The Job Interview When You’re Asked For Your Facebook Password

February 25, 2011
job interview

The Scene: a job interview in a zeitgeisty sort of a law firm. We see a new-fangled desk with new-fangled chairs, upon two of which sit The Lawyer and The Applicant.

Lawyer: So tell me, what is your Facebook log in?

Applicant: I’m sorry?

Lawyer: Just a joke! How long have you wanted to be a lawyer?

Applicant (lying): Since I was three.

Lawyer: Me too. And why this law firm?

Applicant: I admire the way you’ve carved out a niche in cutting edge, zeitgeisty law and yet at the same time stayed true to your roots. Similarly, I sense that within these walls office banter goes on, and yet is never untoward, and yet, at the same time, not too PC either.

Lawyer: That was a little convoluted. But thank you. What are your hobbies?

Applicant: Sex, drugs and general licentiousness.

Lawyer: Good. If you hadn’t admitted that we’d have had to commission a thorough investigation of your social media profile.

Applicant: I have nothing to hide.

Lawyer: We know. It’s all out there, on your Facebook page.

Applicant: I have done nothing wrong.

Lawyer: Then give me your Facebook log in.

Applicant: But why? I’ve already told you that I’m into sex, drugs and general licentiousness. Outre sex, too, if you must know.

Lawyer: Give it to me.

Applicant: What? Sex?

Lawyer: No, you fool! Your log on details.

Applicant: Please, I beg of you. Don’t make me do this. I’ll do anything. I will even, as you lawyers say, rescind this job application.

Lawyer: It’s too late for that. You are in The System now. Tell me your Facebook log in.

Applicant: You mean like that bloke in America on RollonFriday?

Lawyer: The very same. We know who he is. We know who you are. We know who everyone is. What we don’t know, yet, is every job applicant’s personal log on details to places like Facebook. Once this information is ours, we will know what we need to know.

Applicant: Which is?

Lawyer: That question is an infringement of our privacy.

Applicant: You know what, I wouldn’t want to work in this law firm if you paid me.

Lawyer: Be careful. There are limits.

Applicant: I don’t care any more! I tell you this: I wouldn’t work here, even if you paid me twice what you weren’t going to pay me!

Lawyer: Tell us your log on details, and we will forget we ever met you.

Applicant: Never! My integrity is worth more than any job, however badly paid.

Lawyer: Here is a cheque for £100,000. It is a welcome bonus, contingent only on your telling us your password.

Applicant: Why didn’t you say! It’s ‘integrity at a price’, all lower case but separate words.

Lawyer: Thank you. You’re hired.

Pictured: if you are interviewed by a man looking like this, by all means tell him your password but for God’s sake keep your integrity.

 

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If you’re Joey Barton, attack is not the best form of defence

May 17, 2012

Interesting times, these, in the life of Joey Barton.

If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.

In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.

What, then, should Barton do? Should he:

(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or

(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and

(c) Add an apology to said statement, or

(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.

The answer is not (d).

The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.

Gunning foglessly for clarity

May 15, 2012

A fine piece, this, on Winston Churchill’s gift for language and the obscurantism that goes with so much corporate communication.

But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:

Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.

Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index.  But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.

We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.

The Gunning Fog index is 9.585

Spin at the Leveson Inquiry

May 9, 2012
Leveson witch hunt

The idea that Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry’s QC, Robert Jay, are in need of PR advice is intriguing.

Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.

Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.