I have known Sandy Van Pelt for years. She came to work for me right after graduating from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in communications. Sandy was an excellent aide, with terrific interpersonal skills, and a real flair for working with the media people I dealt with when appearing regularly on CNBC television and CBS radio. Her clean-scrubbed, all-American girl looks, and her outgoing personality, made her an exuberant presence in my office.

Clients loved her. After two years with me, she left to take a position in the marketing department of a major media company, best known for its family-oriented programming. Sandy’s skill and personality served her well there too. She was making a name for herself in New York. So much so that she received a telephone call offering what seemed to be a fabulous job opportunity.

The call came from the owner of a small but very well known television production company. The owner was the widow of the founder of the firm, a much beloved creative genius who unfortunately died quite young. She and her family were continuing the business, and actually doing quite well. Her late husband had successfully institutionalized the creativity that originally came solely from him. A score of talented young people were now continuing his work. The company was using the licensing fees from their early successes as a foundation for new ventures. Sandy had been targeted as just the sort of fresh young person who could fit in with the company. She was offered the spot as director of publicity. Ecstatic, Sandy then telephoned to let me know what was going on and to ask my help in negotiating her salary.

After congratulating her, the first thing I did was get Sandy to slow down. After just a couple of minutes it was clear to me she needed to become much more of an expert on the company that was now pursuing her. Sandy and everyone else knew a great deal about the company’s products, it was true. But its inner workings weren’t as well known.

Sandy began by going to the New York Public Library’s primary business branch and scouring the periodical indexes for mentions of the firm. She spent her next three lunch hours compiling a list of references. At home in the evening she went online and searched the Web for references to the firm. She printed out the results of searches using four different search engines. On Saturday, she went back to the library, pulled the relevant microfiches and bound copies from the stacks, and photocopied them. Returning home, she went back online, downloaded, and then printed the most potentially interesting sites.

On Sunday, rather than spending her day reading the New York Times, she dug through all her public research.

I was surprised when my office telephone rang at 7:30 a.m. on Monday. I was doubly surprised when I picked up and heard a glum Sandy. She told me her research had uncovered a problem. The firm that was courting her had been a recent acquisition target of Sandy’s current company. The details weren’t clear, but apparently the sale was all set to go until the founder suddenly died. At that point the larger corporation, depending on which story you read, either heartlessly backed out of a sealed deal, or wisely decided to renegotiate a still pending sale. Whatever the truth was, there was certainly bad blood between the two firms. That wouldn’t have been such a big deal if Sandy hadn’t also learned from a recent small item in the financial press that the acquisition talks were still going on, albeit with less fanfare. Sandy and I were both concerned that she could take the new job, earning the enmity of her current company, and then be faced with working for them again if the sale actually went through. It seemed like a recipe for getting dismissed in the near future. We agreed that Sandy would call the owner of the smaller firm and ask for a few more days to think about the offer, and then come to my office later in the day so we could strategies.

After going over Sandy’s goals as well as her understandable fears, she and I came up with a plan. She would meet with the president of the small firm, express her excitement about the opportunity, but also state her strong desire for an employment contract. There would be nothing to gain by getting into the details of the battle, so we decided Sandy shouldn’t be overt in demonstrating her information. Instead, we decided to present her contract request as a desire to protect herself in case there was a change in ownership that might not be advantageous to her position. This would make it clear that Sandy was astute enough to know of the struggle, but also politic enough not to raise the issue directly. Those traits, added to her already admired skills and abilities, would make her, we thought, an even more attractive candidate.

We were right. Despite her young age and relatively junior level, Sandy was able to negotiate a three-year contract. We both felt that would be long enough for either the deal to fall through, or for her former employer to get over any animosity. Luckily, we were right once again. After two years the acquisition efforts stopped and the outward acrimony came to an end when a quiet, out-of-court settlement was reached