Job Seekers: The Background Check - One Thing You Might Not Know
Yo
A few months ago I interviewed for a CxO role at a $80M SaaS company. This role came to me through an independent executive search firm. I went through my interviews and I was even flown out to their location to meet them in person for a final round.
Just prior to the final interview I received a background check request from the search firm. Because I live in California, I was able to request a copy of it.
You would expect someone of my caliber to come out squeaky clean. But this is what surprised me. There was a yellow flag on my profile under social media profiles.
When I read it, it was almost appalling and I thought, “there’s no way I wrote that.” And that’s because I didn’t write it, someone else did and I “laughed” at it on LinkedIn, and so did 22 of the 119 people that engaged with it.
The post was a 4-month old Clark Barron rants about cold calling from SDRs. It made me laugh when I read it because some of it rang true and then again, who doesn’t enjoy a good Clark Barron rant now and then?
And believe it or not, although it wasn’t the exact reason I was given that I didn’t get the job, I am sure it was a factor.
Is it fair to judge someone on what they think is funny vs what is not funny?
I don’t think so. But this is why recruitment has so much unconscious bias built into it. It’s why I don’t like behavioral assessment tests either.
In the end I feel as though if you don’t like me for me, then I don’t want to work there anyway. Who wants to tip-toe around things you think are funny but can’t laugh about them? My sense of humor is one of my most redeeming qualities!
I always tell people that THEY should be the funniest person they know of because if you can’t make yourself laugh, you are probably miserable.
Comedy to me is like wine, art, music, — it’s all subjective. There are plenty of SNL or South Park skits that I just don’t find very funny, but millions of other people do and its why those shows have been on the air so long. Again, subjective.
So don’t censor yourself because of what you learned in this post. But do keep in mind that if you are out there job searching, your likes, hearts, and laugh emojis will get flagged if on the wrong content.
