References, Anxiety ...Really?

I misread a bullet point of a job’s position description last night:

• “Typically supervises a variety of midlevel exempt employees. Accomplishes results through subordinate supervisors, or exempt specialist employees”

I was tired and read ‘medieval’ instead of ‘midlevel’...and I laughed myself awake! (An exempt employee is paid by salary, not an hourly wage).

While I have no pining for medieval life, I feel loss for what was common in the more recent past between employers and ?job-seekers…part of the bond of respect and propriety between applicant and prospective employer.

My work as a 1099 Independent Contractor (an IRS classification), as an in-residence technical and managerial consultant has been wonderful. 15 busy months most recently which wind down soon, and 10 months at a prior time in my career. Two distillery-focused enterprises and two breweries. But as the current contract as Acting-COO approaches its end, it’s time to find a new thing that is appropriate and offers a degree of permanency for me.

I am smarting from disappointment that a large company delivered, after scheduling two long interview zooms with 5-6 participants across two Sundays. Their Chairman wanted to schedule these on Sundays and I expect the senior leaders on the Zoom sessions had already worked Saturday at the plants or on senior-leadership stuff.

Going through the Zoom interviews, etc is the currency we deal with today, and I’m sad that the ?company’s Chair ?‘downsized’ their consideration of me from a senior leadership role (with a degree of permanency) in a fine city and instead?said they were considering me to become a Senior Consultant on one project…and their President?reached out to all 7 of the references I provided when I applied for the long-term role (they actually asked me for 15 references!) at my original application, months before. This is to determine if I qualify to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement…for a project that would probably not exceed 60 days, and it may as little be as 3 days work that I would gain. What stings is the overarching company’s focus is something near and dear to me… yet this super-secret project with implications on a patent development…their outreach to my 7 references, all company Presidents and CEOS, was to determine if I am worthy of signing their NDA. I have no idea what they are doing in this project and not an inkling of how I may help progress things. And it also stings a bit that after contacting my references, they chose not to reach out to me again, nor do I expect them to by now. I can’t control that, but what is sad is that I see something I had control of before is now less secure in finding new employment.

I hate expending the currency of professional references- because to me, these are a treasure, and I don’t want to disturb my former bosses with answering questions for a short term consulting gig. ?Yet these days, some position applications online request at least three employment references cited with phone numbers and email addresses at the time of initial application. You can’t proceed if you want to write in, “Details available immediately after I am interviewed”. Whenever possible, I hold off on sharing references until I know the company is serious.?I don’t want anyone spending my precious “currency”… the people I ?once reported to and list as my references across 5 countries. Busy professionals who take the time to answer a series of questions emailed to them about me. I’m saddened that the sharing of references on our own terms is no longer fully under our control in applying for new opportunities.

Things evolve. How could the most natural thing to occur at the end of the hiring process become a part of the start of the process? To me it’s like having 20 tabs open at the same time, but in real life instead of on my laptop. I guess I need to accept that occurrences like this, which I take a bit personally, really have nothing to with me. ?There is a medieval anecdote about the man in Perugia who was going along the streets, wrapped in his melancholy, and was met by someone who asked him about what was wrong, and he replied that he owed money which he could not pay. The man responded, “Leave that anxiety to your creditor.” But I actually do think I could positively supervise a variety of medieval exempt employees.