It doesn’t even matter whether or not the particular company or department employs women – a candidate who is misogynistic and/or racist is an asshole who is morally broken and is going to be a problem one way or another.
I was the HR part of a three person panel interviewing an internal candidate for a supervisory position in the area he currently worked in.
Me: What do you see as some of the problems in you department that should be addressed?
Candidate: There are too many women in management.
I was the only man on the panel and the other two women, including who the candidate would have reported to directly, were shocked. Up until that point, he was still a viable candidate even if the interview hadn’t been stellar, but we all unanimously decided he wasn’t a good fit for the position. I still have no idea what would possess someone to say something like that in an interview, and I can only surmise it must have been deliberate.
To be fair, that could have been due to misogyny (I mean, from the information you had at the time-- It sounds like it later turned out to be correct), or it could have just been because the CEO was the ranking person in the room (I’m not sure where in the hierarchy you were, but I assume that the CEO was above you). Which would still be a problem: If there are two people interviewing you, they’re both there for a reason, and you should be paying attention to both. But it’d be a different problem.
OK, that one, not so subtle. Did he even keep his current job, after that?
Only sometimes. In a previous life I was briefly responsible for safety training in an organization. It was often used as a CYA for management (e.g. “You sat through the safety traininng film, so the accident is your fault” when what was really needed was better procedures and engineering). A lot (all?) of the “management seminars” I attended were total time sucks. IMO when a manager loads up on this BS, it’s a sign that they don’t have enough to do and the team is probably more productive without them.
He kept his job, but moved on to another employer a few years later. As an employee, he was fine. No disciplinary problems, no complaints from his coworkers, and he was consistently doing well in his annual evaluations.
My second most memorable interview was a nice young lady, internal candidate again, for a supervisory position. This was an excellent candidate who was favored by the hiring manager but lost the job before the interview really got started.
Me: Why do you want to be a supervisor?’
Candidate: I like to tell people what to do.
The rest of the interview went fine, and I suspect she would have had the job had she come up with a different answer. But at the end of the interview, the hiring manager looked me square in the eyes and said, “Absolutely not. Not until she grows up.”
The position was to be a direct report to toxgoddess. Candidates need to make sure they make good contact with their potential immediate superior.
If you get a new job, and colleagues ask who you’re working with and always laugh when you mention one name in particular, and that person is your boss, things aren’t going to end well.
In this case, I figured out that he had a lengthy history of walking out on jobs without giving notice. How he kept getting hired after doing this was a puzzle to me too.
Did “they” use the Pluralis majestatis … or why “they”?
(not really important, just wondering)
Because it’d be rude to refer to the director as “it”?
well, the whole “walk the talk” thing, obviously …
damned if you suck up, damned if you don’t …
(fwiw: he might have been a good fit in 1979 or so … )
It’s a habit I picked up working in HR over the years. When talking about an employee relations issue, or even when we’re just bitching about an employee, we sometimes avoid using names or other identifying information where possible. Plus it’s just another layer to making my description vague enough to make it more difficult for anyone to figure out where I’m employed. It’s a little silly, I know.
Yes. The CEO was wrong to overrule the direct manager in the hiring process. It’s good to get insight from a variety of people when interviewing, but the direct manager should veto over any possible candidates.
Even in 1979, if you found yourself being interviewed by a man and two women, I’d think it’d be common sense to refrain from saying that there were too many women in management.
I wonder whether that person didn’t actually want the job, but had some reason to interview for it anyway.
I don’t think the “Balanced Slate” is as a thing in 1979. Which is the #1 reason for people interviewing for jobs they don’t want nowadays.
For positions at or above a certain level companies make a commitment to “seriously consider” candidates outside the over-represented demographic (which is almost always “white male” or just “white”).
I have been “invited” to apply for at least six positions in the last four years where it was pretty obvious I wasn’t actually being considered. I would always make it to the final interview with the boss of the hiring manager and then two or three days later someone else would be announced. A white person who was the “obvious” internal candidate in most cases.
Sometimes the interviewer pretends they are actually interviewing you. Sometimes they just talk about tangential issues. But it’s very obvious that you are just there so they can check the box that a non-white person made it to the finalist list.
But it never crossed my mind to just blow up the game by either refusing to apply or saying something impolitic in the interview.