Spring Associates

Undoubtedly, much of your career has been spent nurturing and protecting your company or client's reputation. In fact, you've probably been paid handsomely and been promoted for either keeping your company or client out of the news and when the time is right, making sure they are part of the news. But what of your own reputation? Who's watching out for you? Your ship, the USS Reputation has you as its captain and crew. Steering clear of potential hazards that lie ahead is a full time job - while you're doing your other job.

While you were out and about simultaneously managing the media and your company's or client's expectations, all who come in contact with you inside and outside your company, are interacting with you and consciously or unconsciously observing you and how you conduct yourself in the process of "getting the job done". Are you comporting yourself professionally and treating everyone with the respect they deserve or are you running over everyone who you feel are just in your way?

You've heard it a thousand times before - reputations take years to build and minutes to destroy. The PR and marketing communications business is no exception. PR is a relatively small, close-knit industry where your relations with your colleagues, editors, clients, bosses and recruiters is on display every working day. Bear in mind that everyone talks - to each other and about each other. There's no escaping the scrutiny of all who come in contact with you.

From our point of view as PR recruiters, your reputation can make or break the chance of being considered for a position. Even though you may have excellent credentials, worked for well-known and respected companies and have a track record of increasing title and responsibility, what others will (or won't) say about you on a formal reference check is only one of the usual ways that we can assess your suitability for a job. Another lesser-known method is word-of-mouth referencing. This is different than the buzz you try to create for your company or client. This time it's about you and it falls beneath the standard methods used in evaluating a candidate.

WOM referencing starts when a client receives your resume. Often the client will innocently call or email a colleague in another corporate communications department or PR agency who you may or may not have worked for in the past for the expressed purpose of getting some feedback on you as a person and PR professional. We try to discourage this method of behind-the-scenes screening. But clients are connected as well. All senior managers have worked in a number of different organizations and have friends and colleagues throughout the business. To think that potential employers would not "ask around" about you is just plain naive. If negative or questionable information about you is discovered, often consideration of you as a candidate will end before it's even begun.

In the course of our daily business as PR recruiters, we will hear information about many PR people and how they interact with their colleagues, subordinates and management. This confidential communication among communicators can also work to your advantage - a well-liked, respected, congenial reputation is contagious in that people are proud to be associated with you and happy to sing your praises. Interviews and other forms of conversation, taken with a face-to-face meeting helps us to form a "picture" of our candidates. We don't judge, we evaluate. Our clients pay us to match our candidate's personality and working style to the "culture" of their organization.

Be constantly mindful of the way you treat your colleagues, direct reports, editors and other people in the PR business. PR is a relationship business and how you conduct yourself on a day-to-day basis can have profound effect on your ability to move ahead and be successful both within your company and when you are looking for a job. Remember, your reputation can be a hidden job-killer or job-booster.

As Jackie Gleason once said, "Be nice to the people on the way up because you're going to meet those same people on the way down".