Mise, its not practical to do what you want them to do, to interview all 2000 applicants. The firm simply does not have the time or the money.
People who are currently employed are the ones that have performed decently on the job or are valuable enough that they cannot be laid off -- which means they are good. People who have been laid off either have performance problems or where not deemed important enough to be not expendable.
As a company, you want to hire the "non-expendible" people because on average, they are going to be of higher value.
Many places seniority is based on time with the company.
I was lucky when our layoffs happened last year. I was 6 out of 9 on seniority. 2 were laid off last year. A couple people have left, now I'm 3 out of 6.
There still is the danger of my place closing down, however. We are losing money. It's bad when your place loses money even though they essentually steal money from people.
Given what you say below, say you have 200 applications for 1 position and you have time at your firm to interview 10 of them in depth. How do you go from 200 to 10?
If I were hiring this would be my criteria.
1) How qualified is the candidate
2) How well did they present their information (look for obvious errors, padding, etc).
3) How badly do they want or need the job. The more enthusiasm for the work the better they are likely to perform.
4) Work history, do they have some working knowledge/skills that could be useful.
5) Logistical practicality, how difficult would it be in terms of location, commute, etc.
There would also be some degree of first-come-first-serve. If you sent your resume at the last minute, it will probably be reviewed last.
This isn't done at the federal level because they are mandated to post jobs for X days and ignore when in that period the application was sent.
It could certainly be a "ding" but it should not eliminate someone for consideration. Bad credit doesn't end it, but it makes it very difficult and when there is great demand for a job it pretty much is a killer.
Given the recession we're in, the government should take into consideration that many people are just down on their luck. Just having poor credit doesn't make you a bad person. It's a temporary situation that getting a job can help fix. So, basically, what about the person who didn't get into debt for whatever reason managed to live within their means (either through luck or design?) Sounds like you are not rewarding that. There isn't a good answer here.
There's lots of ways to monitor a person's activities at work. If you are paranoid about people with bad/poor credit just monitor those people's activities more closely, but it still should be "innocent until proven guilty." Security is expensive. Recently some hires in DC government were found to have moved millions into private accounts, committing fraud. 30 million dollars when a simple security check would have seen that they had done small scale stuff before? Moving further, would you trust sensitive national intelligence on fleet movement to someone with a gambling problem? It may not be fair but its practical thinking
This argument that employers can afford to be picky is getting kinda frustrating... Employers can probably afford to do a great deal of unethical, immoral things, but that doesn't mean we should allow them to. I'm not sure if that was a substantial part of your argument though, or whether you were saying, "it's not that big a deal, so it's not worth caring about".
I think this particular phenomenon--i.e., screening based on employment status, is limited to a specific set of professional sectors, i.e. finance and law and maybe some others. That's where the headhunters are. It's worth caring about, it doesn't necessarily sit well with me because I know perfectly qualified people that have been laid off, but in these sectors it's not necessarily unethical or immoral.
Why? Because if it's a job where being laid off is a possible indication of performance, and the applicant is up for a substantially similar job, I don't think it's unreasonable to use one's status as laid off for the purposes of screening. It might be lazy and foolish, but it's not necessarily unethical or immoral.
Take the recent spate of Law Firms layoffs, for instance. The top law firms in the US in the past 2 years went on a massive lay off binge. They seriously culled the herd and laid off thousands of people. These lay offs were not totally random. While Law Firm A might be laying off half its M&A practice for economic reasons first, there are usually performance reasons playing a part in those layoffs. Law Firm B just did the same thing so they have their suspicions about the new applicant from Law Firm A. In the middle of this are the headhunters who want to get paid for bringing in applicants, so they don't touch anything law firms seem even remotely skeptical of. Foolish? Maybe. Lazy? Yes probably. Immoral and unethical? No.
But like I said, in other sectors or if the employee is coming from a specific job where being laid off is clearly not an indicator of performance, such as someone coming from a closed down factory or someone laid-off from a union job that does things based on rank, then yeah it's foolish to screen based on employment status.
@JH: I didn't present an argument to FAL, I presented a counterargument:
FAL's argument: It's costly and time consuming to do X.
My counterargument: All regulations and legislation imposes costs on business, but we still need to regulate and legislate when businesses engage in unethical employment practices.
