Mobile Press-Register Alabama beat reporter

What if you don't tell your boss for all the reasons most people say not to tell your boss, but you come to the two-week's notice meeting with a couple of candidates in mind and an offer to help recruit and get them ready?

 

It's just common courtesy to tell the corporate kiss-asses your job plans. Makes it easier for you to get a pink slip if you end up not taking the job.

 

I got no problem not knowing if people on my staff are looking. Hell, I expect them to always be looking to better themselves. When it gets to the interview stage, I'd like to know so i can start planning a little bit if it comes to filling a position.
Is that too much to ask?

 

Icy glare? Why because someone decides to leave your place for another job? That's really childish.
If you've got a list, as you claim, you thank the person for the time spent and move on. What's the big deal? So you have to replace them, it's all part of business.
Icy glare? I think that's a little overboard.

 

Stitch is right.
2under, if it gets to the stage where money is involved, I think it would be OK to talk to your superior about making a move. It prepares them but again, since many reside in right to work states, there's no obligation.

 

I'm with Drip on a lot of this. It's your choice. And he makes a very good point: Your bosses rarely will tell you when they're considering leaving. Moreover, Mizzougrad96 put someone on the spot, and it wasn't really his place to do that. It puts that person and the other, unknown applicants in a unique situation, particularly since the hiring editor (Randy Kennedy) created this thread and the sports editor in Knoxville (Phil Kaplan) has posted on this message board in the past.

One of the complexities that can arise, particularly for those working in a larger newsroom, is how far up you want to go in discussing searching for employment. If I were offered an interview somewhere, I'd absolutely tell my direct supervisor. But we've got several layers of management between copy editor and sports editor, and I don't think I'd want to involve the sports editor until I had received an employment offer. My guess is there aren't nearly as many layers of management in Knoxville. But that doesn't mean the white male applicant wants his entire office to know. It's not just Kaplan who could stumble across this thread. There are many coworkers to consider. Maybe the Knoxville writer would rather his fellow reporters and copy editors not know he applied in case he didn't get the job. That could potentially make things awkward in the future.

 

Good post, Versatile. In this case, as you noted, the choice was taken away from the person in question, and it stuns me that people think it was OK for someone, anonymously, to take that choice away from him.

It would be a wonderful world if every boss -- and every boss of that boss, and every boss of those bosses, and every corporate structure -- were like Moddy and others say they are about this kind of thing. You could add a verse to the Louis Armstrong classic. Sadly, that isn't close to being reality. Common courtesy isn't so common in this industry, especially coming the other way down the two-way street.

One truth of SportsJournalists.com is we have some pretty smart, accomplished people on here who have great difficulty imagining that life, circumstances and dynamics at places where they've never been or worked might be different than what they've encountered.

 

I'd like to name names, but I think there might be a rule against it.