “Just have her con-
tact my assistant.”
The Candidate
A month later, on the other side of the
country, Mimi Brewster was admir-
ing herself in the bedroom mirror. As
she stared at her refl ection, a trace of
a smile brightened her face. It wasn’t a
smile that Mimi would let everyone see,
but it communicated the satisfaction
she felt with her life. With her bobbed
black hair and Manolo Blahnik shoes,
Mimi felt that she was right on track.
Not quite 30, she was already the kind
of person who made people sit up and
take notice.
“You look terrifi c; he’ll be as wild
about you as I am,” Mimi’s boyfriend,
Chandler, said as he rolled over in bed,
unable to hide his continuing infatu-
ation with Mimi. “He’d be nuts not to
hire you.”
Mimi agreed with Chandler. She
had grown up in China, and she spoke
both Mandarin and a local dialect. Al-
though she had been an average stu-
dent, her profi le had won her admis-
sion to some top colleges, including
two Ivy League schools. She eventually
plumped for Berkeley, where her fa-
ther had gone. There she’d majored in
modern Chinese history and graduated
cum laude.
She had parlayed her college experi-
ence into numerous job offers, fi nally
accepting a position at a management
consultancy, where she got the broad
business exposure she wanted. Her ca-
reer in motion, she applied to an MBA
program two years later, choosing
Stanford over Harvard because she felt
that it was closer to the buzz. She was
recruited after graduation by the West
Coast regional offi ce of Eleanor Gaston,
the largest clothing, shoes, and acces-
sories company in the United States.
There, for the past four years, she’d
shown a sharp eye for the capricious
fashion tastes of the young, newly rich
people in search of something to do
with their dot-com money. Now, with
two successful brand relaunches behind
her, she was looking for some general
management experience, preferably in
a fast-growing market like China.
Mimi walked over to the bed, sat
down, and kissed Chandler playfully on
the lips. “Don’t waste the day chatting
with your Facebook friends,” she told
him. “You’ve got to take Patapouf to the
vet.” Mimi’s Siamese cat was famously
ill-tempered, but he had attitude, and
Mimi warmed to that. She picked up
Patapouf and gave him a hug.
Abruptly, she stood, straightened
her Hathaway Jones interview suit, and
said good-bye. All business now, she
grabbed her bag, her BlackBerry, and
her keys and ran out to catch the fl ight
to Philadelphia.
Bullish on a China Shop
Fred left the house at 5:30 am every day
for his offi ce at 1 Constitution Road. He
had a lot of work to do, and there was
not a moment to waste. Despite sales
of $5 billion in 2006, Hathaway Jones
had fallen on hard times. Four years
ago, the privately owned U.S. retail
chain had recruited Fred because of his
imposing credentials and a lifetime’s
experience of working with luxury
brands and had charged him with wak-
ing up the company’s sleepy, conserva-
tive stores.
It hadn’t been easy. Though aggres-
sive outsourcing to suppliers in Mex-
ico for some of the chain’s lower-tier
brands had helped bring the company’s
margins closer to industry standards,
that was just a start. An avid con-
sumer of his fi rm’s marketing research,
Fred knew that the company’s image
was getting old fast. Younger people
across the United States, where Hatha-
way Jones had 144 shops and outlets,
wanted more affordable clothing, with
more fl air. The trend was starting to
show up in declining numbers for the
company’s high-priced – some said
stodgy – designer clothes. Plans for rad-
ically revamping the company’s image
and product line were in the offi ng.
Fred’s biggest bet, however, was to el-
bow in on China’s luxury goods market,
which was growing by 70% a year. He
had earmarked millions of dollars to
open new stores in three of the largest
cities, including Beijing and Guangzhou,
with the fl agship in Shanghai, China’s
wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city.
Diane Coutu (dcoutu@hbsp.harvard.edu ) is
a senior editor at HBR.
“ It gets worse every day.
Even our thoughts aren’t
private anymore.”
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40 Harvard Business Review | June 2007 | hbr.org
With the plans in place, Fred was fo-
cused on selecting a winning team. “I
wonder what Mimi’s like now?” he
asked himself, eyeing her CV. “Maybe
there’s a way I can fi t her in. Doing a
friend a favor and banking on a ris-
ing star – who knows? This could be a
twofer.”
