8 ms·

"Fair" is a four-letter word. Very little in life is "fair", and hiring is probably one of the less "fair" arenas around. It may feel good to talk about how "un

"Fair" is a four-letter word. Very little in life is "fair", and hiring is probably one of the less "fair" arenas around. It may feel good to talk about how "unfair" certain things seem, but in the end it's ultimately unproductive and while you're bellyaching about "fair", someone else is just going to get shit done and leave you in the dirt. "Fair" is a fairly useless concept in the real world, and it's only going to muddy the waters if it gets brought up. That said, it's almost certainly a bad idea to discriminate against the unemployed as a hiring policy. Since corporate loyalty went out the window, and the economy is currently in the toilet, the correlation between "applicant employment status" and "applicant competence" is quite low. Good people get laid off all the time, and if your company refuses to hire them ON THAT BASIS ALONE then you're almost certainly making a non-optimal decision. Hell, depending on your scruples the qualified currently-unemployed applicant might be a great find because you have more leverage when it comes to salary negotiation. Whether they are unemployed or moving on from their current job, skilled applicants are skilled applicants and it's stupid to refuse to consider them based on an antiquated notion that someone's employment status strongly reflects their worth. Give their application the same 30 second screening you'd give Joe Employed, and give them the same coding test or exercises, and if they stand out then they stand out. What do you have to lose?

techsupporter 16y ago
The idea isn't that the prospective candidate isn't loyal. As the theory has been described to me, a candidate who is still employed after the bloodbath has been able to successfully navigate the "don't get fired because you're now redundant" waters and remain "in the game." Allegedly this means that the person is one or more of: a) valuable; b) competent; c) a good salesperson of his or her worth. (That's the way the theory goes, at least; I'm sure we can all think of plenty more reasons why someone remains employed that are not at all desirable for future employers) Regardless, being laid off in a down economy means "you suck" to some people and, since everyone professes to only wants the "top 10%," that naturally excludes the unemployed. It's akin to being arrested: You wouldn't have been arrested (fired) if you weren't guilty (worthless as an employee). For the record, I strongly disagree with this "theory," but that's how it's been explained to me from two small business owners.
- lwhi 16y ago
  A person's ability to survive a culling, isn't usually the objective that the person was initially hired to achieve. It's perfectly reasonable that someone could be a very skilled ______ (gardener, banker, coder, nurse, chef, accountant etc.) and not be very skilled at office politics. It's perfectly reasonable that a person might have just suffered bad luck.
- cheez 16y ago
  I think that those who repeatedly navigate the layoff cycle successfully are either incredibly competent or evil and incompetent. I have only come across evil and incompetent though.
  - angdis 16y ago
    The other possibility is that they pay attention to the writing on the wall, keep their professional networks fresh and are ready to bail out in time before the lay-offs come.
- Duff 16y ago
  I think it depends on degree of unemployment. Folks in this 99 week situations have been unemployed for nearly 2 years... you have to wonder at some point why they haven't gotten some sort of job -- even a lousy one. For an IT job, are you really qualified for many midlevel or senior positions after two years of inactivity? That's a long time on the bench.
  - bartonfink 16y ago
    I'd bet that someone who's been unemployed for 99 weeks without anything to show for it (e.g. taking a trip around South America), probably doesn't have midlevel or senior skills.
    - Duff 16y ago
      I think that's the issue many folks have. You coast up the salary band at a big corporate or public sector employer and get accustomed to a $100k gig coordinating paperclip management or something. At big companies especially, it's easy to turn into an specialist on the processes within the company instead of whatever your job title is. Meanwhile, your marketable skills have eroded to the point that you no longer fit where you feel you should.
lwhi 16y ago
It's wrong to discriminate on any basis other than an applicant's ability to carry out a post. There is no definitive or provable correlation between employment status and ability.
- philwelch 16y ago
  No correlation at all? That can't be true. That's logically equivalent to saying that someone's ability has absolutely no impact at all on the probability that they can remain employed--or, in other words, that employment is completely random with respect to ability. While the employment market is quite flawed in this respect, it's certainly at least a little better than random.
  - lwhi 16y ago
    Perhaps a little better than random - but why use such a poor indicator of suitability when you there are so many other more concrete ways to assess a person's worth in the workplace?
    - philwelch 16y ago
      As a filter. If you have a large pool of applicants you want to take steps that reduce the size of the pool while increasing the average quality inside the pool. Remember, you're not trying to pick the single very best individual in that pool; you're just trying to pick someone who's well qualified. Why? Because processing a large pool of applicants and completely ranking the entire pool is prohibitively expensive and doesn't give the employer much marginal benefit. Now, let's consider what happens in an economy with high structural unemployment. First, the pool of applicants for every job opening becomes much larger, pushing more and more businesses to employ quick, cost-effective filters to the applicant pool. Second, the new people who join this pool are the newly unemployed, who are less likely to be well qualified. Even worse, the people who can't find work stay unemployed, become more desperate, and apply for more jobs, including jobs they're not well qualified for. As a result, there's a lower proportion of well qualified applicants among the unemployed applicants. Sure, there are well qualified applicants in there, just a lower proportion. Lower, even, than there would be if it wasn't for the high structural unemployment. But among the employed applicants, there are just as many well qualified applicants as ever. Also, the pool of already-employed applicants is much smaller than the complete pool of applicants. What happens when you ignore applications from unemployed people? You go from a huge pool with a low proportion of well qualified applicants to a much smaller pool with a higher proportion of well qualified applicants. How is that not a win? And I wouldn't discount this thinking out of hand, either. People generally do things for reasons and act upon the evidence that's available to them. I'm willing to bet that most of these companies that don't even consider unemployed applicants chose that policy because someone went through hundreds of hopeless applications from unemployed and completely unqualified people and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Also, keep in mind that all I've done here is show how it could be rational and self-interested to ignore job applications from unemployed applicants. That's not the same as saying it's fair or morally right.
presidentender 16y ago
I agree. The question which ought to be answered is "Is it optimal for us to preferentially hire the employed?" Frankly, the answer to that question ought to be left to each individual employer and left out of the law entirely.
geebee 16y ago
The problem is that sub-optimal policies can still work as a good heuristic. For instance, you might say "it's so hard to wade through these resumes, I'm just going to toss out everyone who doesn't have a degree in Computer Science from a list of preferred universities, everyone who is unemployed, and everyone whose age doesn't fall between 26 and 35". This is where "fairness", in spite of how hard (and even dangerous) it is to define, does matter, because many people believe that a civilized society has an interest in enforcing some basic standards of fairness. The goal isn't to make life fair, which is impossible, it's to set a minimum standard. For instance, auto insurance companies used to charge men under 25 more for car insurance than women. And it was very clear that males were more likely to result in a claim than women in this age group. However, does using this distinction violate basic standards of fairness? What if you could make a similar claim for a religious group? A racial group? An age group? People tend to differ on exactly where they draw the line, though almost everyone agrees that the line should be drawn somewhere. Personally, I think that using employment status as a screen strikes me as unfair on a gut level, but I think it does exceed the basic decency standard. In other words, I don't think it should illegal, but I definitely don't like it.
xiaoma 16y ago
>"Fair" is a fairly useless concept in the real world, and it's only going to muddy the waters if it gets brought up. I sincerely hope those that feel this way will never wield significant power as a lawmaker, a sentencing judge, a law enforcement officer or in any other position. Many terrible things have been done by people completely immorally following their own self interest. Just look at the arguments for and against slavery in the colonial era if you have any doubts.