I notice, however, that you haven't presented any kind of counterargument to any criticisms of your position on what discrimination should be illegal. I mean, you've read all the examples and counterexamples proving why "being born with it" is a stupid way of deciding what kind of discrimination is ethical, and yet you don't even bother to respond.......
Again, lots and lots of discriminatory practices, such as filtering by age, sex, race, religion and sexual orientation, could easily lead to a pool with a higher probability of "good fit". And yet these things are illegal and unethical. You contend that they are illegal and unethical because they were "born with it" -- yet, as the numerous counterexamples have shown, this is a load of nonsense.
You really need to come up with a decent way of deciding what it's okay to discriminate on, because "being born with it" is just plain nonsense.
I don't feel that your argument of "we are born unemployed" holds water. I have pointed to (mainly) gender, race, sexual orientation, age as protected classes.
Please point to me the gene that indicates unemployment at birth. I can at least find something in the genes for the 4 classes above.
@Murky
Priority depends upon the job listing. In general
a) veterans get preference (which is simply an increase on their baseline score) for jobs until a GS 10 rating
b) current employees seeking promotional advance get preference over outside hires
For positions at GS13 and above, it seems in practice that internal and external candidates are given equal treatment. Note that for much of the government a GS13 is a supervisory position sometimes, typically is at a GS14, and almost always at GS15
*I hold a rare GS13-15 job without a supervisory function. I applied at the behest of an outside recruiter who recruited me from within the government for my current position, was a contractor for a while and then brought back into the government fold
I think this particular phenomenon--i.e., screening based on employment status, is limited to a specific set of professional sectors, i.e. finance and law and maybe some others. That's where the headhunters are. It's worth caring about, it doesn't necessarily sit well with me because I know perfectly qualified people that have been laid off, but in these sectors it's not necessarily unethical or immoral.
Why? Because if it's a job where being laid off is a possible indication of performance, and the applicant is up for a substantially similar job, I don't think it's unreasonable to use one's status as laid off for the purposes of screening. It might be lazy and foolish, but it's not necessarily unethical or immoral.
Take the recent spate of Law Firms layoffs, for instance. The top law firms in the US in the past 2 years went on a massive lay off binge. They seriously culled the herd and laid off thousands of people. These lay offs were not totally random. While Law Firm A might be laying off half its M&A practice for economic reasons first, there are usually performance reasons playing a part in those layoffs. Law Firm B just did the same thing so they have their suspicions about the new applicant from Law Firm A. In the middle of this are the headhunters who want to get paid for bringing in applicants, so they don't touch anything law firms seem even remotely skeptical of. Foolish? Maybe. Lazy? Yes probably. Immoral and unethical? No.
But like I said, in other sectors or if the employee is coming from a specific job where being laid off is clearly not an indicator of performance, such as someone coming from a closed down factory or someone laid-off from a union job that does things based on rank, then yeah it's foolish to screen based on employment status.
I don't feel that your argument of "we are born unemployed" holds water. I have pointed to (mainly) gender, race, sexual orientation, age as protected classes.
Please point to me the gene that indicates unemployment at birth. I can at least find something in the genes for the 4 classes above.
1) You said nothing about genetics; being born X does NOT mean you have a gene for X, obviously. Are you admitting that "being born with it" is completely wrong afterall, and are now changing your argument to "having a gene for it"?
For the record, I was definitely born unemployed At least have the intellectual and testicular fortitude to admit that you were completely and utterly wrong about "being born with it".
2) Even if you are now changing your argument to "having a gene for it", then maybe you can explain why religion is a protected status? Or homosexuality? There's no "Christian" gene, nor any kind of "gay" gene (at least, not one discovered at the time that discrimination based on sexual orientation was outlawed). Perhaps you believe that war veterans disabled in Iraq were born with a "cripple gene"? If you're saying that "having a gene for it" is a necessary condition for discrimination being wrong, then you would have to admit that all of these things shouldn't be considered wrongful discrimination.
3) There are things that are genetic (indeed, hereditary) that you can discriminate on, such as various mental disabilities, or a kid born with an innate gift for mathematics. If you're saying that "having a gene for it" is a sufficient condition for discrimination being wrong, then you would have to admit that all of these things should be considered wrongful discrimination.
Oh, I am assuming you know what "necessary and sufficient" conditions are. Perhaps you should outline what you believe are the necessary and sufficient conditions for considering discrimination based on X wrong...
