The Dangers of Getting Jobs Through Friends

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.

“Oh, I already have a friend there. I’ll just contact him.” In the job market, it’s one of the more common things we hear after informing a job seeker that a certain employer has a job opening. There is a lot you need to consider before you decide to apply to a job through a friend or relative, or take a job working for a friend or relative. First, it’s exceedingly rare that a friend or family member will ever be able to get you a position. The reason for this is simple: despite what you think, the involvement of friends or family members in your job search may actually hurt you. All employers know the severe problems that can arise when friends or relatives work together. Because of this, simply going through a close contact is often something that’s actually counterproductive to your job search. Second, even if you are one of the few people who can get positions through a friend or family member, you could run into a great deal of trouble and harm your relationship with that person.

First, this article examines the risks associated with attempting to get a job through a friend or family member. Second, the article will then examine potential problems you could face if you ultimately get a position through these means. Third, this article describes some reasons for not working for a friend or relative. Finally, because it’s so common to get jobs through acquaintances, this article examines the conditions where it’s acceptable and likely to not be a problem.

A. The Risks of Trying to Get a Position Through a Friend or Family Member
When seeking a job through a friend, you’ll be often surprised to find that he or she won’t help you get a job with his/her organization. The organization may actually look upon you negatively and not hire you if you try to use a friend or family member to get hired.

1. Friends and Family Members, More Often Than Not, Do Not Help You When Seeking a Job
One of the most common things that job seekers do is think friends are their best allies in job searches. After all, the employment market is a harsh place. Who better to help you with your job search than a friend employed by someone you’d like to work for? A friend certainly recognizes all of your strengths and appreciates you for the person you are. In addition, the thought of depending upon a stranger when you have a friend or family member close by makes little sense. Certainly, you can always trust a friend over a stranger.

I have been a legal recruiter for several years. I have represented more candidates than I can count. In all of my time as a legal recruiter, I’ve never once had a candidate get a job through a friend. Incredibly, I’ve actually gotten several candidates jobs with firms where they thought they had friends inside who were helping them with their job searches, “insiders” who never got their friends interviews. When I think back on my own life, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten any job where I had a friend or relative helping me.

The issue with using friends to help you with your job search is that you never know your friends as well as you think. Almost instinctively, most people compete with one another. When dealing with people close to you, you will often agree with them just to avoid argument. In fact, if you spend more than a couple of hours with your family or a group of your friends, you will find this sort of thing occurring probably every few minutes throughout each conversation. Friends and family also often do their best to laugh extra hard at each other’s jokes and cover up their unpleasant qualities. Your friends and family will most often say they love your taste in music, your choice of clothing, your house or apartment, your writing, and most everything you take seriously. It’s possible your friends and family mean this. It’s also possible they don’t.

The thought of asking a friend to help you with a job search with his employer is an attempt to shield yourself from the harshness of the world. The same enthusiasm your friends and family have for you in the personal realm, you may imagine, will directly translate to an eagerness to help you find work with their organizations. I would offer at the outset that this is a possibility and you may not be wrong in thinking this. Notwithstanding, this is often not the case.

One of the more common things that occurs when job seekers ask a friend or family member for help is nothing. The friend or family member gets your résumé, thinks about it, and then (for whatever reason) decides she doesn’t want to forward it to the powers that be. You can’t imagine how common this is. If you’ve forwarded a résumé to a friend recently, call the hiring partner or recruiting coordinator about it. In over 50% of the cases, your “friend” will not have even forwarded the information. She will pleasantly tell you she will, but ultimately won’t. Your friend will often lie and tell you she forwarded the information she didn’t. Again, I’ve seen this more times than I can count. The number is over 50% (with the exception of employers that pay “bounties” to employees who find other employees).

Your guess why this occurs is as good as mine. Perhaps your friend or family member simply doesn’t want the two of you working in the same office. Perhaps your friend doesn’t want responsibility for what you might do if you were hired. Perhaps (just perhaps) your friend honestly doesn’t think as highly of your capabilities as you do. While your friend might not tell you he resents you because you have so and so, did so and so, or said such-and-such once, you can believe this can come out if you come to him seeking help with getting a job. Again, you won’t even know this has come out. It just will. The employer may never see your résumé.