techsupporter 16y ago

The idea isn't that the prospective candidate isn't loyal. As the theory has been described to me, a candidate who is still employed after the bloodbath has been able to successfully navigate the "don't get fired because you're now redundant" waters and remain "in the game." Allegedly this means that the person is one or more of: a) valuable; b) competent; c) a good salesperson of his or her worth. (That's the way the theory goes, at least; I'm sure we can all think of plenty more reasons why someone remains employed that are not at all desirable for future employers) Regardless, being laid off in a down economy means "you suck" to some people and, since everyone professes to only wants the "top 10%," that naturally excludes the unemployed. It's akin to being arrested: You wouldn't have been arrested (fired) if you weren't guilty (worthless as an employee). For the record, I strongly disagree with this "theory," but that's how it's been explained to me from two small business owners.

lwhi 16y ago
A person's ability to survive a culling, isn't usually the objective that the person was initially hired to achieve. It's perfectly reasonable that someone could be a very skilled ______ (gardener, banker, coder, nurse, chef, accountant etc.) and not be very skilled at office politics. It's perfectly reasonable that a person might have just suffered bad luck.
cheez 16y ago
I think that those who repeatedly navigate the layoff cycle successfully are either incredibly competent or evil and incompetent. I have only come across evil and incompetent though.
- angdis 16y ago
  The other possibility is that they pay attention to the writing on the wall, keep their professional networks fresh and are ready to bail out in time before the lay-offs come.
Duff 16y ago
I think it depends on degree of unemployment. Folks in this 99 week situations have been unemployed for nearly 2 years... you have to wonder at some point why they haven't gotten some sort of job -- even a lousy one. For an IT job, are you really qualified for many midlevel or senior positions after two years of inactivity? That's a long time on the bench.
- bartonfink 16y ago
  I'd bet that someone who's been unemployed for 99 weeks without anything to show for it (e.g. taking a trip around South America), probably doesn't have midlevel or senior skills.
  - Duff 16y ago
    I think that's the issue many folks have. You coast up the salary band at a big corporate or public sector employer and get accustomed to a $100k gig coordinating paperclip management or something. At big companies especially, it's easy to turn into an specialist on the processes within the company instead of whatever your job title is. Meanwhile, your marketable skills have eroded to the point that you no longer fit where you feel you should.

