"The unemployed will not be considered"

[bordelond]

Something else:

How pervasive is this practice really? And is there a concern that for every company that advertises publicly that they won’t hire unemployed people, there are 10 other companies doing the same thing sotto voce?

[Henrichek]

My father’s previous boss used to throw away half of the application papers. He didn’t want to hire somebody with bad luck :).

[Duke]

@bordelond

The only way this makes sense is if the “no unemployed allowed” companies figure that they can hire 5 “superstars” to do the work of, say, 8 “regular” employees. Maybe then the higher rates to the “superstars” work out.

Hasn’t that been an overarching trend in business anyway over the last several decades? “If my enterprise works great with 100 employees, maybe I can pare it down to 90 with barely any loss of production.”

Then when the 90-employee enterprise stabilizes, it’s pared down to 75, then 60, and so on.

Yeah, I’ve heard that. My father worked as a Personnel Director for a brief time at a place where he also served as Director of Engineering (how’s that for wearing two completely different hats?) The management was always trying to get him to unload secretaries or other support staff so they could get one more engineer. My dad kept pointing out to them that if they got rid of the secretaries, then their work would have to be done by higher-paid engineers who probably wouldn’t appreciate the burden. I mean, surely it didn’t make sense to pay an engineer $75 an hour to do the work of a $12 an hour secretary, right? But management somehow didn’t see it that way…

[Evil_Captor]

@Quartz

Jeebus guys, are you and RR talking at cross-purposes or what? He’s not denying that it’s assholish; he’s saying it’s within their rights; he’s not assuming that the currently employed are the best, but saying that corporations are within their rights to make that assumption.

Both sides are correct.

Well actually Rand is wrong. He’s using a sleight-of-hand I’ve seen conservatives use many times on this board. He is trying to convince us that because something if being done by a corporation, we are not allowed to examine its morality.

It’s true, companies currently have the right to hire only the employed: we are examining whether or not that is a good thing. Maybe we’ll decide it should be made illegal, maybe we’ll decide it has little real effect on the job market and should be ignored. But we have EVERY right to examine the morality and effectiveness of these companies’ actions and decide in our own minds how their actions should be dealt with. Just because it is accepted now does not mean it should always be accepted. We’ve made child labor illegal, we’ve outlawed slavery, etc., presumably after much the same sort of discussions we are having here. It is in fact our duty as citizens to examine the morality of such practices and judge them evil if they are in fact evil.

And I think hiring only the employed is evil. It shows a significant lack of concern for the suffering of the unemployed.

[joebuck20]

@Evil_Captor

Well actually Rand is wrong. He’s using a sleight-of-hand I’ve seen conservatives use many times on this board. He is trying to convince us that because something if being done by a corporation, we are not allowed to examine its morality.

It’s true, companies currently have the right to hire only the employed: we are examining whether or not that is a good thing. Maybe we’ll decide it should be made illegal, maybe we’ll decide it has little real effect on the job market and should be ignored. But we have EVERY right to examine the morality and effectiveness of these companies’ actions and decide in our own minds how their actions should be dealt with. Just because it is accepted now does not mean it should always be accepted. We’ve made child labor illegal, we’ve outlawed slavery, etc., presumably after much the same sort of discussions we are having here. It is in fact our duty as citizens to examine the morality of such practices and judge them evil if they are in fact evil.

And I think hiring only the employed is evil. It shows a significant lack of concern for the suffering of the unemployed.

Exactly. Nobody here is saying that these sorts of hiring practices are illegal. We’re simply examining the motives and wisdom of said practices, which many people here happen to think are douchey in the extreme.

[Duke]

@joebuck20

Exactly. Nobody here is saying that these sorts of hiring practices are illegal. We’re simply examining the motives and wisdom of said practices, which many people here happen to think are douchey in the extreme.

Well, don’t underestimate RR’s insistence on trying to turn the conversation into what he wants it to be. You will notice that my post above didn’t even touch on the question of whether considering only currently employed persons was legal, moral, or any other -al that you can think of–in fact, it didn’t even discuss that issue at all. It didn’t stop RR from accusing me of…something, I’m not sure exactly what.

[Evil_Captor]

@Duke

Well, don’t underestimate RR’s insistence on trying to turn the conversation into what he wants it to be. You will notice that my post above didn’t even touch on the question of whether considering only currently employed persons was legal, moral, or any other -al that you can think of–in fact, it didn’t even discuss that issue at all. It didn’t stop RR from accusing me of…something, I’m not sure exactly what.

That’ll learn ya!

[msmith537]

@Evil_Captor

And I think hiring only the employed is evil. It shows a significant lack of concern for the suffering of the unemployed.

