These are common questions, but my argument is that they shouldn’t be permitted.
Why would an applicant answer truthfully, if the answer would make him or her look bad? Unless the real purpose is to try to pick out the people stupid enough to tell the truth, it doesn’t make any sense to me.
Furthermore, there’s a trend here in the United States for employers to refuse to make any comment about a former employee other than dates of employment, title, and salary. Many employers will simply refuse to give references not because they wouldn’t say anything good, but because they want to avoid any possibility of liability if they happened to say something that resulted in a bad outcome for the applicant.
There’s also the simple fact that many employers will hold a grudge against a former employee simply for leaving or for other reasons that aren’t necessarily fair to the applicant.
Or how about ‘‘personality profile’’ tests that feature Agree/Disagree statements like, ‘‘Generally, I had a good relationship with my parents as a child.’’
That should be illegal. It’s none of any employer’s mfing business and the last thing anyone wants to do in the middle of a job interview is be reminded of their shitty childhood, or the early death of a parent, or something equally traumatic.
hawksgirl, I think volunteer experience can be extremely relevant under the right circumstances. For example, I applied for a job as a Spanish-speaking rep for a nonprofit organization, and my volunteer experience teaching English in the U.S. and Mexico not only demonstrated a consistency of values but also a high level of independence, organization, and demonstrable ability of a relatively advanced grasp of the language.
I think the key is that when using volunteer experience, you point out skills that are relevant to the job. Understand that professional/academic experience is more relevant, but volunteer experience can be that icing on the cake that makes you stand out as a candidate – I imagine that is true especially for jobs in nonprofit, humanities, social work, etc.
Sample from my cover letter:
This became a major point of interest during my interview, where I was able to elaborate on teaching 8 classes a day with very little resources and no training. It impressed the hell out of them. I was hired almost on the spot. (Note: that paragraph on volunteer stuff came after all the information about education, academic achievements, research experience, etc… I believe volunteer experience can be used to enhance a résumé, but it won’t make one by itself.)
Apart from being what the OP asked for, that’s sort of the largest part of sorting through resumes.
If you’ve got thirty resumes, and you need to pick five people to interview, then effectively your task is discarding twenty-five resumes. Some are easier than others.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I generally overlook superficial characteristics, like the type of paper used and typefaces and formatting, and I assumed that this was a general trend, but some of the comments here seem to contradict that assumption.
I have found it easy to sort through resumes based on more substantive criteria. Of course, we also require applicants to take a written test before we even look at their resumes, so that helps us narrow in on substantive data rather than the “who does that on a resume?” type of nonsense.
I suspect the purpose in some cases is to allow the company to get rid of someone who has been a problem employee at a previous job without waiting for them to actually do something bad at their current job.
Say someone left their job at X Corporation when they were fired for stealing, then applied for a job at Y Corporation. Y doesn’t find out about this until after they’ve hired the person. Now, Y doesn’t want an employee who has a history of stealing from employers, because someone who has done that once is probably more likely than the average person to do it again. The employee hasn’t done anything to Y, but Y would rather be rid of them before they steal again. If Y asked the applicant to say, in writing, why they left X , and Y can now prove that they lied, Y now has some grounds for firing the person without waiting for them to do something detrimental to Y.
Some people who didn’t get along with their parents may have done so because they have trouble getting along with people who are somewhat difficult, or because they have problems accepting others having authority over them, or just because they are difficult for people to get along with. A prospective boss doesn’t want to hire that kind of person for a lot of positions, because they will have a negative impact on the business. It’s entirely legitimate for a prospective employer to want to screen out those people.
If they come right out and ask “do you have problems accepting authority”, most people are going to know that they should answer no, even if they do. Something less obvious, like a personality profile, might catch some of those people. Of course, this assumes that personality profiling actually works (IMNSHO, most personality profiles are somewhere around graphology in legitimacy).
I thought most people submitted resumes electronically in Word or text format these days, so they don’t control what kind of paper gets used. Certainly that’s generally how it works in IT- nobody mails paper resumes.
These are reasons why an employer would want to ask such questions. Really, employers would really like to have documentation of your entire personal life. But that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to ask whatever they want, especially in a place like the United States where most employment is at will and you can discharge people for no reason at any time.
For example, take the question about “have you ever filed a lawsuit”? As a society, we want people to be able to vindicate their rights in a court. However, being required to disclose that on an employment application might put you at a disadvantage if employers are going to think “might be a troublemaker; better not take a chance.”
Most of them probably only want to know “is this person going to be a good employee and not make trouble for my company?” They really aren’t interested in digging up dirt on people they don’t even know. But since they don’t have a crystal ball that can show them the future, all they can do is try to find out if you’ve made trouble, been hard to get along with, or not been a good employee for someone else in the past.