The First Impression
Mimi was Fred’s last appointment of
the day. “C’mon in!” he boomed, em-
bracing her and inviting her to take a
seat on the couch. Mimi looked around
the corner suite and glanced at a litho-
graph of Hathaway Jones’s fi rst store, a
draper’s shop in Philadelphia. “You’re
the spitting image of your mother,”
Fred said, settling into his soft leather
chair. “Tell me how she’s doing.”
Mimi relayed how after almost 30
years of painting portraits, her mother
had taken up fashion photography to
capitalize on China’s unprecedented
interest in image and celebrity. “It’s
amazing how much appetite the new
middle class has for fashion,” Mimi com-
mented. “Right,” Fred said, adding that
Chuppies – China’s yuppies – couldn’t
seem to get their hands on luxury
goods quickly enough. “Absolutely!”
she said, a little too abruptly. “Every-
body knows that.”
Mimi fi shed around for insights that
would make a smart impression on Fred.
She knew that on the face of it, China
seemed to be all about money. “But if
you talk to senior executives in the big
cities,” she reported intelligently, “Con-
fucianism comes up in every conversa-
tion.” She said that the Chinese wanted
to balance the intense materialism of
the past two decades with some kind
of spirituality and that Fred had better
be prepared to deal with it.
Mimi looked him squarely in the eye.
Clearly, she wasn’t expecting a handout.
She wanted to be part of Hathaway
Jones’s plans to expand into China be-
cause she felt she deserved to be part of
those plans. Indeed, she hoped to lead
the team opening the fl agship store
on Nanjing Road – Shanghai’s version
of Fifth Avenue. “A store is more than
just the look and feel of a brand,” she
said knowingly. “It’s a woman’s fashion
fantasy. I can help you create a fantasy
to die for.” Mimi talked about using an-
cient Chinese archetypes to bring the
company’s brand alive, and Fred was in-
trigued by the pitch. “I’ll open the door
for you and arrange some interviews,”
he said noncommittally, “but after that,
you’re on your own.”
Mimi winked. “Thanks, boss,” she
said, turning on her heel, confi dent that
she was going to be a player at Hatha-
way Jones.
Page Nine News
Virginia Flanders, the vice president of
human resources, was a lifer at Hatha-
way Jones, and as a member of the old
guard, she had not been invited into
Fred’s inner circle. Indeed, the two of
them had been at loggerheads about
the way Fred brought together his top
team. He ignored internal talent and
downplayed the value of HR, relying
overmuch, Virginia thought, on his
sixth sense about who were the right
people to bring on board. It was typi-
cal of the man, she refl ected, that Fred
spoke glowingly about Mimi after just
one interview.
As she put together a fi le on Mimi
for the staff, Virginia had to concede
that the candidate’s letters of recom-
mendation were impressive. Employers
described her as aggressively creative,
original, opinionated, and a risk taker –
perhaps a bit brash for Hathaway Jones,
Virginia thought. She rounded out the
fi le by running a routine Google search
on Mimi. The fi rst hits turned up a res-
taurant owner who shared Mimi’s name.
Virginia narrowed the search by adding
a few parameters – Berkeley, Stanford,
and Mimi’s employer.
It was Virginia’s practice to scan the
fi rst 11 pages of Google results, and on
page nine she glimpsed something that
might cause concern. A story in the
November 1999 issue of the Alterna-
tive Review identifi ed Mimi, fresh out of
Berkeley, as the leader of a nonviolent
but vocal protest group that had helped
mobilize campaigns against the World
Trade Organization.
“That’s odd,” Virginia mused, deciding
to key in “human rights” and “free trade”
along with Mimi’s name. She didn’t ex-
pect to fi nd much, but the search en-
gine came up with several hits. It was
soon clear that Mimi’s involvement
had been more than just a student’s
expression of defi ance. One newspaper
story featured a photo of Mimi sitting
outside China’s San Francisco consulate
protesting China’s treatment of a dis-
sident journalist.
Virginia had just clicked on another
entry when a pop-up notifi ed her of
an e-mail from Fred, canceling their
meeting for later that day. Groaning
inwardly, Virginia typed a short mes-
sage and hit the reply button. She was
going to have to talk with Fred about
this straightaway.
Ex Post Facebook
Fred was in the boardroom wrapping
up a meeting with the senior execu-
tive team; Virginia waited a few mo-
ments, then walked in. He knew her
well enough to see that whatever she
had to say to him wasn’t going to make
him happy. “What’s the problem, Vir-
ginia?” he asked as he snapped his
binder shut.
