GUEST COMMENT: My personal experience of being very subtly blacklisted
Recently, this site ran an article about the 'secret blacklist' that exists in the City of London. In my opinion, I've encountered a similar, but not identical phenomenon to that described.
I've spoken to numerous people about the problem, all of whom have told me that the issue exists only in my imagination, but I'm not convinced. The nub of the issue is that I moved from being support staff, to professional staff, but my reputation didn't move with me. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's experienced this.
I began my career in this industry as an Institutional Equity Research Publisher. In other words, I was the girl who makes the PDFs. I quickly demonstrated to my boss that I was capable of much more, and began taking on additional responsibilities beyond publishing. After about two years, I ceased doing any publishing at all - my time was spent on special projects, strategic analysis, and technology implementation.
I also served as unofficial Research Associate to one of our most productive Research Analysts. However, officially, my title was still unchanged.
Despite the fact that I'd moved on from publishing, I remained everyone's favourite publishing professional. Our sales & trading team regularly bypassed our three research publishers, and brought all their requests to me. The same went for our investment bankers. Even our research analysts, who were aware of my new role, brought me all publishing-related issues for resolution.
In every case, I responded by saying that publishing was no longer my responsibility, but that I would certainly pass their requests along to the publishing team. Frequently, they responded by saying they'd really prefer it if I handled their requests myself.
After four years, I was finally promoted to Equity Research Associate. Still, all the publishing troubles were sent my way. Even the Research Publishers themselves brought me all their troubleshooting requests.
I should also mention that during this time, while working 60 hours a week, I completed an MBA in Finance. I
began applying to other firms as Research Associate, but never received ANY calls back. I did however receive plenty of unsolicited calls from both headhunters and competing firms, asking if I was interested in publishing positions.
I know that on at least a few occasions, recipients of my job applications asked my current or former co-workers about me, only to be told that they should definitely consider hiring me -- as a Publisher! The equity research analysts I've worked directly with and for will provide excellent references regarding my research abilities. However, the problem I have is with the people I DIDN'T work directly with. They are scuppering my career and I'm not sure what I can do about it.
