Consumers in the Southeast spent several days last week locked in a fuel shortage after a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline that sent gas prices surging and drivers panic-buying. As with any crisis, there was also opportunity — in this case, for a job.
Reactions to the job listing couldn’t resist feigned surprise — “Oh really? What happened?” — and schadenfreude. One Twitter user who summed up the daunting task that lay ahead for the potential hire simply wrote, “ … pass.”
Those who were suspicious of the timing were proved right: Colonial Pipeline’s job portal shows the listing was already more than a month old when it was uploaded last week to an open-source job search app. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the role.
The job posting’s resurfacing reflects a broader dynamic: When a company is embroiled in a headline-making crisis, it tends to lead to a new job opening — or several — in which the hire is willingly taking a turn in the hot seat.
Candidates who take on a job in the eye of a storm, particularly at the executive level, can be lured by a big payday, a broad mandate to make change and the opportunity to tackle a career-defining challenge, said Lawrence J. Parnell, a crisis-management expert and program director at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.
“To go into that kind of role, the more seasoned person will say, ‘Will I have the opportunity to mandate for change? Can I figure out with management what happened and engage in a kind of risk-management exercise?’ ” Parnell told The Washington Post.
“My view is that there’s a higher premium and value add on fire prevention than putting out a fire,” he added.
Not every job with a company that just made negative headlines ends up being a rewarding professional experience. Parnell said those considering a role with a crisis-bitten company should evaluate whether the company is still denying its problem or moving to fix it.
“If you can look on that spectrum and say, ‘Where is the company now? Are they blaming someone else for this? Are they solving the problem?’ That’s an interesting dynamic,” Parnell said.
“Companies like Boeing may take a year to do it. Peloton did it in 10 days,” he said in reference to safety issues that challenged the airplane maker and, most recently, the at-home fitness company.
One social media manager who took their job after their employer posted an embarrassing video that was both mocked via meme and decried as racist soon learned that the employer, a tabloid news organization, had seemingly little interest in preventing future social media furors.
The employee, who asked that neither they nor their employer be identified since they were not authorized to speak about the company to the news media, said they anticipated the role would come with baggage but had “been through the digital media layoff ringer about 90 times” and was desperate for a job.
“I thought, ‘Oh dear. This is quite the time to be involved,’ ” the employee told The Post. Though the employee said they were aware of the criticism the organization had faced, a need for steady employment and health insurance outweighed their misgivings.
Months after taking the job, harassment and headaches stemming from the original viral video never abated.
“In my first few months there, the biggest places where something goes viral, it hit all of them — the viral-on-Twitter-to-article circuit, the viral YouTube circuit. It was on every meme page circuit on Instagram,” they said.
The video has never truly gone away, dying down on one platform only to reemerge in some form, often memed and repackaged, the employee said. It was discovered by a new generation of users after it resurfaced on TikTok in 2019.
The employee said the experience has been beneficial professionally but laments that the role does not come with the power to make editorial and strategic decisions about the organization’s content that would stanch the flow of problematic viral videos.
“It’s quite the learning experience, but it feels like a brick to the head every time there’s a new crisis. It’s an experience few people want to have,” they said.
It remains unclear who will land in the cybersecurity role for Colonial Pipeline, but the hire is likely to be busy.
On Tuesday, one week after the cybersecurity manager job resurfaced, the company was hit by a new computer problem.
Read more: