Reprint: R0706A
As the CEO of Hathaway Jones, an American luxury apparel retailer, Fred Westen has spent the past four years struggling to revamp his company’s stodgy image and boost flagging sales. He’s just announced an ambitious plan to elbow in on China’s fast-growing luxury goods market when he gets a call from an old prep school friend. Fred agrees to meet his friend’s daughter, Mimi Brewster, to see whether she might be able to head up the company’s flagship store in Shanghai.
Fred is impressed by Mimi’s CV, and the interview goes off without a hitch, but a routine Google search turns up information about her that could affect the company’s performance in China. News stories and photos reveal that when Mimi was fresh out of college, she’d participated in nonviolent but vocal demonstrations—including one in front of China’s San Francisco consulate—against the World Trade Organization.
As the vice president of HR urges caution, Fred ponders hiring practices in the digital age. He knows that nothing is secret anymore—especially among younger people, who brazenly post the most intimate details of their lives for the world to see. If he hires Mimi, and her past conduct becomes widely known, his company’s expansion overseas could be set back. But rising stars like Mimi don’t walk in the door every day. Should Fred hire her despite her online history?
Commenting on this fictional case study are John G. Palfrey, Jr., a professor and the executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Jeffrey A. Joerres, the CEO of Manpower; danah m. boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, and a corporate adviser; and Michael Fertik, the CEO of ReputationDefender.
The wind was howling and relentless as Fred Westen opened the door and called upstairs to tell his wife that he was home. While he waited for her to come down, he poured himself a shot of whiskey, tilting the decanter with his left hand. In his right he grasped the morning’s Wall Street Journal. The CEO of the luxury apparel retailer Hathaway Jones wanted to hear his wife’s reaction to a story.
