Here is what I would have told Acorn if it had asked me to handle the crisis involving two employees who were videotaped advising a fake pimp and prostitute how to defraud the government:

1. Fire the people and immediately announce you have fired them because they are rogue employees.
2. Demonstrate that the company has ethics and malfeasance policies that it enforces and communicates to employees on a regular basis.
3. State that the organization is doing a full-scale investigation that will look into how policies can be improved to prevent a reoccurrence.
4. Remind everyone with easy-to-understand facts how much Acorn helps people.
5. Announce results of the investigation, which will likely reveal that these are isolated instances of rogue employees, and make sure you include at least three concrete steps the organization is make sure it doesn’t happen again.
6. Consider rolling the head of an executive who takes the blame for poor oversight.

What I just described is the standard crisis communications strategy when a corporation steps into the deep stuff.  I have used these communications principles to help maybe 25 organizations to successfully overcome crises caused by malfeasance, stupidity, acts of nature, mistakes and bad luck.  My short hand for this strategy is: fix it, tell why it happened and tell why it will never happen again.

Now it occurred to me that perhaps Acorn tried this strategy, but the news media did not let it succeed for ideological reasons.  And while it’ true that the conservative media has been after Acorn’s blood for some time now, my analysis of the news releases on the Acorn website suggests that Acorn efforts to “fix it, tell why it happened and tell why it will never happen again” have been too little, too late.

Of course, it doesn’t help the situation much when in responding to the announcement that the IRS was severing ties with the group, Acorn’s chief executive lets herself be quoted saying, “We had already made that decision to not deliver these services.”  Few things are more detrimental to an organization with a social or political mission than for it to characterize that mission as just another business product or service.

I’ve reserved for its very own blog entry what may be the most important tip I have for job-seekers: Never lie on the resume or in the interview.

Employers detest lies and usually can smell them. And a half-truth is considered the worst of all lies, as Alfred Lord Tennyson once observed.

When someone claims to have done something that is not associated with the job he or she held at the time, or when the applicant cannot provide details of an assignment or job, that’s usually a good sign that some unhealthy fibbing has occurred.

My favorite example is a lie we didn’t smell, but still uncovered through some standard checking.

After hiring an advertising professional a few years back, we called the company that he claimed was his current employer to do a standard check, only to discover that he had been laid off six months earlier.

I immediately rescinded the offer of employment because our business operates on a basis of trust. We are trusted because we are trustworthy. It takes only one lie to a client to destroy what years of honesty have built up.

The sad thing is that being laid off from an ad agency during a recession was, and is, no big deal, and would not have affected in the slightest what we thought of the job applicant.

A special type of lie is to submit a work sample that was not yours.  In my business, the most frequent work samples are writing or design samples.  Unbelievable as it might seem, in 20 years of doing business my company has uncovered three instances of people claiming writing that someone had done at Jampole Communications was their own work product! 

You ask, how could people be so dumb?

In one case, a former employee responded to a blind ad with work samples that others had written at the agency.  In another, the applicant had taken the work sample from a former employer who had engaged Jampole Communications to write it for them.

My last example is a bizarre variation on the theme of lying about a work sample: A client called us because someone claimed he/she had written something while employed at Jampole Communications. Now it was true the person worked briefly (and well) at my company and it was also true that the person had written the work sample she had submitted to my client.  Unfortunately she had not written it for us, but rather as a writing test as part of our hiring process.  While the sample was well written enough to get an entry level job at Jampole Communications, we would never have released it to a client or the public.  And our client (thank goodness!) recognized that the quality of the writing was beneath our high standards immediately. To claim that a writing test was work you did for a company as opposed to being a writing test to get a job is a fairly self-evident kind of lie to virtually every employer.

So what have we learned, class?

Follow directions, avoid mistakes, do research, never lie. If you run down this list of tips for job seekers, you’ll find these suggestions are precisely the skills that make for good employees. Sometimes they are called good work habits. But call them what you may, they not only increase the chance of landing the job but also help employees to thrive on the job and build successful careers.

Getting in the hiring mode has got me started on a screed about mistakes that far too many job applicants make.  In my last entry, I detailed faux pas on resumes and application forms.  Now to interviews.

I start with something that many people forget to do before the interview and that is research the company. Once you learn the identity of the potential employer, find out something about the organization. Since most companies have websites, researching a prospective employer has become relatively easy.

Employers always appreciate it when job applicants have taken the time to understand their businesses. Knowing something about the company can help you formulate questions and guide you in answering the employer’s questions. It enables you to present your experience and capabilities in terms of the employer’s needs.

What else? Focus on what you can do for the employer. In interviews (and also in cover letters) too many job candidates want to talk about only what they want out of a job.

One job applicant sent a press release, the lead of which was that he was sitting at home watching TV since he couldn’t find a job; another compared herself to a frog on a pond waiting for the “kiss of inspiration” from an employer to turn her into a princess of creativity.

I’ll leave it to the reader to determine if these were fresh, creative approaches; one thing I know is that they demonstrated a self-centeredness that does not make for a competent professional service provider.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, ask not what the employer can do for you, ask what you can do for the employer.

We’re hiring again at Jampole Communications, and for the first time in a few years it’s because the business is growing past the resources of the existing staff.

Growth is good, but I think I’m not the only businessperson who has more fears approaching the hiring process than when involved in any other aspect of managing an organization, large or small.

Job applicants don’t make it any easier. Perusing through resumes and interviewing candidates makes me more aware than usual that the overwhelming majority of job candidates shoot themselves in the foot and don’t even know it.

I wrote in 2002 for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the many mistakes jobseekers make are a problem for them, but an even bigger problem for employers, especially at small businesses.

Virtually all my fellow employers tell me that hiring is the hardest thing they have to do. It’s made harder by the numerous missteps that most job applicants take.

In the interests of making life a little easier for the many people seeking jobs in the current tight marketplace as well as for the businesses doing the hiring, I want to present a few tips on applying for a job. What I have to say applies specifically to seekers of professional positions, but it should help other job applicants as well.

Make sure your application is error-free. About half of all cover letters and resumes we receive have grammatical, syntactical or spelling errors. If there is one mistake only and we like what we see on the resume, we will sometimes contact the applicant and ask that he or she find the error and resubmit. If there is more than one mistake, the resume goes into the trash bin.

Follow all directions. When a prospective employer asks you to provide something or do something, if you want the job, you had better follow the directions (assuming it’s legal and ethical).

For example, one time we placed a classified ad for a public relations writer, in which we asked that applicants send resumes and writing samples. We received 150 responses, but only 20 of them had writing samples enclosed. The other 130 went right into the trash bin.

Keep it relevant. While I may personally be intrigued by the job applicant who writes poetry or paints abstract images on guitar cases, it isn’t really relevant to the job we have to do every day.

Deciding what is relevant often involves a judgment call.

For example, participation in extracurricular activities and holding summer jobs are relevant when a job applicant has just graduated from college. They are no longer relevant five years later. But getting a full academic scholarship covering room and board for four years (as my son did! says the proud dad) or winning a Fulbright Fellowship—these kind of academic achievements are probably relevant until the end of your career.

No time for more right now, but next time I really should also write something about frequent interview mistakes that are killers.