White Paper: Employment Agreements regarding Employee-owned
Intellectual Property: Conflicts of Interest, Trade Secrets, Non-Disclosure,
Non-competition
In
the age of inexpensive self-publishing (as on the Internet or through
cooperative publishers) there is a growing "risk" of intellectual
property conflicts that individuals develop principally on their own but which
their employers or which other business affiliates may perceive as creating
infringement or business risk. This area of ethics and law is largely
undeveloped because the technology (placing "the press" within the
reach of a salaried middle class person) is so new.
Let's
say at the outset that most employers today are still preoccupied with misuse
of corporate information systems within the workplace (or on corporate property
when dialed up from home): for example, employees using corporate email for
their own personal purposes, surfing personal sites at work, or engaging in
forums and chat rooms at work. It is well established that employees do not
have an expectation of "privacy" when using their employer's
resources. ABC “2020” covered this
problem in 1999 with a report about an employee fired by USAA for loading
computer games (particularly the focus of corporate objections in early years
of PC use) on her company laptop when she took it home. But problems may occur
even when the employee uses his own resources, which is the focus of
this discussion. Perhaps the simplest
example of this kind of problem would be the associate’s posting his resume on
a public jobs site—and giving away the fact that he or she is “looking.” In
fact, an employee taking a corporate laptop while traveling and meeting clients
will have a problem if he or she cannot reasonably take a personally-owned
laptop at the same time for personal use (Oh – there is Kinkos,
of course). Please understand that this
“White Paper” will bring up a lot of points that may sound “theoretical” for
the sake of playing devil’s advocate.
The
situation of interest in this paper occurs when a salaried employee wants to
develop and publish a body of intellectual property on his own and eventually
(although not always immediately) use it to supplement or replace his
income. And what can complicate the
picture further is the possibility that an employee will want to give away
"free content" (as on an Internet domain at first) to build a public
reputation so that he may sell himself later to major publishers or
entertainment (television, motion pictures) at some time in the future. This is different than the innocuous posting
of "family pictures" on a shared-domain personal web site (although
even this kind of “my-place” web publishing implies that in the “Internet age”
almost everyone’s life will have a “public component” and that accepting
thinking, developed in the 70s and 80s, about lifestyle “privacy” will undergo
change as well).. This is also distinct from the use of Internet resources
while at work with corporate resources.
The issues are particularly controversial because of the "at
will" employment doctrine and the tendency of employers to lay people off
rapidly as business climates change, so any restrictions imposed upon outside
activities by an employer can become unfair if the employer tries to monopolize
the associate's professional and personal expressions. Sometimes (but not
always) issues will be more critical with salaried employees than with
independent contractors. The
Some
situations are relatively clear-cut. Practically all employers require the
signature of "non-disclosure" agreements. This prohibits the disclosure of
company-specific information obtained on the job for the employee's own benefit
(even though with the employee's own resources). (Some dot-coms
are particularly strict with these.) Most such information (as from data files
on customers and employees or other stakeholders) is obviously
"proprietary" and "confidential." But generally, employers
must state the fact that they regard this information as confidential; and to
be regarded as confidential, information must have been obtained from the
employer's data resources and during the course of employment. (An employee would probably have the legal
right to use the same information that he coincidentally developed from his own
publicly-available resources, constrained by normal intellectual property law
concepts like copyright, invasion of privacy, and the like).
Even
on access to confidential information, there could be a legal trap. Many
“responsible” technical jobs require this responsibility (ranging from customer
information including medical or credit to information protected by security
clearances). Government agencies providing information usually require that
contracting companies not allow the unauthorized disclosure of such information
to either individuals or to “organizations.”
