This past week there was an inquiry on the message boards at MyAuditions.com about the results of a recent viola audition for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Apparently, there were two people who were finalists and who were going to be given trial periods before a hiring decision was made. The names of those two people were exposed on the boards.
Almost immediately, there was a protest from someone unacquainted with the people in question who put forward the view that it was a violation of an person’s privacy rights to post anything about their audition experience without their permission, and that in doing so, one might be endangering their present employment (if they were already employed).
If you’re employed in an orchestra, and you apply for time off, whether personal leave or audition leave, and it is granted, your present circumstances cannot by law be affected by the fact that you’re taking an audition. It’s illegal for an employer to fire you for taking an audition if you are granted an excused absence.
If, however, you apply for time off, are denied by your employer, and then call in sick and take the audition anyway, you have just committed a violation of your terms of employment, which means that your employer has grounds to proceed with a lawful termination for cause.
I can accept the argument that people want to keep their job search as private as possible, but at the same time, if you lie to your employer in order to take an audition, you’ve essentially voluntarily opened the door to being fired (and fired without any of the peer-review processes that happen in artistic merit terminations) by your employer. The fact that word can and will get out to the entire world within moments of the final result should have been thought about before the initial poor decision was made.
That having been said, I understand that some people don’t want their audition experiences to become public knowledge without their consent. However, taking an audition is essentially a public exercise. There will be close to a hundred other applicants all in tight proximity to you if it’s a cattle call style audition, and in the music world, most people will know at least a couple of the people in their own group of six or eight, never mind out of the entire audition pool.
Add in the fact that everyone has a camera phone, text messaging and the ability to leave voice mails with multiple mailboxes at the same time, and the likelihood of word getting out almost instantly is a very real possibility.
So, what are some possible solutions? Orchestras could require applicants to sign non-disclosure agreements concerning who attends the audition and the final results. MyAuditions could require real names (verifiable like on Amazon.com) for all posters to the forums, and thus violators of the non-disclosure agreements could be prosecuted.
How likely are these measures to be implemented? Not very – and even if they were, orchestras don’t have the time or money to check these things after the fact, most applicants can’t hire a lawyer to sue a violator, and MyAuditions isn’t likely to require real names be publicly posted, as that would most likely drastically curtail their forum traffic and premium memberships.
What’s the easy solution? If you don’t personally know the person or persons who have gone through the process and either been given a trial period or offered a job, don’t speculate about who won. You might be wrong.
If you know the person or persons, give them a call or a quick email and ask them if they want the results posted – if they do, go for it. If they don’t, respect their wishes. It’s not a hard thing to do, and while having inside knowledge is exciting and sexy and empowering, think about what you’d want “random person X” posting about your audition experience.