Honestly, your posts are seldom as shallow as they have been in this thread. It's incredibly disappointing. Especially when it takes so long for you to even acknowledge a criticism, let alone reply to it substantially... You would have forseen all of these counterexamples, if only you had bothered to read and respond to my previous post
Again.... Just because it's inconvenient to follow ethical recruitment practices doesn't mean they shouldn't.... And nobody's saying they should interview 2000 people, don't be ridiculous.
Thats just what you are saying, by not allowing any generalizations to weed out applicants. They are using a simple metric to determine which pool is more likely to do better on the job. People who are employed are good enough to keep a job while some of the unemployed aren't. On average, people who are employed are going to be more qualified than those who are unemployed. Other things like race, gender, etc, have nothing to do with their ability to work or past work performance. Whether you have a job currently or not(unless you are a new graduate) can actually reflect on your past performance.
You have clearly never worked in any kind of job before... This is just... plainly false.
I don't live off welfare, therefore I have to work to make a living. Your statement is nonsense.
And its not plainly false, if you hold a key or critical position in your company, then you are less likely to get laid off. If you just a basic run-of-the-mill employee, your much more likely to get laid off because your easily replaceable when they want to replace you.
If I were hiring workers, I'd rather try to hire the guy whose skills are not easily replaceable than a guy who is. The guy with the special skill simply has more value.
Thats just what you are saying, by not allowing any generalizations to weed out applicants. They are using a simple metric to determine which pool is more likely to do better on the job. People who are employed are good enough to keep a job while some of the unemployed aren't. On average, people who are employed are going to be more qualified than those who are unemployed. Other things like race, gender, etc, have nothing to do with their ability to work or past work performance. Whether you have a job currently or not(unless you are a new graduate) can actually reflect on your past performance.
Blacks have statistically lower IQs; Asians have statistically higher IQs. Blacks are more likely to be convicted of a crime, or go to jail. Women are more likely to get pregnant and take lots of maternity leave. Etc etc etc. I've already listed all of this before though.
I don't live off welfare, therefore I have to work to make a living. Your statement is nonsense.
And its not plainly false, if you hold a key or critical position in your company, then you are less likely to get laid off. If you just a basic run-of-the-mill employee, your much more likely to get laid off because your easily replaceable when they want to replace you.
That wasn't true in my company. I'm going to spoiler most of this story, since it is very long, complicated, and boring.
Spoiler:
I've been working here for 3 years now, and in that time I've had 4 different line managers. When I first joined, the hierarchy went like this: MD -> Director -> Department manager -> Line manager 1 -> line manager 2 -> Me. During the downturn, they decided that such a "top heavy" structure was too stupid and expensive to maintain. So they got rid of Line Manager 1. Line manager 1 wasn't a bad line manager - in fact, he was pretty good, and much better than Line manager 2 - he was just unnecessary. There is no reason why our team needed 2 line managers. It was pointless. Now, line manager 1 was better at his job than line manager 2, but line manager 2 was cheaper, so they fired line manager 1. They didn't promote line manager 2.
But this was still too convoluted, so they got rid of the Department manager and replaced him with Line manager 2. Again, the Dept manager was a genuinely great manager, and added significant value in his time. Unfortunately, this was disastrous, because line manager 2 was really, really crap. So they put line manager 2 out to pasture, by sending him to a team in which he didn't have to manage people. Then they hired another guy internally to do what Line manager 1 did originally, except now with no line manager 1. This worked pretty well, because the market had now started to recover, meaning that the numerous mistakes the new LM 1 made were pretty well masked by the $$$ that were now flowing in.
Now, in our department, there are two near-identical teams - call them teams A and B - with identical structures when I joined. Team B, however, didn't undergo this kind of "reorganisation" (mostly due to incongruously grandfathered employment contracts that made it incredibly difficult to fire anyone), and is largely in the "MD -> Director -> Department manager -> Line manager 1 -> line manager 2 -> Me" structure. Now, though, Department manager B decides to retire. Instead of hiring a new person, they decide to "horizontally promote" Dep't manager A, so that he now manages both departments. At the same time, they decide to put LM 2B out to pasture, by sending him on a one-way secondment to Africa. This, again, worked fairly well, until management started realising that the new LM1 in team A wasn't actually doing anything. He, too, got put out to pasture, by sending him on a one-way secondment to southern Africa. Again, neither could be fired, because of 30 year old employment contracts and ridiculously onerous redundancy payments -- it was cheaper to send them to another department (actually, technically another company) to be someone else's problem, than for our department to have to pay his severance package.