“I’m afraid we have something of a
situation on our hands,” she began,
priding herself on her ability to remain
objective. “I’ve been Googling Mimi
Brewster, and I think there’s some-
thing we might need to worry about.”
Virginia showed Fred printouts of the
half-dozen or so articles she had found.
Choosing her words carefully, she
pointed out that Mimi could be the
kind of person who could get the com-
pany into trouble in China.
“For heaven’s sake,” Fred said, betray-
ing his irritation. “Google anyone hard
enough, and you’ll fi nd some dirt.” Pri-
vately, however, Fred was relieved that
Virginia hadn’t turned up anything
more recent than eight years ago – and
even more relieved that it wasn’t a pic-
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ture of Mimi half naked on MySpace,
which could really embarrass Hatha-
way Jones.
Fred’s mind moved back in time, re-
membering the 1960s. “Let’s face it,” he
thought a little defensively, he’d “not
inhaled” just like the rest of his friends.
Suddenly he felt a touch of paranoia – or
was it realism? He couldn’t tell.
“Let’s get Mimi back in here to tell
her side of the story,” he said, looking
up at Virginia. He knew enough about
the Internet to understand that anyone
could put information out there.
Virginia blinked anxiously and sug-
gested that Fred might fi rst want to
get some feedback from the company
lawyers. She explained that they were
studying the legal and privacy impli-
cations of Internet searching practices
in an attempt to defi ne an appropriate
position for the company. “It’s a bit risky
letting her know that we’re consider-
ing not hiring her because we Googled
her,” Virginia pointed out. “It might be
safer just to back away before we get
too involved.”
“Maybe,” Fred conceded, acknowl-
edging that he might need to rethink
Mimi’s candidacy. “But people with her
credentials and references don’t walk
in the door of a company like ours ev-
ery day. If she’s swept up by the compe-
tition, there’ll be hell to pay.”
The Decision Point
“Watch out!” Martha shouted as Fred
ignored a yield sign and veered toward
an oncoming car.
Martha and Fred were heading out
for dinner in the city, but Fred’s mind
was a million miles away. “What’s
the matter?” she asked, trying not to
sound intrusive. “Is it something we can
discuss?”
Fred put on his blinker to signal
that he was turning left. He told Mar-
tha what HR had turned up about
Mimi. “What am I supposed to do?”
he brooded. “With everyone’s sins out
there on the Internet, fewer and fewer
young people seem to be coming to us
without any baggage.” He turned on
the car’s defroster and loosened his tie.
“Everyone is going to have to be a little
more forgiving,” he said.
Martha was quiet for a few min-
utes as she tried to process the news.
She didn’t think anyone was going to
just forgive and forget. “Internet post-
ings are like tattoos,” she said, ending
the short silence. “They never go away.
Sooner or later someone else will dig
up this information, and if the wrong
people get hold of it, your China plans
will be derailed.”
Fred quickly glanced at her in surprise.
He’d expected Martha to insist that he
hire Mimi despite the discoveries.
Martha grew impatient with Fred’s
naïveté. The genie was out of the bottle
now. He needed to put business consid-
erations ahead of any hesitation he felt
about using information that turned
up on the Internet.
Fred looked away from Martha and
turned the windshield wipers on high.
Snow was falling fast and hard, and
Fred felt strangely alone. “I don’t know,”
he thought, fl ipping the argument back
and forth. “The problem is that I have
a responsibility to Hathaway Jones to
hire the best people I can fi nd. And how
am I going to do that if I can only con-
sider the ones who have always played
it safe?”
Should Fred hire Mimi despite her
online history? Four commentators offer
expert advice beginning on page 42.
“ People with her credentials and references don’t walk in
the door of a company like ours every day. If she’s swept
up by the competition, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“If you don’t get
the magazine
from the
Rotman School
of Management,
aptly called
Rotman,
you’re making
a mistake.”
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42 Harvard Business Review | June 2007 | hbr.org
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HBR CASE COMMENTARY | Should Fred Hire Mimi Despite Her Online History?
RED WESTEN should certainly follow his
instinct and hire Mimi Brewster if every-
thing else checks out. He should talk to her
and tell her exactly what has come up. He has
little to lose. There’s no legal reason to fear
searching the Internet for information about
your job applicants – an issue arises only if
you unlawfully discriminate against someone
because of what you fi nd. And if CEOs are
looking only for people who are total saints,
and who never did anything that made it onto
the Web, then maybe they’re hiring only un-
interesting people at the end of the day. A
strategy of that sort could backfi re terribly: If
you have nobody with chutzpah in your group,
you will fi nd yourself hurting for leaders.
