A new term has hit my radar this week: corporate refugee. At several local meetings, people have introduced themselves by indicating that they are “corporate refugees”. I had not heard this term before, but a few connotations sprang to mind: a) this person was persecuted or had horrible situations occur at his/her last job, and b) this person has escaped from the corporate sector.
After reflecting upon this term, and hearing from the people that used it that they are either looking for a new job or have started their own consulting business, I began to wonder if this is a term that makes sense for people to be using?
Googling the term “corporate refugee” brings up many hits, including links to groups that have formed for people to meet up and network for their next job. One website reference describes the term as “much like refugees from war-torn countries, corporate refugees find the situation in their place of work has become so awful, so inhuman and so intolerable that they would rather risk everything and get out to start afresh.”
As an interviewing coach, I wonder how that next corporation would feel about an interviewee who describes him- or herself as a “corporate refugee”? Is this a way of saying negative things about one’s last employer, which is frowned upon by interviewing experts? Or is the term simply a way of describing a group of people who have been displaced from their former employer?
What do you think? Corporate Refugee: to say or not to say?
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