4 ms·

Hiring easily with an open mind to firing quickly sounds like a good idea but civil rights law, at least in the US, makes it very difficult. Let's say that "fir

Hiring easily with an open mind to firing quickly sounds like a good idea but civil rights law, at least in the US, makes it very difficult. Let's say that "fire quickly" is one of the few women or blacks you've hired. Even worse, let's say that the "fire quickly" contingent is disproportionately women or racial minorities, through no fault of your own. I hope you're ready to pay a lawyer and a decent settlement. It doesn't matter whether you've actually done anything wrong. It just comes down to the economics of the chance they draw a sympathetic judge, the chance a jury will buy their sob story, the amount of money it would cost you to litigate the case, and the amount of money they're willing to go away (i.e. settle) for. Hope no one in your workplace sent a stupid joke over email that will make you look awful in front of a jury. That makes the settlement number go up by a lot. You can maybe get away with this practice with a small enough company, but even then, I'd advise extreme caution. If you can filter people out before offering them a job, you're in a much safer position legally. Edit: I think you're in the UK. I don't know much about employment law over there, but I gather the situation is actually better.

geocar 5y ago
> Edit: I think you're in the UK. I don't know much about employment law over there, but I gather the situation is actually better. I'm in Portugal actually, but I've lived in the UK and the US (I've actually worked there for almost 20 years). In a past life I was hired as the country manager for a British company working out of New York, and I had to receive training on employment law in both the UK and US because they actually take it very seriously in the UK, much more so than in the US; An employee (or former employee) can ask tribunal to decide if their termination was fair, and they absolutely do look for race and gender selection. I can appreciate Americans might not get a very good education on workers rights, so it is perhaps worth mentioning to an American when I fire someone, I'm doing it after I've had that decision reviewed by council, and with that training. Now when I said they lie to me, perhaps you got some idea that was just my opinion or something. I didn't mean to imply any amount of whimsy and tried to avoid any words that might suggest it; I admitted elsewhere I've fired less than 5 people for lying to me, and that's paper evidence of a lie. I've probably hired hundreds of people at this point in my life, so we're talking about a 1-2% problem where even if we have to pay a six month settlement, that's peanuts compared to what we save: See, if I had to spend 3 hours for each candidate, and maybe out of hundreds of people I've interviewed thousands, we're talking literal years of my life. I can't realistically do anything else with that time. And not just my life- I have a fiduciary duty to the company I work for, I can't in good-conscience spend the money in the budget for my salary to avoid a much smaller potential penalty that probably won't even happen. But I think it's important to think about some of the things you're saying: If someone thinks they're doing what I'm doing, and find themselves firing so many people that there is any racial or gender bias in the pool they're firing then I don't think they're doing what I'm doing. I might even wonder if they're racist or sexist myself, because my point is this shouldn't happen often enough to worry about.
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  The problem is that there's often a gender and racial bias in the pool of qualified workers, but the courts are basically willfully blind to that. Deviation from the overall demographic breakdown is taken as evidence of discrimination, even if those demographic groups have very different breakdowns of qualifications.
  - geocar 5y ago
    I think if you're worried about what a judge and jury would think of something, you probably shouldn't do it. I'm not worried about firing someone for lying on their CV.

geocar 5y ago

> Edit: I think you're in the UK. I don't know much about employment law over there, but I gather the situation is actually better. I'm in Portugal actually, but I've lived in the UK and the US (I've actually worked there for almost 20 years). In a past life I was hired as the country manager for a British company working out of New York, and I had to receive training on employment law in both the UK and US because they actually take it very seriously in the UK, much more so than in the US; An employee (or former employee) can ask tribunal to decide if their termination was fair, and they absolutely do look for race and gender selection. I can appreciate Americans might not get a very good education on workers rights, so it is perhaps worth mentioning to an American when I fire someone, I'm doing it after I've had that decision reviewed by council, and with that training. Now when I said they lie to me, perhaps you got some idea that was just my opinion or something. I didn't mean to imply any amount of whimsy and tried to avoid any words that might suggest it; I admitted elsewhere I've fired less than 5 people for lying to me, and that's paper evidence of a lie. I've probably hired hundreds of people at this point in my life, so we're talking about a 1-2% problem where even if we have to pay a six month settlement, that's peanuts compared to what we save: See, if I had to spend 3 hours for each candidate, and maybe out of hundreds of people I've interviewed thousands, we're talking literal years of my life. I can't realistically do anything else with that time. And not just my life- I have a fiduciary duty to the company I work for, I can't in good-conscience spend the money in the budget for my salary to avoid a much smaller potential penalty that probably won't even happen. But I think it's important to think about some of the things you're saying: If someone thinks they're doing what I'm doing, and find themselves firing so many people that there is any racial or gender bias in the pool they're firing then I don't think they're doing what I'm doing. I might even wonder if they're racist or sexist myself, because my point is this shouldn't happen often enough to worry about.

legalcorrection 5y ago
The problem is that there's often a gender and racial bias in the pool of qualified workers, but the courts are basically willfully blind to that. Deviation from the overall demographic breakdown is taken as evidence of discrimination, even if those demographic groups have very different breakdowns of qualifications.
- geocar 5y ago
  I think if you're worried about what a judge and jury would think of something, you probably shouldn't do it. I'm not worried about firing someone for lying on their CV.