If an employee needing access owned his own side “home-based” business,
would he become an “organization,” or would the organization somehow still be a
different legal “object”? What if it is just a proprietorship and he does claim
expenses for it on his income taxes? On the other hand, what if he advertises
it nationally on the Internet as a .com site? One would hope that common sense
would prevail, but government could, if politically so disposed, try to use
this concept to regulate the workplace and force employers to prevent most of
their salaried people from carrying on their own enterprises. Government (perhaps under competitive
pressure from labor unions) could even maintain “consumer protection” arguments
that home-based businesses should have enough mass that they can support their
owners. Maybe this is all libertarian
“straw dogs” or maybe not. This sort of
“what if???” thinking occurs a lot in pondering the issues posed by the open
technology (and unrestrained opportunities) of the Internet. For example, if
confidential material were posted, either on a corporate site or even an
individual site, it might compromise privacy because of the way search engines
work—“Google hacking.”[2]
Employers
generally require that employees protect and not disclose "trade secrets." These are facts (data, processes, business or
merger plans, experimental results, even "creative" ideas) not
generally known (and not previously published) in an industry and which give an
employer a competitive advantage. But an
employer must make the effort to make it clear that an item is regarded as a
"trade secret," usually by restricting access to relatively few
employees (or consultants).[3]
For example, a political interpretation of a particular public policy problem
could not be a trade secret unless the employer had developed it in detail and
then shared it in a restricted manner with relatively few associates on a
"need to know" basis. There was a discussion of this in USA Today,
There
are also "non-compete" agreements,
which may restrict employment with competitors after an employee leaves a
company (even involuntarily) or, particularly, with an employer's ability to
take clients away from the employers. In
the intellectual property world, this would be of greatest concern to people
who had been "employed" by producing intellectual property for other
employers or third parties to publish (that is journalists, technical writers,
etc., or programmers who develop software code which itself will be sold
publicly rather than used internally). Generally, a non-compete clause must be
reasonably related to a business need (particularly trade secrets) and not
simply be applied blindly to keep a monopoly on a product or service. There is
conflicting law on this (as to what would constitute a legal non-compete
contract and what would violate “public policy” and unreasonably interfere with
a person’s making a living) . One state (
And
there may also exist a practical time-management
issue. Many professional positions require
long stretches of travel and essentially unpaid overtime for deadlines or production support, although technology is rapidly enabling
people to manage two careers at the same time.
Also, many professions would encourage people to take time on their own
to get training and certifications, which would interfere with pursuing second
careers.
Some
employers (including defense contractors) have “no moonlighting” policies, at
least for their “key persons.” This used
to be more common in the past, before corporate restructurings made salaried
employment less stable and ethically less justifiable. There is some thoughtful
discussion of the variations of moonlighting policies in the Journal
for the Society for Human Resources Management,
Oct. 2000. (Search for “moonlighting” and the article appears.)
Theoretically, such a policy would make it a violation to self-publish anything
and sell it, or make money from any activity that requires “work” outside of
the principle place of employment. One
rationale for such a policy is that he or she must be available for overtime at
the employer’s whim. “Moonlighting” does not involve the use of an employee’s
own property (and of his “property rights,” so it may be easier legally for
employers to ban it than to ban the ownership of businesses. No-moonlighting
policies, at least when they occur in the context of employment at will (see
below), are controversial, and flexible policies involving management
discretion are often suggested.[5] A good source is the Society for Human
Resources Management: http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/1000hirschman.htm.
Sometimes employers who invest a lot of training into an associate or even a
contractor will insist on time-based no-moonlighting policies, even to include
income from strictly private property sources.[6]
How
does one draw the line between what is an employer's intellectual property and
the employee's? The best example of this
kind of problem occurs when a software developer wants to write and sell
software or books on software on his own.
Generally, the material that he sells on his own must be
"generic" in nature. For example, an author could present object-oriented
or "responsibility-driven" design but not specific java methods or
classes (unless he made them up on his own). Copyright law is quite generous in
protecting the employee's ownership right to his own personal intellectual
property even when he has a "work for hire" agreement at work.[7]
A related patent law concept for inventions by employees is called “shop rights,” which employers often
negotiate to claim the patents of inventions by employees depending on whether
any significant resources of the employer were used. A possible unexplored
concept in controversies over an employee’s own personal intellectual property
could derive from the concepts of “right of publicity”[8]
and the possibility that an employee could be required to show that his own
property had monetary value before he went to work for the employer.
