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We Googled You
Hathaway Jones’s CEO has found a promising candidate to open the company’s flagship
store in Shanghai. Should a revelation on the Internet disqualify her now?
by Diane Coutu
An Interview with Diane Coutu,
author of “We Googled You”
This is an abridged version of
“We Googled You” from the June 2007
issue of Harvard Business Review.
hbr.org
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Harvard Business Review 1
Daniel Vasconcellos
F
our years ago, the privately owned U.S. luxury retail chain
Hathaway Jones recruited Fred Westen because of his imposing
credentials and a lifetime’s experience of working with luxury
brands and charged him with waking up the company’s sleepy,
conservative stores.
It wasn’t an easy task. Despite sales of $5 billion in 2006, Hathaway
Jones had fallen on hard times. Though aggressive outsourcing to suppliers in Mexico for some of the chain’s lower-tier brands had helped
bring the company’s margins closer to industry standards, that was just
a start. An avid consumer of his firm’s marketing research, Fred knew
that the company’s image was getting old fast. Younger people across
the United States, where Hathaway Jones had 144 shops and outlets,
wanted more affordable clothing, with more flair. The trend was starting to show up in declining numbers for the company’s high-priced
– some said stodgy – designer clothes. Plans for radically revamping the
company’s image and product line were in the offing.
He had just announced an ambitious plan to elbow in on a luxury
goods market that’s growing at 70 percent – China – when a call came
in from an old prep school friend. Fred agreed to meet his friend’s
daughter, Mimi Brewster, to see whether she might be able to head up
the company’s flagship store in Shanghai.
hbr interactive case study | We Googled You
Mimi grew up in China, and she
spoke both Mandarin and a local dialect.
Although she had been an average student, her profile had won her admission
to some top colleges, including two Ivy
League schools. She eventually opted
for Berkeley, where her father had gone.
There she majored in modern Chinese
history and graduated cum laude.
She had parlayed her college experience into numerous job offers, finally
accepting a position at a management
consultancy, where she got the broad
business exposure she wanted. Her
career in motion, she applied to an
MBA program two years later, choosing Stanford over Harvard because she
felt that it was closer to the buzz. She
was recruited after graduation by the
West Coast regional office of Eleanor
Gaston, the largest clothing, shoes, and
accessories company in the United
States. There, for the past four years,
she’d shown a sharp eye for the capricious fashion tastes of the young, newly
rich people in search of something to
do with their dot-com money. Now,
with two successful brand relaunches
behind her, she was looking for some
general management experience, preferably in a fast-growing market like
China. Fred is impressed by Mimi’s CV
and her personal professionalism, and
the interview goes off without a hitch.
After the interview, Fred directs his
vice president of HR, Virginia Flanders,
to put together a file on Mimi for the
rest of his executive staff. In addition
to checking references and collecting letters of recommendation, it was
Virginia’s practice to scan the first 11
pages of search results on a potential
hire. On page nine of Mimi’s results,
she glimpsed something of concern.
A story in the November 1999 issue of
the Alternative Review identified Mimi,
fresh out of Berkeley, as the leader of a
nonviolent but vocal protest group that
had helped mobilize campaigns against
the World Trade Organization. A few
clicks deeper, and it was soon clear that
Mimi’s involvement had been more
than just a student’s expression of defi-
2 Harvard Business Review | hbr.org
ance. One newspaper story featured a
photo of Mimi sitting outside China’s
San Francisco consulate protesting China’s treatment of a dissident journalist.
Virginia presents Fred with the Mimi
dossier and urges caution. Faced with
this information on Mimi’s past, Fred
ponders hiring practices in the digital
age. He knows that nothing is secret
anymore – especially among younger
people, who brazenly post the most intimate details of their lives for the world
to see. If he hires Mimi, and her past
conduct becomes widely known, his
company’s expansion overseas could be
set back. But rising stars like Mimi don’t
walk in the door every day. Should Fred
hire her despite her online history?
What would you do?
Diane Coutu (dcoutu@hbsp.harvard.edu ) is
a senior editor at HBR.
Click sticky note above to see additional
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