Out of the blue yesterday, I received a request to take down a testimonial on my “hire me” site that I had received from a colleague from a past employer. There was some question about the testimonial being a violation of that company’s policies on employee references.
As I had done on every testimonial, I cited their current company and the company where I worked with them. These citations give the quote context and are helpful to the reader. When I collect a quotation, I always ask how someone wants to be cited and give them the opportunity to differ from my normal method. I even let them know when its been posted to the website.
However, in this case, the citation ran afoul of the company policy which forbids any employee from giving a reference to a past employee.
When I first got the takedown email, I was stunned and thought that they must have misunderstood the policy. It was a positive comment, of course, and I felt like it was good for both the company and me to have positivity out there. I had even wondered about freedom of speech issues — surely my colleague was entitled to express an individual opinion. But alas, I took the citation down so that the person’s opinion is not blurred with the company’s opinion.
But it made me wonder if the citation really blurs the issue. It was a personal opinion, not a corporate endorsement, otherwise I would cite the company alone. In the end, I respect everyone’s policies and I definitely want to ensure that my past colleagues are not disadvantaged by saying something nice about me. I will just be a lot more careful in the future, I had no idea that anyone would ever have a problem with this.