Yahoo! Finance Expert Penelope Trunk's Advice Riles Some Readers

For the second week in row, Yahoo! Finance Expert Penelope Trunk wrote a career advice column prompting low ratings and many negative comments.

This week's column, titled "The New Girls' Guide to Workplace Success," discussed five rules for "succeeding" in the workplace, which include: "date coworkers, show some flesh - but just enough, expect harassment and stay cool, and tone down your work ethic." Specific career advice Trunk provided includes "if you want to have children, you need to make getting married a higher priority than your career" (which means that you should think about dating coworkers) and "stop being the overachiever who does each assignment perfectly."

Readers who commented on the piece firmly disagreed with the advice, particularly regarding not reporting harassment and on Trunk's point regarding appropriate attire at work, as she advises women that "women are received better when they hit that magic point between dressing like a guy and dressing like a harlot."

Last week, Yahoo! Finance posted Trunk's article "Ten New Etiquette Tips for the Workplace," which advised workers to leave work whenever they wanted and to call coworkers on the weekend. The article received 1.5 stars (out of a possible 5) and received over 2700 comments, the bulk of which were negative. Scathing feedback included "This is brazenly stupid and shouldn't be on Yahoo" and "Please tell me this article is satire."

Trunk is billed by Yahoo! Finance as as the "Brazen Careerist," which happens to also be the title of her book. While her articles tend to receive more negative feedback than other Yahoo! Finance experts such as Suze Orman and Laura Rowley, Trunk's articles also tend to be rated by more readers, with many more comments written, thus garnering a substantial amount of traffic for Yahoo! Finance.

In addition to her recent Yahoo! Finance columns, Trunk recently wrote a controversial column for the Huffington Post which stated that journalists tell "their own story" and often "misquote" their subjects.

Despite the negative feedback on Yahoo! Finance, magazines such as BusinessWeek have touted Trunk's career advice as good for "twenty-something" employees and her book has many more positive reviews than negative ones on Amazon .

C.M. Paulson is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh, PA. In addition to receiving her MBA from the University of Pittsburgh's Katz School of Business, Ms. Paulson has extensive business experience with two Fortune 100 companies.

Sources:

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/careerist/41033

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/careerist/40342

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_06/c4020011.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Brazen-Careerist-New-Rules-Success/dp/0446578649

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/penelope-trunk/it-doesnt-matter-that-jo_b_56985.html