There may also be another side to the story
discovered by the human resources depart-
ment. Digital information is extremely mal-
leable. Anyone with a tiny bit of expertise can
easily falsify it – for example, by anonymously
lying about someone in a chat room and start-
ing a rumor that catches fi re and becomes a
“truth.” Fallacious remarks travel very, very
quickly online – perhaps even faster than
true information – and it is hard to track them
down and expunge them. So if something that
may or may not be true about a candidate is
raised, it is essential to bring that person in
to clarify the situation. You might also want
to ask them to provide more references for
you to check. Because online information
is so easily falsifi ed – and, plainly, so easily
shared – this second level of interviewing has
become increasingly important.
Presumably, Mimi didn’t call up newspa-
pers and ask them to write articles about her.
But in the culture of “digital natives,” there’s
often an intention to be public. People raised
in the modern computing environment share
information much more promiscuously than
previous generations have. They have a cer-
tain devil-may-care attitude toward things that
other people would probably consider highly
private – compromising photos, embarrass-
ing conversations, and other activities that
they otherwise wouldn’t want their mothers
to know – and they don’t think twice about
revealing them online. That’s not going to
change unless there’s a radical course cor-
rection in social norms.
Given the trend, hiring standards will have
to change, or you just won’t be able to hire
great people. That’s hard for the current crop
of CEOs and HR executives to understand.
Most senior executives are “digital immi-
grants” who have not immersed themselves
in the electronic culture. Baby boomers, and
sometimes younger executives, are trying to
work through their ambivalence toward the
current generation of 20 -somethings, who
increasingly put negative information about
themselves online. The primary diffi culty for
digital immigrants is that they’re fi ghting
against their own instinct, which is to pull the
trigger on the digital natives. The generation
gap will continue to widen until the digital
natives become CEOs and HR executives
themselves.
I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t tell
whether the current revolution is going to
turn out to be permanent or not. My guess
is that we’re headed for a really big backlash
at some point – there are going to be train
wrecks as people who post too much per-
sonal information online begin to realize the
consequences. When they have to explain to
their kids why naked pictures of themselves
at age 25 are on the Internet, some digital na-
tives will have real regrets. That said, I don’t
think those conversations will necessarily dif-
fer much from the ones that people who grew
up in the 1960s had to have with their kids
about drugs and free love.
The primary diffi culty for digital immigrants is that they’re
fi ghting against their own instinct, which is to pull the trigger
on the digital natives.
John G. Palfrey, Jr., (jpalfrey
@law.harvard.edu) is a clinical
professor of law and the exec-
utive director of the Berkman
Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard Law School, in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He is also a founder of RSS
Investors. He writes a blog at
http://blogs.law.harvard
.edu/palfrey/.
F
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HBR CASE COMMENTARY | Should Fred Hire Mimi Despite Her Online History?
Today, qualifi ed candidates can be Googled out of contention
for a job before they even get a foot in the door for an interview.
HE EVOLUTION of online media and
social networking is changing the em-
ployment landscape in many subtle but fun-
damental ways, which most employers and
candidates are only beginning to understand
fully and manage effectively. One of these
shifts is the practice of informally conducting
at least partial online background checks of
individuals prior to interviewing them.
Traditionally, a background check was not
done until after an applicant had gone through
a gauntlet of interviews and been selected
as a fi nalist. And it wasn’t long ago that some-
one with an imperfect past could move far
away from his troubled history and start fresh
in a new location. Today, qualifi ed candidates
can be Googled out of contention for a job
before they even get a foot in the door for an
interview, and it’s diffi cult for them to leave
their baggage behind even when crossing
national borders, because the online commu-
nity knows no boundaries.
In this case, Fred and his HR manager have
taken some initial steps in the hiring process
and uncovered some red fl ags that would
cause me to sideline Mimi as a candidate for
the Shanghai position. Beyond the discon-
certing online revelation, former employers
describe her as opinionated and brash, and
in the interview with Fred, it seemed quite
inappropriate for her to wink at him and call
him “boss” on the way out of his offi ce. If the
job for which Mimi was interviewing were in
a Western country, these concerns might not
be as big a deal, but China is a unique place.