At best the “suffering of the unemployed” should be completely irrelevant to a hiring decision. I don’t care how desperately a person wants or needs a job. My obligation is to hire the person who I believe is the most qualified and best fit for the position in question.
I’ve heard some variation of the concept of “it’s better to have a job when you are looking for a job” for as long as I can remember. So I’m not sure why any of this is a surprise. At the end of the day, you are being interviewed and hired by a person. And people are subject to biases and preconceived notions. For example, these are things that make you appear more attractive to a potential employer:
-Personal connections within the company
-Experience working with a competitor
-Some shared interest with the interviewer
-Outgoing and likeable
-Speaking clearly and confidently
-Prestigeous schools
-Experience with a big-name company
-Already having a job
-Being tall (but not freakishly so)
-Not looking to young or too old
-Being attractive
-Professionally and sharply dressed
-Not having a shitload of jobs for 6-18 months at a time
-Involved in college athletics, student government or other extra-ciricular activity

Here are some things that make you appear less attractive:
-Job-hopping
-Appearing angry or disgruntled
-Dressing like a slob
-Looking like you are about to shit yourself in the interview
-Sounding like some mope desperate to take any job
-Having no idea what the hell you are actually interviewing for
-Having a background that appears to have nothing to do with the job
-Appearing as if the only reason I am interviewing you is because you need a job and your uncle put you into the employee referral database
-Appearing dishonest or as if you are hiding something.
No one sits there during or after the interview and makes a check-list of these things. But these are things that will cause an interviewer to come away with a general sense of “I like this candidate” or “mmm…let’s keep looking.”

Let’s be honest. Do you really think you would get hired if companies were completely dispassionate and objective in their hiring processes? Can you honestly say you are the “best” person for the job? There is always someone with better grades from a better school or with more certifications or who generated more sales for his company last quarter. The objective is to get placed in the pool of people who are “probably good enough to hire” and then connect with your interviewers so that they think you would be the best fit for the organization.

@bordelond

Hasn’t that been an overarching trend in business anyway over the last several decades? “If my enterprise works great with 100 employees, maybe I can pare it down to 90 with barely any loss of production.”

Then when the 90-employee enterprise stabilizes, it’s pared down to 75, then 60, and so on.

No, it hasn’t.

[Voyager]

@Rand_Rover

Well Duke, the other side of the coin is that perhaps an unemployed applicant is not simply an innocent victim of a bad economy–maybe they were fired because they did a shitty job. The employer weighs these two things (among others), and many have apparently concluded to go the “employed only need apply” route.

I see. In other words, the prospective employer is saying that he is incompetent, and unable to evaluate a candidate for value, and must depend on what some other manager’s opinion, without any information about the decision. In some places they layoff by ranking, in other places a whole project gets canceled and everyone goes, even very good people.

Besides lack of loyalty, the person who is willing to jump ship in this fairly risky environment might have some skeletons in his closet. Maybe he is willing to leave because his project is just about to crash and burn. Going to be hard to tell, isn’t it?

20 years ago there was a bias against the unemployed, at least in the tech industry, but today nearly everyone has been laid off one time or another, and I’ve never noticed one.

I’d consider any HR person or manager backing this policy to be incompetent at finding talent, and high on my layoff list.

[Rand_Rover]

@joebuck20

Exactly. Nobody here is saying that these sorts of hiring practices are illegal. We’re simply examining the motives and wisdom of said practices, which many people here happen to think are douchey in the extreme.

That’s all I’m doing as well–examining the motives and wisdom of the employers in question. I only brought up the illegality angle in response to one poster intimating that employers shouldn’t be allowed to do it. Also, as Evil Captor pointed out, discussing whether something is a bad thing can quickly lead to discussions of whether it should be illegal.

[bordelond]

@msmith537

@bordelond

Hasn’t that been an overarching trend in business anyway over the last several decades? “If my enterprise works great with 100 employees, maybe I can pare it down to 90 with barely any loss of production.”

Then when the 90-employee enterprise stabilizes, it’s pared down to 75, then 60, and so on.

No, it hasn’t.

:dubious:

Where are the steno pools these days? Or the banks of telephone operators?

Automation. Use of computers. Advances in telecommunications. Those have all allowed X employees to do the same (or more) work as X+Y employees in years previous.

[msmith537]

@Voyager

Besides lack of loyalty, the person who is willing to jump ship in this fairly risky environment might have some skeletons in his closet. Maybe he is willing to leave because his project is just about to crash and burn. Going to be hard to tell, isn’t it?

That’s the problem with arbitrarily picking out subjective criteria to evaluate candidates. People project their own biases and see whatever they want to see. Is a company where people tend to work there 40+ years a stagnating dinosaur or is it a company that inspires loyalty and provides a great deal of growth and opportunity?
Also, companies that treat their employees like trapped farm animals during economic downturns are typically in for a rude awakening when the market picks up. Even in this economy, I’m seeing people changing firmsand landing jobs.

