Path to Transparency

The world was pretty different when I was looking for a job eight years ago following the dot-com boom. It was before the dawn of social networking, LinkedIn was a couple years from launching, and WIND breakfasts were the place to be. No one was talking about transparency. In fact, most of the advice from job sites was quite the opposite. I remember reading in more than one place that women of childbearing age should not wear their wedding rings to interviews. The thought was that age and marital status would indicate to potential employers that they could be paying for maternity leave or losing you to motherhood. It was one more strike against you in a very competitive job market.

Nearly ten years later I'm still getting job search advice about hiding elements of my identity. This time the advice is to not let people know I'm in the protected group of people over 40. At a time when people are working well into their 60's, who would think that 40 is protected from age discrimination? I have a good 20 years left in my career! Anyway, the advice is not to put dates next to your college degrees so potential employers can't do the math and figure out your age. Since HR people are prevented from asking direct questions about age, marital status and whether you have children, why volunteer answers that could jeopardise your chances of landing the job?

So if I don't want HR people to have preconceived ideas about my potential motherhood or retirement date, why is everyone asking me to be transparent? We're calling for transparency from our government, the companies we do business with and from our colleagues. And we have more and more ways to share all this "protected" information. Even the business network, LinkedIn, offers you the opportunity to share your birth date. How much sharing do we need? Does posting pictures of my son's missing teeth on Facebook hurt my chances of landing a full-time job in the city of Boston because a potential employer will assume that I will want a flexible work schedule without a commute? Or does it make me more real? Or authentic? I think authenticity is more important than transparency. Do you need to be fully transparent to be authentic?

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm not sure about being transparent. I have tried really hard to keep my personal and professional lives separate; even using different names to "protect the innocent." People who know me well know that I'm an open book; sometimes too transparent. I'm working my way down the path of transparency in my professional life. For now I'm becoming translucent -- permitting light (ideas) to pass through but diffusing it so that persons, objects, etc., on the opposite side are not completely visible. It reminds me of Forrester CEO George Colony's Facebook photo. It's a shot of him obscured by rain on a window. You sort of know who it is, but you can't make out all of the details. I want to share my ideas, but not let people know absolutely everything.

This blog is one way for me to explore how/when to open myself up to the rest of the world. Who knows, I might be renaming it before too long.