What to Do If Your Employer Knows You’re Looking for Another Job
Looking for a job while you are working is hard. Trust me, I’ve done it a lot. Just finding the time to talk to someone on the phone is 
difficult let alone spending half a day going to an interview. I was in the midst of a cross country job search a couple of years ago. I was interviewing for jobs in New York and Philadelphia while working in the remote highlands of Vail, CO. I think the whole experience took about ten years off my life and I can say that I can even be a career coach. Now I have nothing but an unemployment va check to show for it, but in the least I can share some of my experiences with the wonderful world of cyberspace and perhaps we can all become a little better for it. Although possibly not richer.
I started apply to job postings and talking to recruiters several months before my dramatic departure from the job in Vail. I wouldn’t say that I was aggressively seeking employment, but I probably spoke with a company or recruiter about once a week. One day I was called into the office by the “operations manager” of the company for whom I was working. This guy didn’t work at our site everyday, but he just came by once in a while to check in. He decided to check in with me that day by telling me that he knew I had sent my resume to a recruiter that the company works with.
I was slightly shocked by the confrontation but I will say that I played it quite cool by explaining that I had often talked to recruiters over the years and even at times sent them my resume and it wasn’t necessarily an indication that I was aggressively seeking a new job. However, I did go on to say that I was worried about what the company was going to do with all the people they had hired for the project I was on as there didn’t seem to be many projects of similar size in the pipeline.
He agreed that the situation was cause for slight concern and I thought that I had done a masterful job of talking my way out of the situation when he made a comment that absolutely threw me for a loop.
He said, “When I was talking to [so and so] over at [so and so recruiter] he mentioned that he may have something for you.”
What the hell does that mean?
First he tells me that I’m very justified in being worried about what the company is going to do with all the people they’ve hired and then he says that the recruiter I sent my resume to may have something for me although the recruiter said nothing of the sort to me. And by way, why the hell was the recruiter telling my boss that they have my resume?
This guy was trying to get rid of me and he was using a sleazy method of doing it. I was extremely pissed off when I left this little meeting and soon called the recruiter and tried to get some answers. They of course played dumb and claimed that didn’t know who did it or how it happened.
I pretty much made up my mind at this point that I was going to leave. However, shortly after this incident the operations manager was fired for unknown reasons and I was left in a position work-wise that wasn’t too bad.
The question is: If I had stayed what damage to my reputation would have been done by the incident and could I have continued my career with them with the same opportunity had the situation never happened.
My opinion was and still is: no.
Your reputation is so crucial within an organization that once it is tarnished with the perception of lack of commitment or what many consider to be selfishness, it is nearly impossible to recovery. I think it would take at least five years of hard devotion to wipe the slate clean. I didn’t feel like I had that kind of time.
Isn’t everybody always at least considering another job? I wouldn’t think the looking would have hurt your reputation within the company too much.