The Sherrod Incident

Discussion surrounding the dismissal of Shirley Sherrod has been focused largely on race, but there's another component to the story that requires employers' attention.

In case you missed the news, Sherrod was forced to resign from her position as the U.S. Department of Agriculture's director of rural development in Georgia for remarks she made at a Georgia NAACP banquet that were assumed to be racist.

It turns out her comments were taken out of context. Sherrod was actually talking about her personal growth and sharing how she had become more enlightened.

Employers should note that remarks about race can be misconstrued without proper context and that a rush to judgment may result in error, as was certainly the case with Sherrod.

However, equally worth noting is how the entire matter came to light. Video snippets of Sherrod's speech were posted at a website. And of course they were gobbled up.

In today's online world, information is sliced and diced for bite-size consumption. And because a new delivery of information arrives daily, people tend to welcome easy-to-digest servings.

But beware: A 30-second clip from a video, an isolated posting on Facebook, a sentence from a blog—all have the potential to create an incorrect impression of a person. Indeed, using a comment in isolation, it is easy to make almost anyone look questionable.

Job seekers are coached to consider their online image, to make sure it's beyond reproach. But the lesson of the Sherrod incident is that employers should also consider online images carefully, since things aren't always what they seem.