There’s a troubling phenomenon afoot in the job-hunting universe: friends are giving friends some really questionable advice. Trying to land a new job is hard enough, but it’s just plain rough if your friends are working against you!

Here’s a recent example of the shenanigans. A candidate I was working with refused to provide information that my client requested. The information was standard: five years of tax returns, her personal diary, the results of a Rorschach inkblot test, a urinalysis, and a bulleted list of the contents of her kitchen catch-all drawer. I’m kidding. All my client wanted was some basic information about salary.

(Now that I had you sweating about the urinalysis, you see how innocent the request for salary info is, right?)

I asked the candidate again for the information. She stonewalled.

I explained this was standard operating procedure for many of my clients. All I needed was an idea of current and desired salaries.

Finally, the candidate confessed, “Well, I’ve been advised by a friend not to discuss salary until after the first in-person interview.”

I wanted to cry. At this point I wasn’t even going to be able to score this gal a first interview, let alone a second! Perhaps the friend meant you shouldn’t bring up the topic of salary until later in the process – but that you should certainly provide it if asked? In any case, the person proffering the advice was putting her friend in danger of missing out on a good opportunity.

Here’s another one. A candidate recently asked for a 50% increase from her current salary. After I picked myself off the floor, I explained that the current market isn’t really providing such luxury. She persisted. I tried again, telling her my client might decide to look elsewhere if she insisted on such a steep increase in pay. I finally asked her where she came up with such a range. “My friend told me this was the increase I should expect if I change jobs.”

Oh, boy.

And here’s one more for the road. I recently had an applicant call me repeatedly to check in about an opening. We’re talking more calls than I got from my middle school boyfriend…despite the fact my client explicitly stated, “No phone calls.” I told the candidate I’d be in touch as soon as I had news. Almost like clockwork the candidate offered up this gem, “By the way, sorry about all the calls. A friend told me I should ignore the no phone calls request.”

Unless your friend is the head of HR for Google, take job-hunting advice with a grain of salt.

Are you wondering why there’s a photo of Spike Lee right here? No worries – I’ll get to that in a second.

Last month we covered the topic of nonprofits having difficulties with hiring due to reputational issues. Now we’re going to tackle the nonprofit’s point of view when considering a candidate with a questionable reputation.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sent a promising candidate to one of my clients, only to have my client say they wouldn’t be pursuing the candidate due to reputation issues. No matter what I think of the candidate, it’s over as soon as the client mentions the R word.

What are some of the things that can earn a candidate a bad reputation? Well, I’ll let you use your creativity, but here are a few:

• Accepting a job and then backing out at the last minute or quitting shortly after starting – Yikes. There’s just no good way around this one. Nonprofits talk; and if you jumped ship right after the boat left port, the others will hear about it.
• Trash-talking a former employer – This one happens a lot; and as you can imagine, prospective employers don’t care for it.
• Dishonesty of any kind – Whether it’s a lie on a résumé or a fib about an accomplishment, you’re as good as done if a hiring manager can’t trust you.
• Being wishy-washy or less than solidly committed to free-market principles – On more than one occasion I’ve had clients say they weren’t interested because a candidate worked for a member of Congress who wasn’t truly free-market oriented or because the candidate espoused ideas in a policy piece or blog that were antithetical to free-market thinking. Most of my clients have dedicated their careers to advancing liberty; they aren’t particularly interested in someone who can take it or leave it, depending on expedience.
• Erratic behavior – Candidates who display unpredictable, histrionic, or irrational behavior in a work setting or during the interview process make quick work of scaring hiring managers away.

So, how will you know if you need a little reputation management? Unfortunately, you may not. Most organizations don’t see the upside in sharing the knowledge that a candidate’s reputation has preceded him. And after some of the histrionics I’ve seen from candidates, I can hardly blame them!

Having strong references who can attest to your character or work product may be one way to counteract reputational problems.

However, my best advice is just to do from the start what Spike Lee told us in the late 80’s: do the right thing. If you do, your reputation should be just fine.

I’ve had a lot of candidates lately tell me they are interested in making a career transition or are open to considering new roles beyond their existing skill set. While I’m usually a fan of Gumby-like flexibility, it pains me to say now is not the time for plasticity.

Here’s why: the economy still stinks; therefore, organizations are taking very few risks when it comes to hiring. This means they are hiring people who have backgrounds that very closely match the openings on hand.

If you’re old enough to remember Gumby (and, ahem, I’m only old enough to remember Eddie Murphy’s rendition of him), you remember when the economy was good. Ok, maybe it hasn’t been that long. The point is that in the good ol’ days, organizations had the luxury of taking hiring risks. For instance, they might hire a private sector salesman for a fundraising role. Or, they might hire an individual with a lot of creativity, strong writing skills, and not a lick of specific communications experience for a communications manager role. They made calculated risks; and while many of those bets paid off, they could afford it when one crashed and burned.

But now organizations are more risk-averse. They are insisting on candidates who have already held similar positions. If they ask me for a major gifts officer, they want someone who has major gifts experience in a nonprofit setting. If they ask me for an executive, they want a nonprofit manager with proven leadership experience.

So, I hear you, my dear candidates, when you say, “I’m Gumby, Dammit!” But let’s save that pliability for a little later when the economy improves.