So now our team goes MD -> Director -> Dep't manager -> Me. The ones that ended up being fired were the good ones; the ones that ended up being put out to pasture were the crap ones. The ones that were fired were fired because there was no longer a need for their positions; however, there is absolutely no reason why they would not be perfectly productive in a company that does need them. The ones that were kept on were kept because their contracts made it too expensive to fire them; it was cheaper to send them to another cost centre than to pay their severance packages.
Another example, again from our company: Between Sept 2008 and around April 2009, the company effectively stopped purchasing. Now, when a company stops purchasing, it puts certain activities on hold. For example, and without going into unnecessary detail, we employ a whole load of people to sort through the stuff we buy and put it into one of 14,000 different categories (they're called sorters). Those sorters had very, very little to do for 8 months or so, and so we fired most of them. Those sorters needed managers, so we also fired a lot of managers. In all, our staff was reduced by around a third in 6 months. Those sorters -- indeed, those managers -- were not necessarily poor workers: they were simply unnecessary. The ones they fired, again, weren't necessarily the worst of the lot, they were often merely the cheapest to fire; a lot of them, in fact, took voluntary severance, since it was slightly more generous than compulsory redundancy payments, while others decided to jump before they were pushed, and got jobs in different companies while they still had a choice. We knew we'd have to rehire and retrain in a few months, but that's okay, because that's also relatively cheap to do. Especially when management is relatively fungible -- a manager in one company or one department does roughly the same thing as a manager in any other company or department.
And you know what else is fungible? HR departments. We got rid of almost all HR staff; I don't even recognise the people in the HR department anymore. Again, they weren't bad workers, they were just unnecessary -- who needs 30 HR workers when 5 will do? And again, the ones that got fired weren't the worst ones. Again, a lot of them took voluntary severance, and some were on temporary contracts anyway.
Not all companies have vast R&D divisions, but ours does, and it was brutally culled during the downturn. These are all highly qualified, intelligent individuals, but the company decided that there was no need for almost all of our R&D projects anymore, and whole departments were mothballed. Again, the ones they fired weren't bad engineers, they simply had the bad luck to be working on a project that the Execs decided wasn't in the company's interests to pursue. The projects are restarting, and R&D is now rehiring - the projects were eminently viable, and some day profitable, but they ate cash at a time when cash was desperately scarce.
This kind of thing happens in pretty much every large corporation. I'm sure it happens in small companies too, but I have no experience there. The insipid bureaucracy of large companies, and the vagaries of employment contracts and severance payments, makes it damn near impossible to draw conclusions on any individual's performance when they're made redundant during a massive corporate downsizing exercise. Indeed, Illram believes it's just blue collar workers or relatively low-ranking office jobs that this applies to -- but it applies just as well to middle- and upper-management, too.
And this is especially true during downturns like the one we just had, where credit was scarce and cash was king.
And you know what else is fungible? HR departments. We got rid of almost all HR staff; I don't even recognise the people in the HR department anymore. Again, they weren't bad workers, they were just unnecessary -- who needs 30 HR workers when 5 will do? And again, the ones that got fired weren't the worst ones. Again, a lot of them took voluntary severance, and some were on temporary contracts anyway.
This is the business I was talking about earlier and in the future will become permanently redundant for many companies. It comes down to paying a variable cost that was once a fixed cost with better hiring outcomes. One company told her firm that they represent the company culture better than the previous HR department employees did.
Is there any function below the level of CEO that some companies don't think it's a swell idea to outsource? Seems to me that the CEO is the function that should most be outsourced.
You want alternatives? How about, remove from the shortlist any women of birthing age? Afterall, we don't want them giving birth and taking a year's maternity leave as soon as they join! Or how about ruling out the gays? You know, it might be disruptive to the other workers to have gays working amongst us. Or what about the elderly? We can't have them leeching money from the company health insurance scheme, what with their kidney failures and hip replacements. Or the young - my, why would I want to hire those irresponsible hooligans! Or the blacks - 3 times more likely to be convicted of a crime, 10 times more likely to go to jail...
