Busted or not?

Medzilla survey results suggest that posting your resume won''t jeopardize your job

You post your resume on the Web either because you''re looking for a new job or just testing the waters. As luck would have it, your boss stumbles onto your resume and the seed is planted that you might be out looking.

What will happen to your current job? Many industry experts say that you''ll be labeled as unfaithful and essentially can consider yourself cooked. However, a survey by MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and professional community that targets job seekers and HR Professionals in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, health care and science, revealed surprising results indicating that it might not be so bad, after all.

Two-hundred-forty-eight employers and recruiters replied to a Medzilla survey asking: What would you do if you saw one of your employee''s resumes on the Web? Of those who responded, 160 were direct employers in the pharmaceutical, healthcare and biotechnology industries and 88 represented recruiting, executive search and personnel agencies.

Just three direct employers, less than 2%, indicated either immediate termination or termination after finding a replacement. Of the remaining 22, 17 were recruiting companies, and five did not designate their status.

The results were:
11 (4.4%
The employee would be terminated at once.
14 (5.6%)
We would begin looking for a replacement, then the employee would be terminated
107 (43%)
We would do nothing, our employees are free to do as they wish, we only hope they will communicate with us if there''s a problem and give us the opportunity to corrective action.
132 (53%)
We would evaluate the employees performance and work environment and attempt to correct any problems we found


According to Frank Heasley, PhD, President and CEO, MedZilla.com, It''s been a long time since anyone could reasonably expect to devote an entire career to just one employer. Just as employers have found that employment at will is necessary in order to manage their businesses, employees have learned that the best job security they have is the ability to find another job. With time, both sides have come to understand this, and attitudes have shifted accordingly.

Greg Smith, HR technology consultant, Biogen, Inc., Cambridge, Mass., says he''ll be in a database looking for resumes and will from time to time run across the resume of a Biogen employee. If that happens, as recruiters, we value the confidentiality of candidates putting resumes into databases, so we would respect that confidentiality Ö and would not jeopardize that confidentiality, Smith says.

Some just don''t buy it

Still, career counselors disagree. Having your boss stumble onto your resume on the Web is probably the worst thing that can happen to those who post, says Margaret Riley Dikel, author of the Riley Guide, a directory of job and career resources on the Internet. I''ve heard stories from people who have seen it happen: Your current employer finds your resume and you''re fired.

Joyce Lain Kennedy, syndicated career columnist and the author of the best selling Resume for Dummies, which just launched a new fourth edition, agrees. Certainly an employee can be fired for looking around, she says.

Kennedy says that some employees will post their resumes just to a light a fire under their bosses-hoping to get a raise or promotion. The problem with that thinking, according to Kennedy, is that you had better be a high flyer-very good and very much in demand-to pull it off. Basically, you don''t want your boss to know you''re on the market because once you are the boss will never really trust you again, she says.

Worried? There are steps job seekers can take to remain anonymous

Kennedy recommends that anyone who does not want an employer to find their resume should not post on the big job boards. Rather, if they are going to use the Web as a search tool, they should post on niche and corporate sites with privacy policies regarding the use of resumes on the database.

Another option is to do a generic resume when posting-one that describes what you do without saying who you are. Though she agrees with the approach in terms of privacy, Kennedy warns that a number of employers won''t deal with a generic resume.

Dikel suggests that job candidates post confidential resumes by deleting their names and addresses from the resumes they post. They should then describe their employers and jobs, without listing their most recent employers.

Dr. Heasley says, Database and internet technology have markedly enhanced out ability to discover information, including private information. We are encouraged that employer''s attitudes toward job seekers have changed in step with these trends. However, most candidates worry too much about their employers finding their resume on the net, and not nearly enough about other potential abuses of their private information.


About MedZilla.com
Established in mid 1994, MedZilla is the original web site to serve career and hiring needs for professionals and employers in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, science and healthcare. MedZilla databases contain about 10,000 open positions and 10,000 resumes from candidates actively seeking new positions. These resources have been characterized as the largest, most comprehensive databases of their kind on the web in the industries served.