This Writer’s Wallet

Here’s the Thing

I have this friend, we’ll call her Annie, who has been very discouraged about looking for a job. She’s not out of work or anything, but she’s young—early 20s—and has only found a part-time job in her field. [That job happens to be at my office; she works for me.] Anyway, to compensate for her part-time gig with me, she also works another job, unrelated, mostly nights. Between the two, she does OK, but she, as you can imagine, wants to find something full-time, in her field, and it’s tough right now.

So a few months ago, I did something I don’t think you should ever do: I gave her the link to my online portfolio.

You may remember my mentioning this portfolio before. It was my good friend while job-hunting because I could track what employers had looked at it, which was a lot better than waiting for the phone to ring. Some of you have e-mailed me before to ask if you could see that portfolio, and I’ve always told you that, no, sorry, I would love to, but it’s too risky because I don’t want people copying it. You’ve all been very nice about that and understood.

Annie thanked me and never said a word about it again, but I found her own portfolio, by guessing at the URL, which was similar to mine and also, because I knew she’d spent a lot of time looking at mine (Sitemeter = awesome) and was curious what she’d done with that looking. She copied it. Full-on, exact-same-thing copied it. She took my paragraphs and changed the info to match hers, she chose the same layout and design, she did everything possible to make it mine, but hers.

I was frustrated, but I felt bad for her. I mean, I’m not actively looking for a job right now—hadn’t even updated the site for Pete’s sake—and maybe she was just unsure of how to make one, so she copied mine. I waited two months, after my Sitemeter showed she hadn’t gone on for a while, and I redid mine. Changed the layout, changed the descriptions, etc.

This week, I discovered she copied it again.

This, surprise!, is the very reason you don’t give your friend your resume when he or she wants to know how to make one. This is why you don’t give out your portfolio URL. This is why I am now deleting mine and starting over, with a site she won’t be able to guess. Please, take a lesson from me, and don’t make this same mistake, OK?

*BTW in case you’re wondering if I’m going to confront her about it, no. I thought long and hard and, honestly, I know her well enough to know she’ll apologize and feel bad, but I will have already moved mine, so what would it matter? It’s really more my fault than hers, because I made it so easy. Lesson learned!