so those of you who have done controversial stuff to the establishment, what do you do for professional networking?Last week one of my teachers brought a guest speaker from XYZ company to answer students' questions about job interviews (in general). He started discussing how employers prefer students who have assumed leadership roles on campus/ are involved in activities besides classes. I raised my hand and asked a question that I -unfortunately- already knew the asnwer to: What if you demonstrated leadership skills in areas that your interviewer/ hr person may not agree with-- such as political beliefs... *deep breath* I mean, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
I immediately noticed the alarmed look on the man's face. He asnwered the question diplomatically saying that if your interviewer had a problem with that, then he's a bad interviewer... and a bunch of things along the line, but somewhere, he mentioned the word "radical". The teacher interrupted by saying "You chose this... and there is nothing you can do about it."
Now my first job may or may not be related to this topic, but I still think it is interesting. The fact that the teacher sent me the following email today made it a whole lot more interesting:
"I hope you are having a good week! I wanted to send you a quick note about the question that you asked in class last week, about whether or not to include your experience working for Palestinian rights on your resume. As I said in class, it is obviously up to you whether or not to include it, since it is a potentially controversial activity, but in my opinion it is great leadership experience that speaks to your skills and experience. Obviously you don't want to run into a situation where one person reviewing your resume has a personal issue with Palestine and passes you over because of it, but I think the chance of that happening are relatively small, and you get more benefit from including the leadership experience than the small chance of a possible drawback.
I know I said all of that in class, but I also wanted to check in with you to make sure you were not offended by our guest speaker's comment at the end of the discussion. I noticed that he made an off-hand comment about "radical viewpoints," or something to that effect. I don't think that he was speaking to your experience specifically (at least I hope he was not!), but rather was making a general statement about personal views not being relevant to the work environment as long as individual employees don't bring those personal views to work with them. I can see how it might have come across as labeling your work on Palestinian issues as "radical," though, so I just wanted to check with you to see if you had been offended by his comment. I was a bit taken aback by it myself - I am choosing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was speaking more generally, but of course I can't be sure. If you were offended, or if you want to chat about this for any reason, let me know - I am happy to talk before or after class this week, or to find another time to meet with you about it.
Thanks!"
I don't see how campaigning for Palestine would give you good professional networking (though you never know).
