March 5, 2019 |

Fake News in Recruiting

Had an interesting – and increasingly common – thing happen recently.  In conversation with a job candidate, a particular company name surfaced.  The candidate had a swift and immediate reaction: “They just had a major shakeup at the top.  New CEO and CFO.  The stock is down seven dollars.”  I could almost feel this person’s personal pride at having what they thought was some serious lowdown that I may not be aware of.

In this particular case, however, it wasn’t to be.  I commented, “Actually the announcement was in line with their succession plan.  It was thoughtful, intentional and completely expected.  And, by the way, the stock did move $7 last Friday.  It went UP by $7.”

Silence.

This is the kind of nonsense that drives me nuts.  With all the misinformation flying around out there, people are getting dumber by the day.  Not dumber because they lack intelligence; dumber because they are too lazy to seek out the truth.  We each have access to the cumulative knowledge and intelligence of all mankind in the palm of our hands (unless you have a flip phone).  How long would it have taken to check, say, Yahoo! Finance?  If this person would have done so, they would have seen that there was a press release…and an earnings call transcript…and commentary from pundits…that explains everything.

Remember Ronald Reagan?  “Trust but verify.”  Made sense in the ‘80s.  Makes way more sense now.  To take things in the public domain at face value these days is to expose yourself to looking like an utter fool.  It’s so easy to take one minute (steal one from your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram time) and run a few cross checks.  Do your due diligence.  Otherwise you look silly and perpetuate the problem.

We got the candidate grounded in reality.  This time…