What
about publishing political or social opinions?
This has been common in non-commercial blogging.
This may well be a no-no for people already employed doing this (journalists,
lobbyists, professional activists ¾ in 1996 a journalist in
Tacoma, WA. was transferred to another job for publicity-generating gay-rights
related activities done on her own time, and the Washington state supreme court
allowed the transfer to stand).[9] It may be unacceptable for executives in a
major company, or for managers having people reporting to them. For although under the
person's own name, generally others will "find out" and the image of
the company with the public or the credibility of the manager to deal with
subordinates or other stakeholders might be affected. (This gets serious
if a company feels, when driven by lawyers, that it needs a “zero tolerance”
policy with respect to hostile workplace and discrimination issues—a development that can itself create a lot of tension
however well-intended.) A secondary problem could occur
when another person writes about such a person’s political or activist
activities on the Internet, making that person searchable world-wide by
potential employers. In the future,
employers may come to consider a person’s worldwide “publicity” or reputation
on the Internet as a job qualification item; the Internet can give anyone his
“15 minutes (and usually much longer) of fame.” If a person is a consultant for
a particular technical discipline, his fame in a controversial political area
might be perceived as diluting his public reputation for professionalism in his
income-earning field.
Another
particular kind of problem can occur for people who work in information systems,
however. These technical geeks may feel
that they have no personal accountability for "image" with the
public. However, while not legally
"insiders" they may have access to confidential information, which
could make their own activities later legally suspect (such as with day stock
trading) or indicative and evidentiary (as what might be "read in" to
their own otherwise political opinions).
An employee will agree not to mention his employer, but if he really is
seriously about establishing himself as a "public figure" with
respect to a problem (say, "gay rights") the public will gradually
learn how he has made a living and may take his comments, however carefully
crafted, as indicative of what may have happened in his places of employment or
conceivably as having been "influenced "by confidential information.
If he goes to work somewhere else there could occur the suspicion that he is
there to gather more underground material for writing. (Part of this
"problem" is that a public figure has relinquished some of his common
law privacy rights.) This might be
called "the appearance of conflict of interest over publicity rights"
and would invoke a lot of poorly developed notions regarding particularly
"the right of publicity" in intellectual property law. Publicity is almost a form of consideration,
since it may have intrinsic value and eventually be converted to money (and
perhaps brings some extra satisfaction to someone otherwise unsatisfied with
what is easily available in personal or family life—and therefore gets seen
unfavorably by some as self-promotion or as a feline drawing of attention to
oneself).[10] This kind of problem is not much discussed in
legal literature yet, but it may contribute to the impression that some people have,
that writing is a profession of its own and that writers should rise up through
the ranks writing about things other than their own personal interests, writing
"what other people want" (and that one's writing should pay the
rent).
Many
companies publish bios of their officers on the Internet, and many smaller
companies and non-profit associations publish bios of all of their staff on
their web sites. If the employee makes a name for himself on the Internet, that
personal “brand” might conflict with the intended image that the employer
wants. Even the possibility that other references to the employee could be
found by search engines could become an issue, particularly when the person’s
name is unusual and easy to identify, and with sites like Google that cache
older copies of pages (unless specifically directed not to index or not to
cache by HTML meta tags).[11]
On the other hand the sheer volume of references to many people dilutes the
impact of references to them. Similarly, persons who share their work,
especially video or music, through file sharing mechanisms (however legally
with their own work) and who manipulate their shared folders effectively or
setup their computers as supernodes may become
noticed. Customer service or support employees (often paid less) typically use
only their first names at work (or, as sometimes with debt collectors,
aliases), and this would avoid this problem. In the future (after 2001) we may
gradually see companies developing policies regarding the issue of an employee’s
management of his or her own “name” or “brand” in public spaces on the
Internet, for positions beyond the “obvious” in media or any executive ranks.