lwhi 16y ago

It's wrong to discriminate on any basis other than an applicant's ability to carry out a post. There is no definitive or provable correlation between employment status and ability.

philwelch 16y ago
No correlation at all? That can't be true. That's logically equivalent to saying that someone's ability has absolutely no impact at all on the probability that they can remain employed--or, in other words, that employment is completely random with respect to ability. While the employment market is quite flawed in this respect, it's certainly at least a little better than random.
- lwhi 16y ago
  Perhaps a little better than random - but why use such a poor indicator of suitability when you there are so many other more concrete ways to assess a person's worth in the workplace?
  - philwelch 16y ago
    As a filter. If you have a large pool of applicants you want to take steps that reduce the size of the pool while increasing the average quality inside the pool. Remember, you're not trying to pick the single very best individual in that pool; you're just trying to pick someone who's well qualified. Why? Because processing a large pool of applicants and completely ranking the entire pool is prohibitively expensive and doesn't give the employer much marginal benefit. Now, let's consider what happens in an economy with high structural unemployment. First, the pool of applicants for every job opening becomes much larger, pushing more and more businesses to employ quick, cost-effective filters to the applicant pool. Second, the new people who join this pool are the newly unemployed, who are less likely to be well qualified. Even worse, the people who can't find work stay unemployed, become more desperate, and apply for more jobs, including jobs they're not well qualified for. As a result, there's a lower proportion of well qualified applicants among the unemployed applicants. Sure, there are well qualified applicants in there, just a lower proportion. Lower, even, than there would be if it wasn't for the high structural unemployment. But among the employed applicants, there are just as many well qualified applicants as ever. Also, the pool of already-employed applicants is much smaller than the complete pool of applicants. What happens when you ignore applications from unemployed people? You go from a huge pool with a low proportion of well qualified applicants to a much smaller pool with a higher proportion of well qualified applicants. How is that not a win? And I wouldn't discount this thinking out of hand, either. People generally do things for reasons and act upon the evidence that's available to them. I'm willing to bet that most of these companies that don't even consider unemployed applicants chose that policy because someone went through hundreds of hopeless applications from unemployed and completely unqualified people and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Also, keep in mind that all I've done here is show how it could be rational and self-interested to ignore job applications from unemployed applicants. That's not the same as saying it's fair or morally right.

presidentender 16y ago

I agree. The question which ought to be answered is "Is it optimal for us to preferentially hire the employed?" Frankly, the answer to that question ought to be left to each individual employer and left out of the law entirely.

geebee 16y ago

The problem is that sub-optimal policies can still work as a good heuristic. For instance, you might say "it's so hard to wade through these resumes, I'm just going to toss out everyone who doesn't have a degree in Computer Science from a list of preferred universities, everyone who is unemployed, and everyone whose age doesn't fall between 26 and 35". This is where "fairness", in spite of how hard (and even dangerous) it is to define, does matter, because many people believe that a civilized society has an interest in enforcing some basic standards of fairness. The goal isn't to make life fair, which is impossible, it's to set a minimum standard. For instance, auto insurance companies used to charge men under 25 more for car insurance than women. And it was very clear that males were more likely to result in a claim than women in this age group. However, does using this distinction violate basic standards of fairness? What if you could make a similar claim for a religious group? A racial group? An age group? People tend to differ on exactly where they draw the line, though almost everyone agrees that the line should be drawn somewhere. Personally, I think that using employment status as a screen strikes me as unfair on a gut level, but I think it does exceed the basic decency standard. In other words, I don't think it should illegal, but I definitely don't like it.

xiaoma 16y ago

>"Fair" is a fairly useless concept in the real world, and it's only going to muddy the waters if it gets brought up. I sincerely hope those that feel this way will never wield significant power as a lawmaker, a sentencing judge, a law enforcement officer or in any other position. Many terrible things have been done by people completely immorally following their own self interest. Just look at the arguments for and against slavery in the colonial era if you have any doubts.