Assuming your friend or family member forwards your résumé, be prepared for many brutally honest assessments of your character and talents that you personally may never have been aware of. Most friends speak about one another with other groups of friends when the other isn’t around. Not all of this conversation is pleasant. Do you have any idea what your friends are saying about you? I can almost guarantee you that some of it is negative. You probably don’t even know 10% of the negative things your friends and family say about you when you’re not around. I have a question for you: do you want any of this 90% of invisible negative information you aren’t aware of to be communicated to your potential employer?

2. The Reasons Organizations Often Do Not Like to Hire Friends or Family Members of Their Employees
We have traditionally considered nepotism a negative term. The word originates from the Latin word nephos, which means nephew, and described Pope Calixtus III’s hiring of nephews as cardinals. The first anti-nepotism policies probably originated in the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages or Renaissance, when resentment built against incompetents appointed to high clerical offices. To this day, nepotism is something that can create resentment in all employment environments. In this article, I define nepotism as the hiring of relatives and friends.

Reducing corruption and increasing efficiency are the primary reasons many organizations have anti-nepotism policies. Corruption has always been a concern in this realm. If individuals who are friends or relatives work together, organizations fear these individuals may collaborate to advance their own interests rather than the interests of the organization. Nepotism can also lower morale of those who supervise relatives of friends of high-level members of the organization, those who work with them, and those who feel that rewards or promotions were given unfairly. One or two friends or relatives may react negatively (and contrary to the interests of the organization) when another is criticized or disciplined by the organization. Finally, perception is a serious problem. Other employees will also perceive unequal treatment of one friend or relative, whether this is the case.

While a great deal could be written about nepotism its something many employers are concerned about. Using a perceived “in” with an employer to get a job may actually hurt you because of the employer’s own feelings about nepotism.

It’s important to note that not all employers will be against nepotism. For example, in smaller, family-owned law businesses, it’s often common because it provides an efficient way to identify dedicated employees. Nepotism may also foster a dedicated, family-like environment that boosts the morale of everyone, relatives and friends alike. A good example is the Central Intelligence Agency, which actually encourages the hiring of married couples. Having both spouses free to discuss classified information can actually reduce the strain of a high-stress career.

While nepotism may have its place, it’s important to note that more often than not, it is something that can scare away employers. It should therefore be avoided in the job search.

B. The Problems You Will Likely Cause Yourself if You Get a Position Through a Friend or Family Member
I review a lot of the résumés that we receive throughout the United States each day at BCG Attorney Search. There are two things I see a lot of: (1) associates who obviously don’t have the qualifications to work inside certain law firms and (2) associates working for small law firms (with their own last names in the mastheads) who are secretly looking for jobs.

Each and every time I speak with these associates, I find they are in positions because of family members and are extremely resentful of the family members for whatever reason. They have lots of negative things to say about them and desperately want new jobs with the same salaries and levels of responsibility. Not once in my career do I think I have seen one of this class of associates who was qualified for a job even remotely as good as the one he/she was in. These associates always resent and, in most instances, hate the family member who got them the jobs they were unqualified for to begin with. These associates refuse to go to a less-prestigious firm or job. Most often, in fact, they believe they should work for even better organizations.

If you accept a job through a friend or family member, watch out. More important, watch yourself. In the end, you will probably be your own downfall. It’s your friend’s or family member’s act of kindness that will ultimately unbalance your friendship.

The typical pattern that happens when someone is hired by a friend, or family member is as follows. First, the people hired are grateful for being hired, but want to feel as if they deserve their good fortunes. The friends or family members hired will look for many justifications to show the world and show to themselves that they deserve their good fortunes.

One response of the people hired may be to believe that being hired is a payback of sorts for everything that they have ever done to be kind to their friends or family members. They begin justifying their hiring by everything they have ever said or done for the friend or family member.

Another response may be for the hired person to compare themselves to others inside the same organization and believe they are more intelligent than all of these other people. Therefore, the hired friends or family members justify their positions by often unjustly attacking their fellow employees.

