Dude, You Know HR Has Arrived When You Mess Up and Suddenly Bikini Shots of You Are On The Web...

First up, let me say that being a HR Manager at Twitter sounds like a cool gig.  I could roll like that and have fun.  Maybe even get above 1,000 followers, if that kind of thing was important to me (CYA in case I don't get there, sniff, sob, tremble)...

With that said, here's the down side of being a HR Manager at Twitter.  EVERYTHING you do is   probably  going to be scrutinized by the digerati that includes the always funny, but sometimes just plain mean gang at Valleywag, which covers the Bay area tech scene daily.

Case in point - the HR Manager at Twitter made a mistake and accidentally sent a "thanks but no thanks" letter to 186 rejected job candidates by using the "to" or "cc" line instead of the "bcc" line.  As a result, the candidates knew directional information on the identities of everyone rejected. 

Who hasn't been there with some email snafu?  More from Valleywag:

"For a company that's not making money, Twitter is being awfully picky about who it hires to come up with ideas for generating cash. The company accidentally published the email addresses of 186 rejects.

Some people say Twitter, which lets people post 140-character status updates to their friends and the rest of the Internet, is replacing email. That might explain why Twitter HR manager Krissy Bush confused the "cc:" and "bcc:" fields in her email client when she informed 186 hopefuls that they weren't a fit for the job of business product manager. How can she be expected to deal with such an outdated communication mechanism? Here's the email header and body, with addresses obscured:"

Click through if you want the picture of the email, or the text from the rejection letter, which is pretty standard flair.

Here's the real downside.  Not only does the HR Manager get the public display of humiliation, but the commenters do what readers do and research the person a bit, which lands them on her twitter page, which links to photo albums (bad choice), which have various photos including a bikini shot, etc.  Dig if you want them, because I'm not showing them here.

The moral of the story?  Welcome to the show, where any mistake you make goes viral in 3 seconds because you work for Twitter.  Thank god Valleywag's not waiting around for me to screw up.

PS - can somebody at Twitter invest in an ATS STAT so Krissy doesn't have to send emails out manually? 

Comments

[KarenM]

There has to be a sad irony about this.. As someone in H.R who usually yells and screams about regarding the privacy of candidates, and many in H.R saying hey, if it is out there, it is open for the look.. Well what an interesting twist of the tables

- Especially for the very reserved, Oh so Professional, austere position of H.R

My only comments are to krissy, PRIVATE - Not only in the B: (cc) of emails - but also Private in regards to Photos and internet profiles...

H.R can be brutal, and have a tendency of Snooping - and they will snoop on you too! Krissy, You may not think much of your photos, but with respect, think of why those were the pictures people chose when they wrote about you.. it wasn't like they tried to find the ones of you in for example a bridesmaid's dress.

Krissy, My heart does go out to you.. It sucks, and it was an honest mistake.. one, like many that many of us in the H.R (including recruiting)World have made time to time.. Unfortunately, for you, yours became a public mess..

Karen

P.S - this is not a I condone snooping of H.R.. I don't, but I do find a sardonic irony (sad, but sardonic) that a Member of H.R got burned, and publicly..

[Hayli @ RiseSmart]

Yeesh, this is sad. Classic case of keeping private photos off the Net because it's become virtually impossible (especially for telecommuting professionals who use the Net all day every day) to separate "work sites/info" from "personal life sites/info".

[Sadistic Manager]

I don't think I can say how strongly I agree with this. One of the first things I do with strong candidates is Google them.

Haven't found anything that would scare me away yet, but I'm just waiting for a hit with an AP story about a party gone wrong or something that eliminates the need for a background check.

Nothing on the internet is private; I wish more people would really believe that.