There you go, 5 more completely rational, logical alternatives to discriminating based on employment status...
Seriously, what is the logic here? There are 100 qualified, experienced candidates for a position, but only 10 can apply -- so it's perfectly acceptable to whittle down the list using spurious pseudo-proxies for "employability" that are completely discriminatory and unjust? It makes no sense why anyone would support this being legal (barring, of course, those genetically predisposed to supporting completely irrational and unethical employment practices in the name of capitalism and "freedom"). We have labour laws for a reason!
Mise, no offense, but your suggestion is horrible.
You talk about unjust and discriminatory criterias, but who are you (again, no offense) to say what is just and what isn't when a private company is hiring a worker? I mean, is it "just" to discriminate against a less qualified candidate? Maybe he just didn't have rich parents to send him to good schools. Is it just to discriminate against the stupid? It's not their fault they were born that way.
If someone feels that employed individuals are better candidates, that's their right. You don't get to force your own illogical criteria down their throat just because you think they are being unjust. And anyway, how do you even enforce that? They might as well claim that they did not hire the candidate because they found the resume lacking in other areas. Even if you force them to interview the unemployed candidates, they might argue that they did not like their interview performance. So unless you force private companies to have "unemployed quotas", it's not enforceable. And I don't think you would favor quotas, being a reasonable guy.
In other words your proposal is not only wrong as it is pointless.
Is there any function below the level of CEO that some companies don't think it's a swell idea to outsource? Seems to me that the CEO is the function that should most be outsourced.
The more difficult the job is to fill the more likely it will be handled by the HR director and maybe a headhunter they have a very close relationship with. Headhunting is much more of a gunslinger and solitary type person looking for the big ticket versus RPO.
Mise, in all seriousness, I find your tone exceptionally combative and I personally feel that you've gone out of your way to insult several posters in this discussion.
In my discussion with Murky, I was raising the practical concerns of HR departments needing to use some filter or screen to reduce the number of interviews granted to a feasible set. In the example I cited, which is a typical example during the economic downturn, we were getting 200 applications for each posted analyst positions (note: these pay ~45K and require a BA). Given that it is not feasible to adequately treat 200 interviews, some cutoffs have to be used
Should we discriminate based on age? race? sex? (other currently protected classes)? No. What do we see this filtering on? Well, we see it for those who are over-qualified, on education, and on the ability to put enough keywords in a job application to get a good score.
Are those first best? No. And no one would argue that. But is the filtering that occurs sort of close to the best achievable? Maybe.
@Whomp, Cutlass
In my experience, specialists tend not to be outsourced.
I'm not sure I suggested they were and I suppose we should define sourced and specialist. If it's a very specific need that a company is looking for and it's a passive candidate then there's a high probability it's been introduced through a headhunter. After the introduction both sides will dance for awhile and decide if there's a fit.
Makes sense to me and why I suggested some H.R. jobs are likely permanently redundant for a lot of companies. A different kind of creative destruction but creative destruction nonetheless.
Mise, no offense, but your suggestion is horrible.
You talk about unjust and discriminatory criterias, but who are you (again, no offense) to say what is just and what isn't when a private company is hiring a worker? I mean, is it "just" to discriminate against a less qualified candidate? Maybe he just didn't have rich parents to send him to good schools. Is it just to discriminate against the stupid? It's not their fault they were born that way.
Actually luiz, I'm not the one arguing that "being born with it" should be the criteria for determining whether some discriminatory practice should be illegal. In fact, I've gone to great lengths to explain why "being born with it" is a stupid way of deciding what discrimination should be illegal. In fact, I made the exact same arguments you made in previous posts of mine, here and here. If you want to argue against someone who thinks that "being born with it" is a good criteria for determining what discrimination should be illegal, go argue with our "bedrock of knowledge", JerichoHill.
In any case my own thoughts on what should be illegal are here. That's why I can agree to disagee with Illram, since he believes that it only occurs in cases where it can be materially evinced that employment status is a non-trivial indicator of performance (i.e. finance, law). I don't know whether that's true, but he's a lawyer so I'll go with it. I know it's not true for middle- and upper-management, so I'm not gonna accept arguments like that for white collar office jobs.