Although Mimi has some strong qualifi ca-
tions, her background in China is not enough
to make her a good manager there. Hathaway
Jones is opening its fi rst store in Shanghai,
and the fi rm needs a manager who can build
a constructive relationship with the local gov-
ernment. Hiring someone without the right
skills and attitudes to do so could hinder the
company’s ability to succeed in this market.
And, of course, the fact that Chinese people
are very Web oriented and know how to
Google probably wouldn’t help her situation.
Frankly, because retail and service busi-
nesses are so local in nature, I would hesitate
to put an expatriate in the Shanghai position.
Chinese employees expect their leaders
to be modest and humble and see them
as highly respected authority fi gures with
parentlike attributes. A Western-style leader
who doesn’t understand this will face high
turnover rates and low productivity levels. For
all her language skills, Mimi does not strike
me as a credible parent substitute for a Chi-
nese workforce.
This case illustrates how important it is
for potential employees – particularly young
people who spend a great deal of time engag-
ing in all sorts of Web 2.0 activities – to pro-
tect their reputations and think twice about
the online personae they are presenting to
the world. Information posted today will still
be available years from now and could come
back to haunt them. Many new high school
and college graduates don’t truly understand
this until they are sitting in a job interview and
the HR manager opens a fi le that includes not
only their résumé but also their latest blog
entries and party photos. Online content is
public information, and it is fair game for em-
ployers to ask about it.
We always recommend that candidates
search the Internet to fi nd anything about
themselves that might come up in an inter-
view, so that they can prepare to respond
effectively. They should consider how they
might use the Web to demonstrate attri-
butes that would make a positive impression
on potential employers. Better to fi ll the In-
ternet with content that portrays you as an
accomplished and capable individual who
would be an asset to a new employer than
to share the details from your latest weekend
adventures.
T
Jeffrey A. Joerres (chief
.executive.offi cer@manpower
.com) is the chairman and CEO
of Manpower, an employment
services company headquar-
tered in Milwaukee.
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46 Harvard Business Review | June 2007 | hbr.org
HBR CASE COMMENTARY | Should Fred Hire Mimi Despite Her Online History?
danah m. boyd (dmb@
ischool.berkeley.edu) is a
doctoral candidate at the
University of California,
Berkeley, and an adviser to
major media corporations.
She maintains a blog at
www.zephoria.org/thoughts/.
If Hathaway Jones doesn’t want to hire people like Mimi,
it’ll miss out on the best minds of my generation.
JUST CELEBRATED my ten-year blogging
anniversary. I started blogging when I was
19, and before that, I regularly posted to public
mailing lists, message boards, and Usenet. I
grew up with this technology, and I’m part of
the generation that should be embarrassed
by what we posted. But I’m not – those posts
are part of my past, part of who I am. I look
back at the 15-year-old me, and I think, “My,
you were foolish.” Many of today’s teens will
also look back at the immaturity of their teen
years and giggle uncomfortably. Over time,
foolish digital pasts will simply become part
of the cultural fabric.
Young people today are doing what young
people have always done: trying to fi gure out
who they are. By putting themselves in pub-
lic for others to examine, teens are working
through how others’ impressions of them
align with their self-perceptions. They adjust
their behavior and attitudes based on the
reactions they get from those they respect.
Today’s public impression management is
taking place online.
Once again, adults are upset by how the
younger generation is engaging with new cul-
tural artifacts; this time, it’s the Internet. As
with all moral panics around teenagers, con-
cern about who might harm the innocent chil-
dren is coupled with a fear of those children’s
devilish activities. To complicate matters, many
contemporary teens are heavily regulated and
restricted while facing excessive pressures
to succeed. The confl icting messages adults
convey can be emotionally damaging.
What is seen as teens’ problematic behavior
can also be traced back to the narratives that
mainstream media sell to teens – including
the celebrity status given to Paris Hilton and
Lindsay Lohan. Thanks to a number of complex
social factors, narcissism is on the rise. Narcis-
sists seek fame. Reality TV shows tell teens
that full exposure is a path to success, so how
can we be surprised that attention-seeking
teens reveal all? Not all teens want this kind of
attention, but cultural norms have shifted, and
the Web has become both a place for friends
and a space to seek attention.
So, what does all this imply for the com-
pany in this case? Many young people have
a questionable online presence. If Hathaway
Jones doesn’t want to hire these people, it’ll
miss out on the best minds of my generation.
Bright people push the edge, but what con-
stitutes the edge is time dependent. It’s no
longer about miniskirts or rock and roll; it’s
about having a complex digital presence.
