Over the past couple of weeks I have been researching corporations to determine where to send my resume to. While doing so I came across a website titled Vault.com. I found it very useful to my current needs in the job-search process. Advertising itself as the “most trusted name in career information,” you will quickly see how surprisingly trustworthy it is. What disturbed me about it was the amount of unsolicited information found on it.
To check the information about each organization I first entered the one I currently work for to check the accuracy of the information retreived. After hitting the search key I found myself sitting in front of a screen titled “Discussion Topics from Industry Message Boards.” Underneath were threads of discussions about the corporation I worked for. No big deal, right? No! I currently work for a highly successful, ultra-private, family-owned corporation which reported its earning to Hoover’s as a miniscule fraction of its actual eanings. It can do this because private corporations do not have to report its actual earnings to anyone but the IRS; and it does misrepresent itself to keep its business highly controlled and unsucceptable to external factors. But right in front of me was dozens and dozens of people adding threads on a public discussion board about the intricacies of the workplace and business. Earnings were talked about, future plans of the corporation, strategies, best practices, as well as lawsuits, hiring practices, and firings. Much of this is secret, proprietary information.
This information is highly valuable to the corporation and it was simply added to a basic discussion board for all to see. At work we have a list of guidelines to follow to answer questions about the corporation outside of the workplace. For instance, if I were asked by an outsider who owns the corporation I work for I am supposed to say “A board of selected members.” If I speak openly about the one owner and president then who is to say that his or her’s son or daughter could not be kidnapped and held for ramsom? Some responses are for the safety of the owner, some are for the privateness of the company itself. On Vault.com his or her’s name is openly talked about.
The career I am pusuing is Competitive Intelligence, and I see on this website a weath of knowledge about my potential competitors at my fingertips. It will be my job to find information about the company you work for and then use that information to my advantage. So it disturbs my that people freely divelge proprietary information on public forums, but it also helps me.
