When Public Shaming Wears the Clothes of Professional Advice
The uncomfortable line between helping people and making examples of them.
There is a particular genre of LinkedIn posts that I have started noticing far too often. Perhaps the effect it has on me is triggering the algorithm to increase their numbers in my feed.
They are the types of posts that requires a screenshot and a sarcastic or annoyed comment from the publisher. Someone receives an awkward message from a job seeker or finds a CV badly written, strangely formatted, or littered with mistakes, or comes across a LinkedIn profile with a headline they find ridiculous or inappropriate, or an application that fails some unwritten rule of professional etiquette.
So, what does that person do? SCREENSHOT and POST!
“I cannot believe candidates still do this.”
“If you are looking for a job, please don’t ever send a message like this.”
“This is why some people don’t get hired.”
“Can you believe this?”
Sometimes the person posting this has the decency to blur or scratch the candidate’s identifying details like their name or photo, but some do not and in some cases, other details may still be used to identify the person.
And let us not get to the argument of whether these posts are real or not. Perhaps some of them are fake and are created simply for a laugh and some engagement. But this does not make the action any less harmful or inappropriate.
Because what follows is usually the same: hundreds or thousands of people are invited to inspect one person’s mistake, awkwardness, lack of experience, poor command of language, questionable judgement, or moment of desperation.
Some people laugh about it while others add their own stories. Some may call the person lazy and try to diagnose the problem or the person behind it. Some might even repost the content. And of course, there are always those who will stand up to this kind of bullying, despite how effective or even recommended this is.
In my opinion, ignoring such posts is the best action. Responding whether positively or negatively only feeds the fire and serves the purpose of the publisher. Attention and engagement. Instead, people should use the site’s algorithm against them. If you ignore them, their posts will not matter, and people will not see them.
What is worse, is that people who publish these posts disguise their actions behind the veil of advice and helping others by showing them what not to do.
But I call it public shaming and bullying.
And apparently, I am not the only one noticing it. The term “candidate shaming” is already being used openly on LinkedIn by professionals criticising hiring managers and recruiters who publicly make examples of candidates’ portfolios, applications, and behaviour. Other users have questioned the growing practice of posting screenshots of applications and CVs accompanied by sarcastic “advice” or ridicule.
What makes this particularly uncomfortable is that LinkedIn itself draws a surprisingly clear line. Its current Professional Community Policies prohibit bullying and harassment, explicitly including targeted “shaming” of other members. Its more detailed harassment policy says the platform removes content that personally attacks, intimidates, shames, bullies, or disparages its members.
One series of three studies found that social media environments could reduce users’ moral sensitivity and increase their tendency to participate in online shaming. When people perceive a shaming post as socially acceptable, they are more likely to engage with it by liking, sharing, and commenting.
And perhaps that is the part that bothers me most.
The person whose message we are dissecting might be looking for their first job. They might have been unemployed for months. They might be communicating in their second or third language. They might not have had anyone teach them how to write a CV, approach a recruiter, optimise a LinkedIn profile, or perform whatever behaviours we have decided as “professional” or “socially correct”.
There is something deeply strange and disturbing about taking someone at a potentially vulnerable point in their life, turning their imperfect attempt to ask for something into a public exhibit, and then claiming that the exercise was conducted for their benefit.
We all make mistakes at some point in our life and career, whether publicly or in private. But what gives us the right to exploit the mistakes people make publicly? Are some people assigned the role of public defense without us knowing? Is anyone really better than other people simply because they can identify others’ shortfalls or what they consider mistakes?
Questions that might remain unanswered.