Techdirt. Stories filed under "hiring" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "hiring"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 3 Dec 2010 11:44:00 PST State Department Telling Students Who Apply For Jobs That If They Mention Wikileaks On Twitter, They Won't Be Hired Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101203/11262712118/state-department-telling-students-who-apply-jobs-that-if-they-mention-wikileaks-twitter-they-wont-be-hired.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101203/11262712118/state-department-telling-students-who-apply-jobs-that-if-they-mention-wikileaks-twitter-they-wont-be-hired.shtml Mathew Ingram points us to the news that a career services person at Columbia University apparently sent around an email, purportedly concerning a conversation they'd had with an alumnus at the State Department warning students who wanted to work in the State Department to ignore Wikileaks. Specifically, it said that, as part of the background check on you, the State Department would review your social networking accounts, like Twitter and Facebook, and if they saw you had talked about Wikileaks, they might think you couldn't handle confidential information:
From: "Office of Career Services"

Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 EST

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,
Office of Career Services
Assuming this is accurate (and it may prove not to be...), it's difficult to think of a much more ridiculous response. Talking about what's going on with Wikileaks is hardly an indication of how one deals with confidential information, because that information is no longer confidential. Pretending that you shouldn't even discuss a rather important and topical story of interest to those who actually do care about diplomacy and public policy, isn't just a "put your head in the sand" approach, it's actively discouraging the folks who might have the most insight and interest into these subjects from getting a job where they might be of assistance.

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]]> head-in-sand http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101203/11262712118 Thu, 4 Jun 2009 02:14:16 PDT Is It An Antitrust Violation To Agree Not To Poach Employees From Competitors? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090604/0051075120.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090604/0051075120.shtml under investigation by the Justice Department for their hiring practices and potential antitrust concerns. The specific issue appears to be that the companies may have agreed to not try to poach top execs from certain companies. Apparently there was nothing stopping the employee from getting a job at one of these companies, if they took the initiative -- but the companies wouldn't initiate the attempt. In most cases, the idea was not to poach from partners -- which might just be good business sense (pissing off partners generally isn't a good idea). Where it gets tricky is the accusation that some companies had written agreements not to poach, which could lead to some charges of collusion. Oddly, the NY Times article's title claims that the issue is "unwritten rules" when the details of the article suggest it's not the unwritten, but the written rules that are the problem. There have been studies that suggest that root of Silicon Valley's success was the easy movement of people from job to job -- so if it's true that companies are holding back trying to get the best employees to move around, they may actually be doing a lot more harm to themselves anyway. And, on the whole, it does seem like there's an awful lot of movement between big name companies. Just this week at the Conversational Marketing Summit, one of the speakers had a musical chairs presentation that went on for a long time showing a bunch of execs and how they played musical chairs between Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL, News Corp. and Facebook.

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]]> not-entirely-clear http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090604/0051075120 Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:29:00 PST Motorola Trying To Block Competitors From Hiring Workers It Laid Off Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081229/0414373237.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081229/0414373237.shtml don't make sense for companies, but Motorola may be taking the concept to a new level. Rather than trying to stop employees from leaving Motorola to go to a competitor, it's now trying to stop employees it already laid off from going to work for RIM. Motorola had already sued RIM earlier this year for trying to entice employees to jump ship, and this followed another suit by Motorola against Apple for hiring away an exec. Maybe rather than trying to prevent employees from going elsewhere, Motorola might want to focus on improving its own offerings and its own working conditions so that this isn't even a problem? But if it's laying people off, it seems rather ridiculous to then try to stop them from joining another company.

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]]> insult-to-injury http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081229/0414373237 Tue, 4 Nov 2008 14:00:00 PST We're Hiring In Sales Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081103/1104172726.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081103/1104172726.shtml evolve and grow our business, we've been looking to hire an experienced sales exec to focus on selling the Insight Community. We've been interviewing a variety of candidates, but wanted to alert the wider Techdirt community, as we know that readers here are most likely to understand what we're trying to achieve. If you're an experienced sales exec and believe in what we're doing here, feel free to contact us. Alternatively, if you know of any good candidates, please feel free to send them the job description.

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]]> brief-programming-note http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081103/1104172726 Thu, 4 Sep 2008 20:39:00 PDT IBM Seeks Patent For Biosensor-Based Hiring Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080828/092445.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080828/092445.shtml theodp writes "A just-published IBM patent application for Optimizing Utilization of a Donor describes how to monitor 'the somatic (i.e. physical) and affective (i.e. emotional) states of human resources' to determine 'an optimal allocation of the human resources to tasks.' IBM further explains that 'the emotional and physical states may be sensed via non-invasive biosensors.' And what exactly will be measured and sensed? Physical condition can be determined by measuring 'the level of blood sugar, the blood heat, or the like.' And clues to 'a human resource's mood to perform a job with lust, joy or any other emotional condition' can be found by looking at 'changes in autonomic functions, such as, for example, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, sweating, trembling, and other features like hormonal changes; changes in body temperature; and changes in neural function that are measurable.' So if you want that job with Big Blue, perhaps you better make sure that your Blood Pressure, Pulse, Mood, and Level of Fatigue are as up-to-snuff as your skills. Yikes."

This sounds like the modern equivalent of Taylorism, which never faired all that well in the first place. Effectively, this sounds like simply applying modern technologies to a typical Taylor-like review of a worker.

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]]> taylorism-is-back... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080828/092445 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:23:00 PDT IFPI Witness Used To Work For IFPI -- Is That Such A Big Deal? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080424/190047940.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080424/190047940.shtml taken a job with Warner Brothers after the investigation concluded, I suggested this wasn't as ridiculous or "shocking" as some made it out to be. As long as there was no additional evidence of questionable activities, switching jobs isn't that surprising. The industry has a long history of hiring former police investigators and prosecutors for its anti-piracy activity. That, alone, shouldn't be considered strange or questionable -- but a lot of folks immediately assumed that something nefarious was up. In fact, one commenter even accused me of being on the take from Warner. Given just how frequently I've totally trashed Warner Music's activities (in just the last year alone), including the faux epiphany of boss Edgar Bronfman, this seems rather laughable.

However, it is important to recognize that not everything is a conspiracy theory, and not every move the industry makes is as ridiculous as it's made out to be by critics. Totally overreacting to these things doesn't help the case of those of us trying to help educate the industry on why their strategy of suing fans and blaming piracy for their own inability to adapt and grow is a problem. So, while I'm sure I'll get beaten up over it again, the latest report that an expert witness in the Danish lawsuit against The Pirate Bay used to work at the IFPI still doesn't seem particularly shocking or troublesome. TorrentFreak, who normally has excellent coverage, continually paints this news as "shocking." However, I just don't see it. It's not surprising that a guy who used to work on IFPI investigations would go on to work at an anti-piracy company. And, just because he does so, it doesn't mean that he's obviously biased on their side (I certainly don't think fondly of all of my ex-employers). The simple fact is that any expert witness has a bias. They're hired to help support one side of the case. So, of course he's going to present the IFPI's case in the best light. That's what he's paid to do -- and the court should take that into account. The fact that he used to work for the IFPI seems rather meaningless.

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]]> it's-not-that-crazy http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080424/190047940