Ask a Manager: should I ask a candidate about her past online behavior?

[minoanmiss]

Content advisory: doxxing.

I manage the recruiting of volunteers for a small nonprofit, and there’s an otherwise strong candidate, Jane, who has a past on the Internet. Another volunteer and I interviewed her for an open position, and it was wonderful. She presented herself as warm, professional, and knowledgeable in our work, and she was one of my top choices. However, a different volunteer recognized Jane because of a small “incident” that had happened at the volunteer’s alma mater, and the volunteer showed me evidence of what happened online.

Six years ago, Jane’s then-high-school-aged sister had applied for a university in the midwest and wanted to be on a particular sports team there. Before any actual confirmation had been sent from the admissions office that the sister was accepted, the head coach of that team had sent an email congratulating the sister for her acceptance into the university. The sister had taken this at face value, but the official acceptance letter never came. When the sister reached back out to the coach, the coach confirmed that he had mixed up the “recently applied” and “accepted” lists of applicants and gave his sincerest apologies to her.

Jane, however, decided to go on a public campaign to name and shame the coach online on her sister’s behalf. She shared screenshots of emails from the coach on her Twitter page with his personal phone number, encouraging people to call it to demand “answers.” She also made a post on a popular website (with enough details to match the information on her Twitter page) to ask if she was in the right, which had hundreds of comments. She was very combative and vitriolic both on both sites, and nobody on either platform supported her cause. Those who had responded on both platforms tried to be gentle and constructive, and some even gave advice on how the sister should move forward. But Jane was digging her heels in and snapping at everyone.

There are enough photos of her with personal information on the Twitter profile (including one on her LinkedIn) to verify that it was her, although I wonder if there’s a way I can ask her directly to verify.

Again, this was all six years ago. The person we interviewed seemed like a very different person than the one online. One could perhaps make a case that the coach’s disorganization had led to a completely avoidable mistake and could’ve saved heartbreak on the sister’s part. However, the coach was entirely apologetic, and the overreaction from Jane at the time gives me pause. If there’s any conflict that involves her in the future, how will I know that she won’t blow it out of proportion online and dox people?

I’m disappointed because she was such a great candidate, but this has sullied my opinion of her. But part of me wonders if I am being unreasonable to hold her against something that happened back in 2019. Should I ignore this and assume that she has changed for the better since? Is there a way to address this with her before deciding whether to accept her? Should I perhaps call her on the phone to specifically ask her questions on how she would handle adversity and conflict?

How old was Jane when it happened? If she was barely out of her teens at the time … well, people grow up a lot in their 20s and she may be a different person now and mortified at what she did. On the hand, if she was already solidly into adulthood when it happened, that’s different.

More importantly, how big is the volunteer role? If it’s relatively small, not high-profile, and doesn’t have much focus on interpersonal communication or conflict resolution, I might not pay any attention to this at all, figuring it was years ago and this is a minor volunteer job rather than than your director of communications or similar.

But if it’s a pretty significant role and/or if Jane handling a conflict in a similarly combative manner could do real harm, it’s reasonable for this to give you significant pause.

I wouldn’t just call her up and ask how she would handle adversity and conflict, though. First, that’s easy for someone to BS their way through and second, it won’t necessarily give you the info you need. Instead, if that’s the situation, just ask her about it! “We think you seem great, we found this online, it gave us some pause because this work requires handling conflict at times, and I wondered if you’d talk to me a little about what happened back then and whether you’d handle it any differently now.”

You might hear that she’s mortified by how she handled things six years ago. Or you might hear that she still feels justified in her response. Or she might be outraged that you’re even asking her. However she responds, you’ll come away with a lot more data than you have now about whether she’s someone you’re comfortable moving forward with.

Comments

[conuly]

I mean... I don't want to force Jane to be punished for all eternity, but six years was not that long ago. Allison's right, she's going to have to ask Jane for her opinion on her own past behavior if she wants to know.

[minoanmiss]

One thing I find interesting about the discussion is the idea that the severity of Jane's actions is affected by the age at which she did them. I'm not sure if I think that's true or not.

[conuly]

The age crime curve is generally accepted.

If most people who commit serious crimes in their adolescence will no longer commit any sort of crime in later adulthood then I see no reason to consider that a permanent mark on their character.

[minoanmiss]

I need to see if I can find curves for different kinds of crime. Theft, drugs[1], arson, battery and sexual assault are rather different from each other and so I think they would have different chances of recurrence.

[1] there's a side discussion about what should/should not be crimes, but anyway.

As for the specific case -- she doxxed someone with intent to have harm come to him. How old is old enough to understand the ramifications of that?

[conuly]

I'm not saying that she should not have been punished at the time. However, I would assume, say, a 14 year old has less real understanding of the ramifications of literally any of their actions than a 24 year old does. Continuing to punish somebody six years later for something they did at 24 may make more sense than punishing somebody who did the same thing for the same reason at 14. Or, on the other extreme, if she was, like, 36 when this happened then I'd be sufficiently concerned about her judgment that it's not even punishment to not hire her - I'd want to see that she's gotten some serious help with her emotions and behavior before I'd consider giving her more responsibility than a cashier job.

[melannen]

I think understanding the ramifications of doxxing someone is actually a pretty complex thing? Like, we've all spent years in a community where doxxing within the community is an absolute no - and even then there's been (very rare) cases where I'm like, no, that information actually did need to come out in order to protect the community, that person was abusing anonymity norms to perpetuate real harm.

Jane was almost certainly thinking of this not as "I want to ruin his life" but as "This is a public figure with a whole lot of power over my family's future and happiness, who is abusing that power; I'm going to leverage what little power I can to try to make it right for my sister." If he'd been, idk, a Congressman, and had been actually abusing his power as a Congressman, we would probably be siding with her.

The lapse of judgement was seriously misjudging what constituted public power and abuse here, a swim coach who made a mistake is not actually an abusive figure of power in the public eye! She was very wrong and did a bad thing! But teens and college kids easily get a super skewed idea of that (because they're used to teachers and other adults having a huge amount of easily abused power over them) especially if their parents are reinforcing the idea that this is huge and important. So I think this is genuinely something where age could be a huge factor in the lack of judgement; as you get older your sense of scale improves rapidly.

[lokifan]

Yeah, exactly - this is a much better version of what I was going to say.

[ysobel]

(In case anyone is curious, the AITA post -- which at a quick skim doesn't contain private info; it's about the doxxing but not part -- is https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/b3i255/aita_for_publicizing_the_emails_between_my/ )

[ysobel]

...the 6-year-ago brouhaha was just after the college admissions scandal. Jane acts like the situation with her sister is equivalent. Systemic and repeated and deliberate. That it ruined her sister's career. (Which, uh, the coach's mistake didn't affect her admission, whereas "has family who will harass and doxx you over one simple mistake" will haunt the sister...)

I'd be interested to know Jane's perspective: "god I was a dumbass teenager" or "my crusade was righteous and correct"?

[minoanmiss]

That is the $64,000 question, yeah.

[gingicat]

This is something my younger child might do even though he knows it's wrong, if sufficiently outraged.

[minoanmiss]

His element is fire.

He is also around 6400 days old, so hopefully in another 3653 he might be slightly less inclined to do such a thing.