We agree that’s what they want. We’re just negotiating where to draw the line.
The question is how far should they be allowed to inquire? At some point there’s a line that says – look, this is largely an at-will employment system. If someone’s no good then you fire them. There should be a limit to how deep an employer can go in order to avoid such a clash. To me, it’s obvious that employers should not be allowed to administer questionable personality tests.
It seemed you might be justifying the “do you get along with your parents” and “do you have problems with accepting authority” lines of questioning. In my mind, these are areas that employers should be curbed on.
I think the “did you get along with your parents as a child” question is silly, too. I was just trying to explain what the thought process behind it might be.
The candidate was a football player. Defensive lineman of some sort, to be more particular:
“Challenged the existing association paradigms”: Squared off against the other team at the line of scrimmage.
“With an aim towards improved teaming”: He wanted to sack the QB, but it’s much more effective if you can work with your fellow players to double- or triple-team the QB.
“And empowerment”: We’re big, powerful guys. Working together, we should be able to cause the other team to lose yards on the next play. The more power we have, the more yards they lose.
I think that questions that lead to protected class discrimination need to be curbed and are. But “Did you get along with your parents” isn’t protected class discrimination.
Here is the deal on resumes and interviews. The person doing the hiring gets most of the balls in their court. They can love Comic Sans or hate it. Interviewing is highly subjective. The person with the best paper creditials is often a jackass no one wants to work with. The woman with a great personality and great creditials is sometimes the one most likely to call in hungover. Hiring is an art form, not a science where you check off “yep, yep - oh, good, give him a ++good on that one.” As an art form, everyone is going to practice it differently.
So as a job seeker, you get to choose to take the safe path (Objective, Education, Experience, Action Words, In Ariel or Times New Roman on White or Ecru paper - or submitted electronically) or the riskier one. Someone may love your purple paper, with comic sans and an email address contact of hotchick@yourproviderhere>com
I have seen people deal with this by deleting the specific organization name and giving the information more generally - for example “president, 2002-2004, of the on-campus branch of a major political party.” Or whatever.
I have seen many stupidly annoying resumes in my life, but one that I found exceptionally irritating was from a woman who put:
Suzy (“MRS. CALVIN”) Derkins
at the top of every page of her multi-page resume. The message was “I am so proud to be married to Calvin Derkins!!! Look at me, I’m married!!! And I’m married to CALVIN DERKINS.”
If we need someone to start right away, we’ll look for someone that isn’t currently employed. They won’t need to give notice and do other “between jobs” stuff that will delay their starting date.
And if you’re willing to bail on your current job without giving notice, then I won’t hire you, because it means you’ll probably be willing to do the same thing to me someday.
On the other hand, some employers I’ve worked for prefer to hire people who are currently employed because it’s proof that they’re employable.
I screened a lot of resumes and cover letters a few years ago. There’s one basic thing which a suprisingly large number of people missed. If an ad asks you to send a resume and a cover letter, send a cover letter. I’d say about 1/3 to 1/2 of the resumes we received didn’t come with one. When you’re screening over one hundred resumes for one job, something like that will count against you.
I’d also argue that a gimmick can work if you do it right. When we were trying to hire a sales rep, one of those hundred-odd resumes came in a large envelope which clanged when I put it down. Normally, this is a bad sign (see below). In this case, when I opened the envelope, it contained a tray with the note, “Delivering your next sales rep on a silver platter.” The fellow who sent it’s credentials were ordinary. If he hadn’t done that, he would have gone on the C list of candidates. Instead, we gave him an interview. In the end, we hired someone who was better qualified, but spending a dollar on that tray showed he was willling to do something special to get people’s attention and make a sale.
One general rule of thumb I developed is if I receive a large envelope containing an elaborately formatted resume, the candidate’s qualifications won’t be that good. The person who sends me a one- or two-page resume with a cover letter folded into a number 10 envelope is likely to have much better qualifications than the person whose resume is bound into a folder and sent flat in a larger envelope.
One other tip I’d give someone is research companies on line and go to their websites. I’ve read what they have to say about themselves and even echoed language from their websites in my cover letters. It has gotten me interviews. My theory is it shows I’m interested enough in working for them specifically, rather than just getting a job anywhere I can.
It might affect how or when they can contact you to set up an interview.
I would say sales jobs are one of the situations that might be an exception to the “no gimmicks” rule.
Or this might be the time to use that thesaurus (paper or online) and find some other words to use. Having a good vocabulary and being able to write well are pluses in most jobs.
Personally speaking, I don’t like unnecessary thesaurusized vocabulary. If “develop” is the correct, most precise, most accurate word and it is the common word used in the industry, I’d prefer it be used a million times rather than some superfluous synonym.