Then, what about “free speech”? One possible wrinkle would be expecting the
employee who wants to have a controversial site to keep it out of search
engines and behind a password-protected logon, which would limit its reach
unless it could actually pay the person’s way with revenues. [12]
The
rise of the Internet is inevitably going to cause employers to consider
policies regarding what employees may self-publish, even on their own time.
Will companies eventually start to inquire about personal sites and web
references as part of employment screening, or would this be protected as a
free-speech claim? Some rules will be
obvious, such as that an employee must not make comments about his employer (as
on a discussion board for that company's stock price). There may be a danger that some employers
might invoke loyalty clauses forbidding published discussion of any public
issue that has a material affect on the company (particularly if the company is
involved in a questionable business, say tobacco, or has a politically
vulnerable "fraternal" customer base). Or employees could be prohibited from using
their own names for commercial purposes (such as .com domains, for which
“.name” will be available as a non-commercial alternative in 2001, according to
ICANN—but here employers may eventually want to track these .name domains,
which are likely to be used for “resume sites,” too[i]). Employers with intellectual property
expertise could credibly prohibit some key associates from inserting themselves
into any public controversy (and instantiating themselves as "limited
public figures") on any issue that can affect the employer's stakeholders
(and this would dive into a labyrinthine catacomb of unexplored law: the notion
that any party could disclose a "public figure's" employment if not
volunteered, that most people have a "reasonable expectation" that expertise
in an issue is obtained in a conventional workplace and that therefore than be
a military-style rebuttable presumption that
corporate confidentiality has been compromised even if this is objectively
untrue -- it gives one the bends). This
would be most unfortunate. It is
becoming increasingly clear that most public policy issues (including those
particularly affecting gays and lesbians) are rooted deeply in personal
behaviors and values and cannot be explored properly if any conjoining issue or
body of embarrassing facts is "left out." Yet this kind of problem may well help
explain the popularity (and power) of well-funded lobbying organizations (often
with ample hired full-time staffs of their own)
which argue more from the point of view of adversarial "suspect classes" or
"groups" than of individual rights and tends to keep a lot of
political bartering a battle between "special interests." It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that people
got fired from being seen on television
showing up at gay events, and throwing money at lobbying organizations
(even at the expense of supporting related causes—like abortion or affirmative
action--for other groups with which one might have a personal disagreement) was
the only way to organize to protect oneself.
In a modern "politically correct" polity, there is a natural
temptation to "protect" gay employees with ENDA-style
anti-discrimination policies and laws so that they (the libertarian ones) won't
become "troublemakers." We should, however, recall another concept
from libel law: "the Opinion rule."
Some
people may view a professional’s involvement in controversial public policy
issues outside of his professional “expertise” as a distraction from that
person’s publicly perceived professionalism. If a computer professional inserts
himself into the middle of “gays in the military” does that create the
impression that he is less dedicated to his “profession”? What if the issue is
one where technology is more relevant, such as Internet censorship?
A
good example of a "conflict of interest" clause over intellectual
property rights (similar to what accounting firms enforce to protect clients
whom they audit) may be found at this site:
http://www.americanbusinesspress.com/ResourcesCode.html.
However, to that the extent that the government (and particularly the
The
public has always regarded “publicity” as a benefit (or burden) that goes with
established employment, particularly in the media. Insurance companies write liability insurance
policies separately for people who become public figures “professionally” (as
entertainers or elected officials). In
the age of the Internet, anyone—depending perhaps on the scale and substance of
his homework-driven effort--can become a public figure and legal and business
practice is far from prepared for this trend. (There is also controversy in the
literary world about how many writers can really make a living by writing
alone—many can’t—and there is some tension among writers over this point.) A fundamental question for future legal
battles could be the extent to which an employer may claim ownership of a
salaried professional’s “right of publicity.”