The most common reaction, though, is that the hired friend or family member will become resentful of the person who helped him get the job to begin with. The receipt of a favor can come to mean, in the hired friend’s or family member’s eyes, that he was hired because of this and not based on merit. There is what I would term “hidden condescension” in the act of hiring a friend or family member that grinds at him all the time.

Whoever you work for likely cares more about (1) getting the job done and (2) doing the job as well as they can do it than having friendly feelings flowing between the two of you. Your status as a friend or relative of someone doesn’t mean you’re automatically the one who can best do the job. If you cannot do the job in the best manner, more resentment is going to arise when your friend or family member asks another person to help with a task.

One of the more brilliant state leaders of the 19th century, Napoleon’s Foreign Minister Talleyrand, decided that his boss was leading France to ruin. Talleyrand therefore decided that he needed to take down Napoleon. Obviously, overthrowing Napoleon wouldn’t be a small one. In order to carry it out, Talleyrand desperately needed to enlist the help of someone he could trust. Instead of turning to a friend for help, Talleyrand turned to his worst enemy, Fouche’, the head of the Secret Police.

Fouche’ had even tried to have Talleyrand assassinated. The brilliance of Talleyrand’s choice was that it provided Fouche’ with the opportunity to reconcile with Talleyrand on an emotional level. In addition, there was nothing Fouche’ would expect from Talleyrand, and quite the contrary, Fouche’ would work hard to prove that he was worthy of Talleyrand’s picking him for the task. When people have something to prove, they will work harder than those who do not. Compare this to what could have occurred if Talleyrand simply went to a friend for help.

Talleyrand chose Fouche’ because he knew that their relationship would be based entirely on their mutual self-interest in removing Napoleon and not poisoned by personal feelings. While their effort to topple Napoleon ultimately failed, they could generate much interest in the cause and had a good relationship from now on.

Similarly, it is important to realize that getting a job and working in a job on equal ground and in an atmosphere of mutual self-interest is crucial. Personal feelings obscure the fact that there is work that needs to be done efficiently. In a work environment where everyone is evaluated and judged on merit, more productivity and honesty on all sides can only ensure good business.

C. Conclusions
One of the more disturbing phone calls I’ve received was from the Dean of Career Services at a second-tier law school. The Dean had read an article I wrote that advised attorneys on how to get a job in a tough legal market. The Dean told me that the first place everyone should always look to get a job was with their family. The Dean then told me that people should go to events and “make friends” with other attorneys and then ask them for jobs (a.k.a. “networking”). As I listened to the Dean speak, it became abundantly clear to me she did not like any manner of getting an attorney job that did not come through friends or family. In her view, if a job came through a friend or family member, it was far better than getting a job through a “stranger.”

It’s natural when looking for a job to contact the people you know to see if they can help you with your job search. In fact, I would guess that most job seekers early in their careers contact a family member, a personal friend, or an acquaintance when seeking a new job. Most associates and partners I have worked with as a recruiter (who have contacted me for help) have been clear with me that before contacting a recruiter, they contacted a friend, an acquaintance, or another person they were connected with in some social manner to see if he could help with a job search. Most employees have, in time, told a friend that they would try to assist them with getting a job at their place of work.

While it may be difficult to believe—and contrary to the advice of the Dean–you actually may be safer (1) getting a job without the help of family or friends and (2) working in an environment without family or friends. You do both at your own risk. Most of the time, I believe the risks far outweigh the potential long-term and short-term rewards.

THE LESSON

Despite the obvious advantages, getting jobs through a friend or relative may ultimately harm you. When you do so, you risk lowering your colleague’s opinions of you, who may see your connections as evidence that you lack the skills to get your position on your own merits. There are situations in which it is acceptable to take advantage of such connections, but you must be on your guard. Make sure the job you get is a good fit, and one in which you would perform well regardless of your connections.

About Harrison Barnes

Harrison Barnes is the Founder of BCG Attorney Search and a successful legal recruiter himself. Harrison is extremely committed to and passionate about the profession of legal placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned in a search and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has placed the leaders of the nation’s top law firms, and countless associates who have gone on to lead the nation’s top law firms. There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placements attract millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and retention efforts. His company LawCrossing has been ranked on the Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison Barnes’ bio.

About BCG Attorney Search

BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive that gets results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities that its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com.