There is
little doubt that you will have the opportunity to “hone your managerial skills to a fine edge” at some point in your
career. It just happens to be a fact of
life. You may even be an expert by
now. But what do you do when someone calls
in the future to ask for a recommendation for one of your prior less than
stellar employees; try being a LIAR.
I hope you
looked at the first post on this topic before reading this one. It will help
put things in the right prospective.
While this post is more humorous by intention, it does have a bit of a
serious side. The ideas for the title
came from real life employees in the past, believe it or not. But the quoted recommendations below came
from an editorial in The Washington Post
March 3, 1987 titled, “Looking for Faint Praise? Try LIAR.” The
info in the editorial contained excerpts from writings of Robert J. Thornton,
at the time a professor in Economics at Lehigh University. He invented a system he called LIAR. The letters stand for “Lexicon of Inconspicuously Ambiguous Recommendations.” I still have the editorial with a few of the
quotes today and provide some below.
The first
time a friend and I read editorial we laughed the rest of the day and quickly
decided which of the key “recommendations” fit the personalities in our group. I hope you have as much a laugh as we did. I actually used a few of these in the past as
to not provide bad information about prior employees and prevent someone from
getting a new position elsewhere.
Quotes
from the editorial:
· About a person that is hopelessly
inept: “I most enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications
whatsoever.”
· About a person that isn’t very
industrious: “In my opinion you would be very fortunate to get this person to work
for you.”
· About a person who isn’t worth
further consideration: “I would urge you to waste no time in making
this candidate an offer of employment.”
· About a person who simply doesn’t
have the credentials: “I cannot say enough good things about this
candidate or recommend him too highly.”
· About an ex-employee who had trouble
getting along with his coworkers: “I am pleased to say that this candidate is a
former colleague of mine.”
· About a person who is so
unproductive that the position would be better left unfilled: “I
can assure you that no person would be better for the job.”
I hope you
never have to use these in real life, unfortunately I did. As I said in the first article, HIRE
WELL. But if all else fails, try one of
the above or make up your own.
Taffy Williams is the author of: Think Agile: How Smart Entrepreneurs Adapt in Order to Succeed to via Amazon