Ironically, however, the “employment at will” rule (inasmuch as the rule
denies the existence of an implied or explicit employment “contract”) would
interfere with an employer’s attempts to claim legitimate property rights
(other than those directly work-related) of an associate, even when salaried.
Another question would be whether the use of pen names or pseudonyms, or the recognizability of persons with common names would become
relevant. Still another issue would be whether religious expressions could be
treated deferentially.
One
interesting question can come up with persons who “publish” their materials
with a more “private” kind of fire sharing, sich as gnutella.
This type of software encourages a kind of “choir building” for intellectual
property content that is effective within a targeted community but not
necessary a obviously visible to the general public.
As a “publishing” mechanism, it is not yet really well known outside of the network
security and music communities. Likewise, conventional websites can, with
advanced XML and style-sheet technologies, be designed so that they are more
tailored to specific users and not as reachable by the public at large, so an
associate’s use of these technologies to publish his own ideas could eventually
provide another source of controversial discussions.
Some
relatively low-paying occupations actually depend upon the local but “public”
reputations of individual workers with customers, such as personal service
workers, who are sometimes encumbered by post-employment non-compete
clauses, mentioned above. (Richard Mosedale, “Spa
Wars,”
Some
specialized jobs, clearly, do require that employees keep a low public profile.
These jobs would include particularly overseas jobs in culturally, religiously
or politically sensitive countries (as in the
This
concern should not normally deal with private political contributions (at least
in ordinary legal amounts). The Federal Election Commission makes individual
contributions public (although they are not convenient to find), and there is
going to be a new website fundrace.org (as of
There
will be a need to develop standards of ethics in self-publishing and Internet
publishing, particularly when there is a possibility that others may be
affected as a person's writings become known and take on potential commercial
value. For example, a person continuing
to work in a conventional job while doing this might establish ownership of his
own time and computer resources by never being paid overtime and by owning all
computer hardware and software licenses used in his home, even if partially for
his employer's benefit. There might be a
reasonable time limit on the length of his remaining time in a salaried fashion
(until he/she is really able to earn a living free-lancing or, at most, W-2
hourly employment with relatively limited or circumscribed discretionary
responsibility). Companies may eventually be inclined to develop policies
worded around the idea that a person might use the Internet to further his own
commercial purposes nationally or worldwide, particularly when providing
editorial content (we see problems like this when discussing the “speech
rights” of military members in conjunction with the gay ban). To minimize the impression that his views are
connected to the company’s, there should (in most cases) be an agreement that
he will not have people report to him, that he will not become "an
insider," that
he will not let the company use his personal name for company’s own public
purposes, and that he will maintain an invisible “back end” or support role
within his employer and minimize discretion or intellectual ownership in the
performance of his official job duties. Extreme care must be taken when the
employer is a "fraternal company."
Or the company, in some cases, may wish to purchase some kind of
ownership of the activities. Indeed, some people in the writing world believe
that one should not take upon (uncommissioned)
publishing projects intended for commercial “general public” consumption until
one is prepared to make a living at it (hence people quit their jobs in order
“to write” as in the movie TV Going Home), but this notion has
apparently never been accepted as a legal principle.
Again. balancing all of this “devil’s advocate” talk
is one important counterweight: employment-at-will. Since employers
downsize and lay people off based on their own “selfish” interests, shouldn’t
employees be able to compete with corporate
So,
again, this is a little-explored area. I would hope that the legal and business
custom infrastructure around self-publishing and cooperative publishing will
recognize the “right” of people to do this as second careers and will establish
proper standards of ethics in doing so.
One
privacy law attorney that I ran this by reacted with the observation that most
employers would probably hold associates to a generic “professional conduct”
standard with respect to one’s own “right to publicity” and not try to
micro-manage what an associate may not do with his own resources (outside of
discussing the company, its stakeholders, trade secrets, etc.).
However,
starting around 2001 there has occurred a gradual
accumulation of some references on the web about employee blogging
(employees as bloggers). One can see this with a
quick Google search on the combination “employee” and “blogging.”
