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[wierd]

Or, just improve the whole system by requiring an actual reason and or explanation other than "not qualified."

You know, something that makes the whole cover letter farce into a bitter and painful memory and nothing more. (the whole idea of having to blow smoke up an employer's ass about how amazing you are, when your work record and cited references should speak for themselves if the HR people did their fucking jobs instead of playing alphabet bingo on the requirements for the position, would solve so many problems I dont even know where to begin. HR people say that they get drenched in people that are unworthy of being interviewed; it never seems to dawn on them that the people who are competent, are competent because they invest their energy into their work performance, not how well they sell themselves. The people that invest in selling themselves are the ones who typically lack actual competence. But get the HR people to understand that.... Better odds of getting a double dip icecream in hell.)

I doubt people would be stupid enough to write "I dont some guy named tyrone working here" or "has 50 foot afro" in the reason line, but requiring a reason for rejection when screening candidates that actually bother to apply would probably do a fair bit to eliminate the personal biases of HR people.

and trust me, a LOT of what is wrong with unemployment in the US today stems from the personal biases of HR people, and NOT with the applicants.

[Helgoland]

I think the root problem is that poverty is much more prevalent in minorities, and higher poverty also means higher crime rates. The Irish were similarly prejudiced against back when they were poor, but as they integrated economically the prejudiced disappeared. So I think the key for this problem is increasing social mobility.

That's an interesting thought: This would imply that 'downward' racism (against blacks, latinos, the Irish etc) is fundamentally different from 'upwards' racism (against Jews, for example, and against ethnic Chinese in many South-East Asian countries). Not that far-fetched an idea, actually.

[wierd]

I'd say that's a no brainer. It's actually the nail I am flailing for. As minorities integrate and become just like everyone else, there is no justifiable reason for prejudice. The idea is to prevent employers from saying "Then FOOs are all lazy, ignorant asses without a quality education, and will never amount to anything-- I dont want them working here" and getting away with it.  While there might be a temporary education gap, that can be solved neatly with antidiscrimination and affordable and equal access to education within at most two generations.

The stereotype? that can live a lot longer, and is why it has to be kept out of the decision matrix completely.

[Lord Shonus]

The trouble with trying to make hiring decisions more fair is that the process is so arbitrary - any given employer's likely going to be picking a dozen interview candidates from a hundred nigh-identical resumes to give a dozen nigh-identical interviews, with very little to choose between them other than very small personality traits. Yhis problem is made worse for minorities because all the outreach programs and job-placement assistance they get reinforces the blandness - every step of the application and interview process is drilled in (to eliminate most of the obvious mistakes) until you can barely tell one candidate from another. More often than not, the decision comes down to "I can understand Candidate A when she talks, while Candidate B talks with a mouthful of mush" or "Candidate C had a slightly better suit than Candidate D, which shows that he cares more about getting the job."

A much better solution is to ban temp services (which is a shame, as they do provide a useful service to all, but companies abuse them too much), make "at-will" employment illegal, increase wrongful termination penalties enormously, and set up a special court to fast-track employment cases.

[mainiac]

Or, just improve the whole system by requiring an actual reason and or explanation other than "not qualified."

Yeah sure I'd love it.  I'd love if the process was more meritocratic.  But I know that right now, blacks are prejudiced against so affirmative action makes the process more meritocratic more then it makes it less meritocratic.  I've never seen an argument against meritocracy in general.  Everyone is already trying to put it into action.

[wierd]

The only real thing holding back such a reform is political inertia, and blowback from existing employers who like to pretend that quality candidates are rare, so they can manipulate labor rates.

The biggest tools in that arsenal are the alphabet bingo requirements that employers place on a position that are not actually necessary, just desirable.  You know, like demanding a masters of science and 10 industry certifications along with a strong linkedin profile and lots of nepetism for what is essentially somebody that fixes the laser printer when it breaks. Oh, and they have to be handsome and attractive-erm... "have good people skills", because, well, the printer has sensitive feelings, or something. (Really, the office workers he will be supporting have biases and want an attractive and personable associate they can abuse for everything they dont want to do, and it helps if he's cute and naive.)

when they cant find prince charming, they cry that they cant find qualified applicants, despite passing up people that can do the job in thier sleep-- some may even be minorities or alternative sexualities, that dont fit the "unwritten" part of the job description. Since, you know-- a female IT person might make that staff cluster feel paranoid about thier jobs, and heaven forbid if she is a lesbian.

Similar if he is a clearly homosexual male-- or other "not what we are looking for" applicant.

HR people must think the rest of us are bind tools not to see this shit. Forcing them to actually tell people WHY, specifically, they were passed up on candidacy would fix two problems.

1) It would make bulk sifting of applicants looking for Prince Charming very costly for employers, and getting them out of that absurd point of view.

2) It would allow people who are trying to find work better understand how they are not meeting the supposed requirements for the positions they are applying for.

It would get even more interesting if there was a way to sue for wrongful/willful behavior in rejecting applicants; eg, they say "You dont meet criterion X", when you can prove that you most certainly DO meet criteron X-- etc. Opening liability for class actions there would be hilarious, but probably going too far.

I would just settle for requiring a human written (no electronic 'thanks for playing' messages. actual human rejection notifications and explanations) reason for rejection, when a person takes the effort to file an application and make a good faith effort at filling the employment vacancy they are trying to fill.

That would pretty much kill the way headhunting agencies and temp to hire agreements currently work-- but I would consider that a step in the right direction.

If answering 5000 applicants to inform them that they have been rejected and why sounds onerous, then perhaps these employers will limit thier employment scope to sensible levels. EG, not advertise nationally for a position that needs to be filled by a local resident. et al.