If someone feels that employed individuals are better candidates, that's their right. You don't get to force your own illogical criteria down their throat just because you think they are being unjust.
Can I assume (given our previous discussions, as well as this post) that you oppose anti-discrimination laws? If so, I doubt there is any kind of common ground. If you acknowledge that, say, it should be illegal to discriminate against blacks, then you should acknowledge that it is possible to "force my own criteria down their throats", because we did exactly that in the 1960s, and again in the 1980s about homosexuality, and with women and with religion and with disabilities... If you think that all of these laws are wrong, then there is quite literally nothing that will change your mind.
And anyway, how do you even enforce that? They might as well claim that they did not hire the candidate because they found the resume lacking in other areas. Even if you force them to interview the unemployed candidates, they might argue that they did not like their interview performance. So unless you force private companies to have "unemployed quotas", it's not enforceable. And I don't think you would favor quotas, being a reasonable guy.
I don't favour quotas, and I never have. I don't favour quotas for getting blacks or women into traditionally white or male jobs, and I don't favour them for getting the unemployed back into work. However, the point of making it illegal to discriminate against blacks, women, gays, etc is to effect an attitudinal change in society and in businesses. It didn't matter that it was still largely unenforceable when we outlawed discrimination against blacks -- an employer could (and did) still argue that he was unqualified or inexperienced or interviewed poorly. However, as lawsuits went on, society and employers realised that it was no longer "okay" to discriminate against blacks. It's reached a point now where race is completely irrelevant to employment decisions in most large companies. What you're saying is that making something illegal doesn't change minds -- but our own experience during the civil rights movement is that it does.
Again, though, if you don't think that it should be illegal to discriminate against blacks then I doubt you'd find this argument compelling anyway...
Don't even go there with the far-right Libertarians. Anyone that did this would get destroyed by the free market. So yes, pretty much, I don't find it that compelling
No, not really. American Eagle and Hollister are well known for lawsuits against their hiring practices and many still go there.
What matters more is the branding and advertising. Of course no company that didn't hire blacks would go around and advertise they didn't hire blacks. So no, the free market would not destroy them.
Don't even go there with the far-right Libertarians. Anyone that did this would get destroyed by the free market. So yes, pretty much, I don't find it that compelling
Hmm well I don't know if it only occurs in sectors where employment status is a non-trivial determinant of performance, that's just where I have actually seen it happen with my own two eyes and where I could possibly see it being sort of plausible. (Because as far as I know, this is mainly a problem with recruiters not "recruiting" or accepting clients who are looking for work who were laid off.) Even though, again, I wouldn't do that myself if I was hiring anybody.
Maybe I can offer my own two cents on when it should be illegal to discriminate. To me there are two layers: 1) when you are discriminating against a specific class of individuals whose status has traditionally been the subject of arbitrary prejudice and malice (under the law, "invidious"), such that discriminating against such an individual in the workplace would rarely, if ever, be justified for any job-related reason and is likely the result of arbitrary prejudice. Such as: blacks in the 50s, gays now, women (although discriminating between men and women may be justified in very limited circumstances, see below) and other classes of folks against whom discrimination rarely, if ever, serves any actual job related purpose other than pure prejudice.
Second layer: discrimination which, as a policy decision, would have negative social consequences and may encourage behavior that we as a society do not want to happen, such as discrimination against pregnant women or the disabled. (E.g. we do not want to encourage, say, not getting pregnant or the creation of some lower class of people who, because of their disability, cannot contribute to society.) Discriminating against unemployment status could arguably come under this distinction, since it creates the catch-22 possibility of a permanent class of laid off people.
However, under both layers there would be exceptions, and how good your reasoning needs to be basically depends on how arbitrary it seems your discrimination is. For instance, there is no logical reason to hire a white guy over a black guy, or a straight guy over a gay guy. None, zero. That would almost always be unlawful. However there may be a very valid reason to hire a man over a pregnant woman for, say, a construction job that requires long hours, lot of heavy lifting, and an immediate start date or something, or hiring a woman over a man for a job as a model for women's clothes, etc. etc., you get the point.
There! I said it. Let the free-market haranguing begin.
Edit: Mise I went back and read your definition and we are basically saying the same thing. Hooray!
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At least have the intellectual and testicular fortitude to admit that you were completely and utterly wrong about "being born with it".