Here, however, the term “blogging” usually refers to
a specific practice of entering diary-like entries into a log in reverse time
sequence, where my concern has been more with unsupervised self-publishing that
has commercial potential. A few companies, such as Groove in Massachusetts,
have tried to come up with what they see as reasonable blogging
policies, particularly the recommendation that employees place conspicuous
disclaimers that the opinions expressed on their websites are their own, as
well as abstinence from mention of specific incidents in their employer (beyond
the obvious legal requirement for respect of confidentiality and trade
secrets). In infrequent cases, the mere existence of a blog
by a key employee (because of the public “presumption”—that good old term from
the military gay ban—that the person represents the company) could harm
securities negotiations and be illegal according to S.E.C. rules. Some of the
references seem to indicate that the main danger occurs with disparaging an
employer on investor trash boards (where anonymity is not always a protection,
since employers have been able to subpoena the names of posters from
Another
recent opportunity that has offered celebrity to a small number of people is
“reality television,” where “ordinary people” compete in some particular
scenario (such as romantic match-making) setup by the entertainment company.
Justin Timberlake may have been on to something when he wrote his controversial
song and poem, “Celebrity.”
For
a script of “infrequently asked questions” on this issue, seehttp://www.doaskdotell.com/content/infreq.htm
We
could play devil’s advocate with this further: Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura
(according to USA Today,
So,
a number of years after the open personal use of the Internet for
self-promotion, new questions come up about balancing professionalism with free
speech and intellectual honesty with speech. If one writes on the dime of an
employer, he or she is generally not as free to tell the whole truth.[13]
To avoid distracting customers and other stakeholders, an employer might
reasonably expect that a well-paid associate appropriate even his public reputation
for his established profession and then leave the controversial problems
related more to personhood to established lobbying organizations—the model from
the past, but one that suddenly seems so intellectually unacceptable now. “You
work for US, so WE own you!” Where
should be balance be struck? There are
genuine conflicting interests here, so the only answer is to work out
reasonable rules and principles.[14]
For
a model intellectual property conflict of interest policy, see http://www.doaskdotell.com/highproductivitypublishing/coirules.htm. These policies are aimed more for freelance
writers than for “professional” journalists[15]
or members of the press. Companies who believe that they may have an issue with
potential conflicts over what an employee (especially those with direct reports
or discretionary decision making authority that affects others substantially)
does with his or her own individual publicly should state clear policies on
their job application forms and application websites.
Here
is a special discussion of
blogging and conflict of interest.
ÓCopyright 2000 by
Email
me at JBoushka@aol.com
Visit
the doaskdotell
site.
Mary
Ellen Slayter provides a high-level discussion of
“conflict of interest” in the workplace in “Double Check Your Politics at the
Office Door” in The Washington Post, Business Section,
[1] Walter Pincus, “
The Department of Homeland Security announced, in
early 2005, that it would drop a requirement that employees and contractors
sign an agreement not to disclose sensitive but unclassified information.
“Sensitive” is any information that could “adversely affect the national
interest or conduct of federal programs” or violate a person’s privacy. The
story is Christopher Lee, “Homeland Security Dropping Pledge of Secrecy for
Workers,” The Washington Post,
[2] Yuki
Noguchi, “Online Search Engines Help Lift Cover of Privacy,” The
[3] An extreme example is the NBC Mark Burnet show The Apprentice (Donald Trump’s “You’re fired!”) where contestants can incur a $5 million liability if they disclose the outcome before airing. Similar provisions might incur for show employees and production assistants.