But, they want prince charming, damnit. not the highly proficient ogre-- and that's the trouble. We ALLOW them to hire only who they feel are handsome princes.

[mainiac]

Fuck man, I wasn't expecting you to rewrite the entire social contract.

[Aklyon]

I like his point, but that sounds like a hell of a difficult push. Maybe just start with the response part.

[wierd]

Yup. I would be happy with just the human response part.

Needs to be written by humans though. not autogenerated form letter spam.

[Flying Dice]

Full disclosure: someone I am very close to has spent decades as a high-level HR professional in both a large multinational retail corporation (as a regional manager responsible for 6-7 sites in the eastern half of the U.S., ranging from Virginia to Florida to Texas; they spent two thirds of their weeks flying on business trips during those years), and in a major city government (around the level where the mayor recognizes them on sight and remembers their name but doesn't know them personally). They've disclosed more than perhaps they should about how HR operates internally, mostly as venting.

First point: The human response? That's not feasible from a simple workload perspective. Single openings at for minor low-level positions see hundreds of applications; most of the work in the selection process is winnowing that down to a number that's practical to offer interviews to. Candidate selection tends to come down to, as you suggested, discovering which of the more or less equally qualified candidates is the best fit on a personal level -- tl;dr, are they responsible and personable, or do they give off asshole vibes and display worrisome behavioral tendencies?

As an aside, this individual's time in the public sector has been spent largely, apart from day-to-day operations, working to get problem employees within the department into retirement, held accountable for their malfunctions, or into a domain that makes them someone else's problem, and replacing them with people who do their jobs competently and don't spend their work hours with passive-aggressive sniping and petty gossip.

Second point: AA and candidate selection. It's not nearly as black and white (don't hit me!) as it's portrayed. It's not a matter of "this person is X and that person isn't; guess we know who to pick!", and it often comes up (at least in the public sector) in specific fields -- the fire department skewing heavily male is one of the big ones, and it's for basically the same reason as active-duty military. It tends to be less a top-down mandate that "of the next five people you hire, three must be minorities" and more emphasis on shifting recruiting norms to break up good ol' boy networks. When they talk about hiring, "the new employee in X department is [whatever]," it's not the implication of "this is why they were chosen," and more in the same tone of "oh, and they're also ex-military, which is nice because they'll do things without constantly whining about them," except with a different emphasis on a minor up note to an already top-of-the-heap candidate.

But yes. The abuse of temp agencies is a serious problem, and a double-blind method for conducting pre-interview assessment would be wonderful. I'd probably not push farther and go for a text-only interview, though, because behavioral cues often indicate how someone will be like as an employee -- no matter what idiot teenagers think, showing up in street casual and talking to the interviewer like they're your best mate doesn't make a good impression. The point of that whole process from the submission of the resume to the interview is to show that you are capable of being professional and taking things seriously, and that you have a very basic level of competence in self-maintenance and composition.

The overemphasis on social networking (no, not that kind) is also absolutely poisonous. If you know someone, that's a virtual guarantee of getting in. If you can give a dozen prestigious references, that's almost as good. And that's bad.

Welp, race relations is about to become a front-and-center topic again (see: Virginia shooting).

So far it seems more personal than racial, as the shooter was an old employee and sent a manifesto beforehand.

Yeah, while there was something about the shooter claiming discrimination, the details are so vague and we don't even know the details in the first place, so, we don't know if there actually was something racial, or maybe the shooter just percieved it as being racial.

"They didn't dislike you because you were black, they disliked you because you were an asshole."

Basically. Even if this was Alabama the race card wouldn't make me buy a disgruntled ex-employee going postal being anything but a headcase who had easy access to handguns -- thanks, NRA!

[Playergamer]

This is a slipping past the radar case, to be fair. Nobody would reasonably deny somebody the chance to purchase a weapon just because they were fired a while ago.

((Notice how i very carefully avoided saying right, since I know Bay12 and don't want an argument.))

[mainiac]

Edit: Eh... nevermind.

[Flying Dice]

Eh, probably. But I doubt local/state laws made it particularly difficult either.

It does sort of amuse me how people who like to hide behind the Second always seem to forget the first half . Y'know, the bit that clearly connects keeping and bearing arms to participation in the governments' militias. If you want to modernize it, it's essentially saying that if you're in the National Guard you're allowed to possess and train with your service weapon.

Besides, I don't give two shits about hunting weapons or even civilianized military equipment. Banning handguns is the single biggest thing we could do to fight gun crime; they're popular with criminals for several damned good reasons.

[wierd]

again, at least in skilled disciplines, focus on branding and selling yourself (which is what looking neat and trim every day, and being more obnoxiously charismatic than a politician at a baby kissing convention actually is) detracts from focusing that energy into your discipline.

There is a serious flaw in your response: looking like a stuffed suit is not a sign of actual competence, and reliance on such symbols is a recipe for disaster. Ask IT hiring managers. They will tell you the exact same thing-- HR sends them fakers and idiots with good cover letters and bright smiles. What they really need are professionals that know how to get things done, and not take down enterprise critical equipment with blunders. It takes a great deal of time and energy to not only work, but also do the requisite continuous self education that comes with that territory. That time comes from somewhere.


as for the militia argument thats come up..

A militia, of the kind referred to, is more like what the minute men were. NOT regular service men, but more a rag-tag assembly of people and armorments capable of engaging in guerilla tactics to weaken and slow an invading military presense while the actual armed forces mobilizes.

eg, more like what the french underground was in the second world war.

[mainiac]

Didn't the minute men essentially not exist by the end of 1776, having been incorporated into the state militias?  I thought the siege of boston was their last hurrah.  Thats 15 years before the 2nd Amendment, years during which the states were continuously operating militias which would be called national guard in the modern parlance.