[Voyager]

@msmith537

That’s the problem with arbitrarily picking out subjective criteria to evaluate candidates. People project their own biases and see whatever they want to see. Is a company where people tend to work there 40+ years a stagnating dinosaur or is it a company that inspires loyalty and provides a great deal of growth and opportunity?

That’s an interesting, if off-topic, point. We all know that the interviewee should research the company and understand what they do and what their problems are. The interviewer might want to research the company the candidate is coming (or came) from to understand a lot of the issues you raise. If a guy got laid off at a time when hardly anyone was leaving a company it looks a lot worse than if he got laid off during a massive restructuring. Not that this is a guarantee - I managed to lay someone off who was going to go anyhow as part of a bigger layoff.

I don’t think we can avoid subjective criteria - the problem here is using objective though irrelevant criteria.

[Kimstu]

@Rand Rover

Well, again, these employers apparently have a different opinion than you on the subject. Hardly anything to get all huffy and puffy about.

Rand Rover, I can sympathize with your feelings here, since I know how deeply it offends your Objectivist sensibilities when anybody voices an opinion to the effect that a capitalist in a position of comparative power (such as an employer setting hiring policies) might be following a policy that is in some ways ill-advised, counterproductive, or immoral.

However, I think you need to relax a bit and remember that this is the Pit, where getting “huffy and puffy” over conflicts of opinion is the standard modus operandi. Even capitalists in positions of comparative power are not immune from disagreement and criticism around here. If that really distresses you so much, you might want just to stay out of Pit threads involving criticism of such capitalists.

[Evil_Captor]

@Rand_Rover

That’s all I’m doing as well–examining the motives and wisdom of the employers in question. I only brought up the illegality angle in response to one poster intimating that employers shouldn’t be allowed to do it. Also, as Evil Captor pointed out, discussing whether something is a bad thing can quickly lead to discussions of whether it should be illegal.

Well Rand the way it works is, people make moral judgments – it is bad to kill people, it is bad to rob people, it is bad to enslave people – and those judgments get codified into law. We discuss the morality, come to a consensus, talk with our Congresscritters, and presto, it’s a law! So if a general consensus develops that it is a bad idea to hire only the employed, something along the line of anti-discrimination statutes could be developed. But first, we gotta decide if its ethical or not, irrespective of whether or not employers have a legal right to do it.

[Heffalump_and_Roo]

@Evil_Captor

But first, we gotta decide if its ethical or not, irrespective of whether or not employers have a legal right to do it.

How do we do that?

[BigT]

@Heffalump_and_Roo

How do we do that?

The easy answer is to apply the “What if everyone did that” principal, which is what allows stealing insignificant amounts from a business to be wrong. If every employer did this, then there would be no more new workers. This would be bad for society. Therefore it is immoral.

Noe the hard part is convincing someone who can actually do something about it to do anything. That takes getting a bunch of people together that agree, and then petitioning Congress.

A really big help would be someone famous who gets that treatment, or something horrible that happens because of it. That would fuel the media, which would then fuel congress to actually deal with it.

There are probably other ways, too, but it’s honestly really hard to effect laws like this. You’d probably be best starting at a city level, and working outward.

[Rand_Rover]

@Evil_Captor

Well Rand the way it works is, people make moral judgments – it is bad to kill people, it is bad to rob people, it is bad to enslave people – and those judgments get codified into law. We discuss the morality, come to a consensus, talk with our Congresscritters, and presto, it’s a law! So if a general consensus develops that it is a bad idea to hire only the employed, something along the line of anti-discrimination statutes could be developed. But first, we gotta decide if its ethical or not, irrespective of whether or not employers have a legal right to do it.

Thanks for proving my point. Someone upthread asked why I said that discriminating against the unemployed shouldn’t be illegal, and I said because some people think along the lines you just outlined.

[Rand_Rover]

@BigT

The easy answer is to apply the “What if everyone did that” principal, which is what allows stealing insignificant amounts from a business to be wrong. If every employer did this, then there would be no more new workers. This would be bad for society. Therefore it is immoral.

1. That’s not a very robust principle you have there. What if every college grad went to med school? Society would collapse. Therefore going to med school is morally wrong.

2. You are assuming that employers decide to accept applications only from the employed even if that policy results in zero (or an unacceptably small number of) applicants. That’s a fairly asinine assumption to make.

[Czarcasm]

@Rand_Rover

Thanks for proving my point. Someone upthread asked why I said that discriminating against the unemployed shouldn’t be illegal, and I said because some people think along the lines you just outlined.

Because thinking is bad for business?