[4] Even
outsiders (non-employees and non-contractors) can run into trade secrets
issues. Nicholas M. Ciarelli, (pseudonym Nick de
Plume) now a Harvard sophomore, has been sued by Apple for publishing scoops of
upcoming produces since he was 13 on http://www.thinksecret.com/ The Washington Post story appears
[5] NIH (The
National Institutes of Health) announced on
[6] For
example, I have encountered a life insurance company that requires new
soliciting agents to sign “no outside income” agreements for the first three
years, a startup time for agents when they may be receiving “training bonues” to build their income while prospecting for
clients. These agreements may even include no income from royalties (past or
present) for music, books, or published articles (even those owned by the agent
in the usual copyright sense) or from owning rental property. (The training
bonus becomes a kind of “rent” or “lease” on this property, perhaps.) The
insurer will insist that this prevents hidden conflicts on interest (like rebating)
and may be required by the
[7] A level-headed discussion of “work for hire” is available at Findlaw.com, for example http://www.inc.com/articles/hr/manage_emp/hire/17162.html
[8] This may be the place to mention that Internet technology has made it easy to locate information on most ordinary people with sites like zabasearch.com. These lead to links to major search engines that show what that individual does on the Web. It may be possible to track down where someone lives (even for illegitimate or harmful purposes) even when that person does not publish his or her residence, and it may often be easy to locate where some works. Of course, this technology is useful to skip tracers (for debt collection, judgments, etc), but could it fall into the hands of terrorists? See http://www.doaskdotell.com/refer/intelct.htm for more (look for “personaldata-banking”),
[9] There has been recent attention (in 2004) for this in conjunction with the gay marriage debate, especially because of unrelated scandals at several publications over journalistic integrity. See note 132 at http://www.doaskdotell.com/content/wchap5.htm (specifically http://www.doaskdotell.com/content/wchap5.htm#conflict)
[10] Tom
Zeller, “Breach Points Up Flaws in Privacy Laws,” The New York Times,
On
[11] Also, it is not always necessary to code HTML metatags to be picked up by search engines. Many major engines can index all combinations of words on a page, and the ranking may be based on the presence of other links to the page from other domains, an observation that could potentially make unsolicited links an issue. In recent years engines have been better at searching and indexing dynamic content, message boards and pdf files as well.
[12] The Minnesota Workforce Center newsletter “Career Connection” presented this comment in the April & May 2003 issue, in an article “Job Hunting and the Internet” by Kay Roseland of the WorkForce Center Staff::
“Go and Google your own name. Do a Google search, put
your own name within quptes and see what turns up!
(If there are likely others with your name put in [Your Name]
Now, as of April 2003 no employer has told me that it does this. Would an employer refuse a job offer because it did not like what it found? I hope that it would not unless it tells the applicant that a “publicity” search is part of the application process and publicity is part of the job (as it is in many but not all jobs, as discussed in this article and other places on this website). Typically, with more regimented or technical jobs employers are reluctant to bring up issues outside of the workplace, and generally applicants should be wary of doing this unless publicity is part of the job, as noted. Of course, Google isn’t the only search engine (try it with Teoma, for example). But will employers gradually realize that the Internet can make anyone a celerity?
The other side of this coin is, or course, is that employers in the “hidden market” can use search engines to look for candidates with very specific combinations of skills or publication histories. So this can also help a job search.
[13] This brings up the fact that Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher were both paid by the Bush administration to write pieces promoting conservative causes; see http://www.doaskdotell.com/controv/coi.htm
[14] VMI (Virginia Military Institute) in 2004 had an incident where some cadets posted Halloween pictures imitating Nazi costumes and making fun of homosexuals on a public (non-school) website, resulting now in a school investigation.
[15] The book Trading Places, by R. Foster Winans (1988, St. Martins Press), gives a pretty graphic account of what it takes to become a publicly recognized professional journalist with press credentials (that is the first-person story of a journalist who gets caught up in the insider trading scandals on Wall Street in the 1980s).
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The next day, May 12, ABC “Good Morning America” ran a story about former writer Stephen Glass, fired from The New Republic in 1998 for fabricating articles and informally sentenced to lifetime silence; yet he has had a novel based on these experiences, The Fabulist, published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster. Many colleagues felt that he has shown no shame or contrition.
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