L. Duksaitė: after companies with a bad reputation, the CEOs have to deal with leprosy?

Whatever you agree with is what you will become. So goes the folk wisdom. Does this also apply to managers working in companies with a bad reputation?

The manager has -eleven years of impressive work experience, excellent results, has worked for super companies and would have been a welcome manager in many companies in the past. However, after working for a company with a bad reputation, he decides that he is not cut out for this company after all. He is looking for a new management position. He is puzzled, as all his experience in the marketplace is suddenly on the back burner. No reputable company wants to hire him as a manager because “he/she worked for X company”.

Indeed, it can be difficult to understand at first glance. How just a few months or years working for a company with a bad reputation can seemingly wipe out a whole wonderful career experience.

But in the selection process, we have to deal with this regularly. “Yes, the experience is good, BUT…”, and that’s what getting a job in such a company becomes. People are scared like the plague to come from there.

The usual arguments are:

• how desperate you have to be to go to a company like this
• Once there, they will have absorbed the company’s “values and culture” – or rather, the lack of it – and will transmit the infection to us.

In reality, this is not always the case. Sometimes managers are simply impressed by the impressive personalities of the shareholders or owners during the selection process. Impressive, strong, charismatic managers attract leaders to come and work together. But there is a price to pay for their choices.

Of course, for ethical reasons, I will not mention specific companies. But most of us have an idea.

What if a company with a bad reputation invites you to join them?

Think twice. And not just in the short term. The latter is often very attractive: because it is so difficult to attract good managers, these companies are forced to offer well above market rates (the difference can be as much as 25-30% – another reason to take care of one’s reputation). In the short term, significantly higher money is naturally tempting. Some also imagine that if they come, they will start to change the company’s culture and values and inspire change there. But most of the time it is the other way around – the new manager’s attitude is ground under the old mill.

So it’s important to take a longer-term view: how long will I be there and what will I want to do later? Because later on, if you want to work for a reputable company, they will think three times and say no more often than yes. The mark of a bad reputation does not fade for long. And waiting for the market to forget can lead to an intermediate career stop in a less attractive position.

#CEOreputation