【英语生活】GOOGLE一下你自己吧

The interviewer leant across the table. “Didn't you Google Sir Alan?” he asked, incredulously.

Tre Azam, the impudent, long-faced candidate on The Apprentice, the popular BBC television show devised to find Sir Alan Sugar's next business “apprentice”, suddenly looked defeated.

“No, I didn't,” he admitted. “Not as such.”

Over 11 episodes Tre had succeeded at tasks including selling sexy photographs of fish and designing products for dogs, but on Week 11
he failed the most basic rule of job interviews and was fired from the programme.

In reality, as well as on reality television, Googling has become such a commonplace part of hiring (and firing) that anyone who doesn't do it is either complacent, foolish or both. Keen candidates not only Google the prospective employer but they also Google themselves, to see what the other side will have unearthed.

All this Googling can be a time-consuming and unrewarding business. I've just Googled Sir Alan and found out many things I knew already. I've waded through scores of averagely diverting blogs and discovered nothing much. The only revelation was that for just $71 you can buy a desk toy in his image that says at the touch of a button: “You're fired.”

I've also Googled myself, which was more disheartening.
I found a few links to past articles and some biographical details. There were disappointingly few mentions of me on other people's blogs, but this may have been just as well. “Lucy Kellaway fundamentally doesn't understand human relationships,” said one, and another: “I hate Lucy Kellaway with a wild, unholy passion (as would anyone who had read her horrible, horrible novel Who Moved My Blackberry?).”

In neither investigation did I stumble on any embarrassing secrets. I can't speak for Sir Alan, but in my case that may be because I committed most of my misdemeanours before the internet was invented.

For almost everyone under 25 this isn't the case. The internet is riddled with steamy details of their sex lives, drug habits, political views and so on. Students may love sharing secrets now; the question is whether they will want to be quite so open with future employers.

In the latest Harvard Business Review there is a case study of a 30-year-old American woman interviewed for a job opening a store in China. She seems just the thing, until someone in human resources Googles her, and finds she was involved in protests against the World Trade Organisation and against China's record on human rights eight years earlier. Should she still be hired? Four experts were asked by HBR. Two said yes, two said no.

It is tempting to conclude that mass Googling has made things worse for everyone in the job market. For employees it means no privacy and no escape from the embarrassments of the past. For employers it means worrying not just about their own reputations but about the reputation of every person they hire. Worst of all, it means the wrong people get the jobs.

Suppose a company finds something dodgy on the internet about a candidate. The obvious thing would be to confront them about it in an interview. Few companies dare do this for fear of being sued for discrimination. Instead, they say no thanks and hire someone who looks cleaner. This risk-averse policy is
a shame: people with colourful pasts may turn out to be profitably colourful employees.

Such caution cannot last. Soon the teenagers who are blogging in their millions about their drunken exploits will join the job market and companies refusing to take them will find it hard to find any recruits at all. Such employers would be putting themselves in a similar situation to the Clinton administration in the 1990s when all job candidates were vetoed for having an illegal nanny or for having inhaled.

Eventually companies will calm down because they will have no choice. In a decade most new hires will have something embarrassing about them on the web, but so too will the new generation of HR managers. In 20 years' time there will even be pictures of CEOs as teenagers drunk and half-naked dancing on tables posted on the internet for anyone to see.

In this new world-without-secrets there will be grounds for cheer. It will be much harder to lie about yourself. Take last week's story of Patrick Imbardelli. He resigned as a senior director of Intercontinental Hotels Group after it turned out he didn't have the degrees he claimed to have. When everyone looks up everyone's CV, fantasy qualifications will be hard to sustain. There will always be a witness to the lie who will post something on the internet saying: “Actually, I graduated that year at that college – you weren't there.”

A more unexpected effect of mass Googling
is that it could make executives' private lives more private than they are now. Any chief executive who has a gay lover or irregular sex life is currently treated to a wave of mock shock when such details come out. When we can see photos of almost everyone misbehaving in the past we'll stop the pretend outrage over the present. The only people who will make us wonder will be another category of deviants: those that appear to be spotlessly clean.