Naturally, there’ll always be a handful of
young people who manage to go through
adolescence and early adulthood without any
blemishes on their record. Employers need
people who play by the rules, but they also
need “creatives.” Mimi is a creative, and for
the job Fred is trying to fi ll, a traditionalist just
won’t do. Fred should listen to his own in-
stincts and hire Mimi. I’d advise him to open
a conversation with her immediately so that
they can strategize together about how to
handle potential challenges posed by employ-
ees’ online practices.
I think Fred will learn a lot from that experi-
ence. My generation isn’t as afraid of public
opinion as his was. We face it head-on and
know how to manage it. We digitally docu-
ment every love story and teen drama imagin-
able and then go on to put out content that
creates a really nuanced public persona. If
you read just one entry, you’re bound to get a
distorted view. That’s why I would also advise
Mimi to begin creating her own Google trails.
She should express her current thoughts on
China, refl ecting on how she has fi ne-tuned
her perspective over the years. Part of living in
a networked society is learning how to acces-
sorize our digital bodies, just as we learn to put
on the appropriate clothes to go to the offi ce.
I
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hbr.org | June 2007 | Harvard Business Review 47
_ ( ) / / / g g / /
Michael Fertik (michael@
reputationdefender.com)
is the founder and CEO of
ReputationDefender, a com-
pany headquartered in Menlo
Park, California, that fi nds and
removes unwelcome online
content.
S FRED HAS told his VP of human re-
sources, if you Google anyone hard
enough you’ll fi nd some dirt. This is the new
reality. Companies don’t want to go on record
about Googling candidates, but everybody’s
doing it. Your CV is no longer what you send
to your employer – it’s the fi rst ten things that
show up on Google. I’m 28, and I’m part of a
generation that doesn’t even go on a second
date without Googling the other person.
In light of the widespread use of Internet
searching practices, Hathaway Jones will have
trouble hiring Mimi. The job is high-profi le
enough, and the online content about her is
sensitive enough for Chinese decision mak-
ers, that there is absolutely no question the in-
formation will be discovered and noted – even
if it appears only on page nine of Google’s
results. Then people will write more about it
on the Internet, and the community will take
heed. Given the climate of the times, Mimi
presents a risk to Hathaway Jones.
In this case, Mimi didn’t publish the
content herself, and she is powerless to
pull it from the Web. These are newspaper
articles. Even our company, which was set
up to search for and destroy unwanted
online information, wouldn’t try to remove
newspaper stories. That would be bad consti-
tutional practice, and what’s more, in almost
every case, we would fail. The Internet loves
newspapers; it can take a very long time to
move an item from page one on Google to
page two.
Mimi should have disclosed the newspaper
articles to Fred when they fi rst met. She’s
smart enough to know that her opinions
about China and globalization could affect
the company’s performance there. By taking
this information to Fred before HR did, she
would have been able to exert some control
over how the story played out.
Mimi doesn’t have to wear the postings like
an albatross around her neck for the rest of
her life, though. There are several things she
can – and should – do if she’s serious about
a business career in China. For example, she
could consider publishing stories about glo-
balization on a home page that she creates, or
joining an online discussion forum about China
and the World Trade Organization. In these
public forums, Mimi can explain that she had
many political and social interests when she
was younger. If her opinion has matured, she
can repudiate her earlier view by explaining
on the Internet that she believes the world is
more complex than she understood it to be
when she was 21.
The lesson to be learned from her experi-
ences – and it is a lesson for CEOs as well as
for job candidates – is that you need to know
what is being said about you online. A person’s
reputation has always been shaped not only
by what she makes known about herself but
also by what other people say about her. Now,
however, what other people say reaches a far
wider audience than ever before. Ten years
ago, if someone spread a rumor that you had
herpes, it probably wouldn’t get too far. To-
day, all it takes is one enemy to put something
anonymously on the Internet, and everyone
will see it, whether it is true or false. Don’t
tell me that it wouldn’t have an enormous im-
pact on your emotional and professional well-
being. Some people shrug their shoulders and
say that our notions of privacy are evolving.
They are. But even today, I believe people have
some right to privacy. It’s the big Internet issue,
which is why I’m in the business I’m in.
Reprint R0706
A
Reprint Case only R0706X
Reprint Commentary only R0706Z
To order, see page 143.
You need to know what is being said about you online. Today,
all it takes is one enemy to put something anonymously on the
Internet and everyone will see it.
A
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