桌子对面的面试官倾斜着身子，疑惑地问道：“难道你没用谷歌(Google)搜索过艾伦爵士(Sir Alan)吗？”

《学徒》(The Apprentice)中那个粗鲁的长脸应聘者特雷•阿扎姆(Tre Azam)看上去顿时受挫。《学徒》是英国广播公司(BBC)颇受欢迎的电视节目，这部电视剧的内容是为艾伦•休格爵士(Sir Alan Sugar)寻找下一位商业“学徒”。

“没，我没有，”他承认道，“没搜过。”

在11出节目中，特雷成功地完成了任务，其中包括出售鱼类的性感照片和为狗狗设计产品等，但在第11周，他没能通过最基本的求职面试，因此被淘汰了。

在现实中，以及在电视真人秀中，用谷歌搜索已成了雇用（和解雇）员工极其普通的一部分，以至于不这么做的人要么是自满或愚蠢，要么就是二者兼而有之。聪明的应聘者不仅会用谷歌搜索未来的雇主，还会搜索一下自己，看看对方能发掘出什么信息。

用谷歌进行的所有这些搜索都可能是一种既浪费时间、又毫无回报的事情。我刚刚搜索了一下艾伦爵士，找到了许多我已知的信息。我还浏览了许多博客，一般而言它们都比较有趣，但我没发现什么有用的东西。唯一的收获是我发现，只要花71美元，就能买到以艾伦爵士形象制成的桌上玩偶，按一下按钮，它就能说：“你被解雇了。”

我也用谷歌搜索了自己，结果更令人沮丧。

我找到了一些过去文章的链接和一些传记细节。在其他人的博客上，提到我的人少得可怜，不过这或许是件好事。有个人的博客写到：“露西•凯拉韦根本不懂人际关系。”另一个则说：“我以一种野蛮和邪恶的激情讨厌露西•凯拉韦（凡是读过她非常、非常可怕的小说《谁动了我的黑莓》(Who Moved My Blackberry)的人都会有此同感）

在对我和艾伦爵士两人的调查中，都没遇到令人尴尬的秘密。我不能代表艾伦爵士说话，但至于我自己，这一现象的原因可能是，我的大部分不端行为都是在互联网发明之前做的。

但对于几乎所有25岁以下的人而言，情况就不一样了。互联网充斥着他们的性生活、毒品习惯、政治观点等内容的各种内容。现在，学生们可能喜爱共享秘密，问题是他们是否愿意对未来的雇主如此开放？

在最新一期的《哈佛商业评论》(Harvard Business Review)中有一个研究案例，内容是一位30岁的美国女士去面试一份在中国开设商店的工作。她似乎是个合适人选，但后来人力资源部有人用谷歌搜索了她，并发现她在8年前参与了反对世界贸易组织(WTO)和有关中国人权记录问题的抗议活动。还应该雇用她吗？《哈佛商业评论》询问了4位专家。两个人说应该，两个人说不应该。

一个很诱人的结论是，大规模的谷歌搜索使职场上每个人的情况都变糟了。对雇员而言，这意味着没有隐私，而且无法逃避过去的尴尬；对雇主而言，这意味着他们不仅要担心自己的名誉，也要担心所雇用的每个人的名誉。最糟糕的是，这意味着不合适的人得到了工作。

假设一家公司在网上发现了有关应聘者的说不清楚的事情。显而易见，在面试中会遇到这些问题。很少有公司敢这么做，因为它们担心自己因歧视而遭到起诉。取而代之，他们会说：不，谢谢，然后雇用一个看起来背景较清白的人。这种风险厌恶政策是令人羞愧的：过去经历丰富多彩的人，可能会成为带来丰厚利润的雇员。

这种谨慎不会持续太久。很快，那些在博客上描写自己醉生经历的青少年将进入职场。而不接纳他们的公司会发现根本无人可招。这种雇主将把自己置于20世纪90年代克林顿(Clinton)政府类似的境地：所有的应聘者都因雇用了非法保姆或吸毒而遭到否决。

最终，公司将冷静下来，因为它们别无选择。10年之内，大多数新员工在网络上都会有些关于自己的尴尬事，但这种事也会发生在新一代人事经理身上。20年内，甚至会有首席执行官青少年时代酗酒和半裸在桌子上跳舞的照片，张贴在互联网上供大家欣赏。

这个没有秘密可言的新世界也有令人快乐的理由：对你自己的事说谎会变得难上加难。以最近帕特里克•伊姆巴德利(Patrick Imbardelli)事件为例。他辞去了洲际酒店集团(InterContinental Hotels Group)高级董事的职务，因为此前有人发现他并不拥有自己声称拥有的学位。当人人都查询其他人的简历时，伪造的资质将难以持久。总会有证人证实那是个谎言，他会在互联网上贴个帖子说：“事实上，我那年在同所学院毕业——当时可没你。”

大量使用谷歌搜索的一个更加出乎意料的效果是，这可能使高管的私生活变得比现在更为隐私。有些首席执行官有个同性恋爱人或者性生活不规律，现在当这些细节披露时，人们会假装感到吃惊。而当我们看到几乎所有人过去不端行为的照片时，我们将停止现在这种假装的愤怒。到时候唯一令我们感到奇怪的人，将是另一类不正常的人：那些看上去毫无污点的人。

译者/梁鸥