Since when is there any obligation to be objective? Organizations are required to be fair, and to not discriminate against protected classes, but otherwise hiring is not at all objective. They are looking for people who can work well in an existing team, and there are too many variables to ever make that objective.
Mostly I would echo what even sven said.
But let me go to my last hiring decision, made just about a month ago. I had two people who have both done some work for me in the past as contractors and I wanted one to come on board as a full-time and long-term employee. (i.e. loyalty was a key part of my criteria).
Choice 1: Says he’s in state to meet certain licensing requirements. Plans to start his own practice in two years, in Texas. Or maybe Brazil.
Choice 2: Says she likes to teach skiing and needs December and three weeks of the spring off to do that each year.
I think you know who I picked, even if I don’t clarify that December is dead in my office and we take half of it off anyway.
Is the measurement of loyalty subjective? Is it just in my head?
If the posted job requirements said that loyalty was a factor for hiring then I agree with you. If not, what you did was not right.See bullet 1 of my post - if there is a requirement that is a deciding criterion, then it must be on the job requirements posting.
I have hired and directly supervised more than 20 engineers so far. And have interviewed more than the same for not direct supervision. If a requirement is not spelled out in the posting - it is not a consideration for hiring.
What you did was wrong. If it was a requirement that the position required employees to work through December , then it should have been posted on the requirements. We have run into situations like this - our policy is to cancel the posting and repost the job with the added requirements.
Huh?
The OP states clearly that he is hiring for a “full-time, long-term employee”. Not temporary, seasonal help.
I’ve never heard of a full-time job which an applicant can automatically assume will allow her to take 2 whole months off to go skiing, every December springtime. If the two sides want to negtiotiate the vaction time, that’s fine. Wy do you considered it wrong to expect a full-time employee to work full-time?
That might work in your field which apparently has requirements so detailed that you don’t have multiple candidates who meet them all , but it doesn’t work in all. For example, the actual requirement in job postings at my employer tend to be along the lines of “must have a high school diploma” or "must be one of the top three scores on a civil service test (which doesn’t actually mean that only three people are eligible due to ties ) or “must have X years experience in Y job”. The last time I interviewed people for a promotion I had 38 candidates , all of whom met the requirements. Plenty of jobs only require a high school diploma and a driver’s license or the ability to lift 50 lbs or some other requirement that many people will meet. When 500 people apply for 10 jobs, how should the employer choose? By lottery?
There's a difference between "nice to have" and a requirement. At some employers, (including mine), if something is listed as a requirement it is exactly that , a requirement and no one can be hired if it is not met. There are positions where it's nice to have someone fluent in a second language, but not actually necessary. If I list it as a requirement and no candidates are bilingual, I can't hire anyone. If I require ten years experience, and no one has more than five, I can't hire anyone. Also, some "nice to haves" are easy to lie about if known in advance. So in **dracoi's **example , if there were a requirement that the successful candidate not have plans to leave within three years ,it's very easy for candidate 1 to lie about/conceal his plans. Then how do you choose between the two? Remember, there's only one job.
And how do I know that you didn’t change the requirements to favor a specific candidate?
Please see my original post. It was for higher level employment only.
Agreed - there are job requirements and desired qualifications. For example - the requirement could be 10 years of experience and the desired qualification could be 15 years.
Again - please keep in mind that I am writing about higher levels of employees. Job requirements (minimum requirements) are what determines job category or classification from the US - DOL. This is specially true for larger businesses hiring immigrants with higher education. The employer is legally required to post the job and demonstrates that there were no US citizen applicants that met the requirements. Also, the employer has to demonstrate that the requirements were not tailored for the individual and that all hirings at that level have similar requirements.
I work in an Employment at will state. You are on a slippery slope if the job requirement is " the successful candidate not have plans to leave within three years". This may also mean that the employer may have to commit to not fire within three years and enforce the same uniformly for all employees at the same level.
The law does not require you to know. It requires for the company to be internally and externally audited to demonstrate this.
The US-DOL does not define full time employment. The employee handbook defines what is a full time position. Generally, for exempt employees, the 40 hours /week can be done in two 20 hour days or three 13.33 hour days. In one of my previous roles - we had every Friday off and worked 10 hour days for 4 days.
Please see my original post - I was talking specifically about higher level jobs. I personally have had an direct report who did this - he had 8 weeks of vacation. Many offshore jobs have 3 months of work followed by three months off.
I am not sure, how you came to that conclusion. Like I said earlier, full-time employment is a definition that the employer publishes in the employee handbook. And again - I was posting about higher level employment where effectiveness of an employee is typically not measured by the time he/she spends at work. If the employee handbook says - “All full time employees are required to work 8 hour days / 40 hrs a week - except for vacations at all levels of the organization” - then I see your point but this is usually not the case.
My position pays six figures. The only actual requirements are to pass a civil service test and be “reachable” on the list that results. There are additional other requirements to take the test, but everyone who was eligible met those. And why differentiate based on the level of the job? If it’s wrong to use subjective criteria for a six figure position because it’s “disguised discrimination”, then it’s wrong to use subjective criteria figure for a minimum wage wage.
Perhaps this is the reason your field has such specific requirements. Many fields never hire immigrants who will need work visas and therefore don’t need to demonstrate that no US citizen applicants meet the requirements.
Of course the law doesn’t require that I know ( although I was speaking more generically in that no one would know (or care) unless there was a pattern of discrimination. It also doesn’t require that all employers under all circumstances use only objective requirements which are laid out in the posting.
My use of level as in my original post was about the higher leadership - Senior Managers, VPs, Presidents …These are typically exempt jobs : Exempt employees are not paid by the hour and do not get overtime. These position are differentiated from union jobs or non-exempt jobs.
That maybe true - most highly skilled levels do have immigrants - in my experience with Doctors, Engineers, lawyers and artists.
Also the laws are different for the number of employees (immigration laws are different depending on number of employees), smaller companies (geographically limited to one state), larger companies and global companies.
For example - someone talked about vacation earlier in this thread. I had an employee work from home in CA. Our standard company policy for vacation is to use it or lose it. In CA, we had to pay the employee all the vacation days unused at the end of the year.
As mentioned - many larger HR departments will require multiple evaluations - several people will be on the panel that interview a candidate and submit scores based on their evaluations. Another way this helps - if they have to produce these for a court case, it can show that the minority person was not obviously underscored (we hope). If the candidate was in the middle of the pack, then obviously there were a number of white guys who met the same requirements but scored lower than him/her. It also removes the possibility that on person’s bias is the cause of the statistical anomalies in diversity.
Just because certain criteria are not stated in the job posting/ad, does not mean they cannot be taken into account. Personal grooming, appearance, friendliness (ability to fit into “the team”), etc. - all are valid points to evaluate. The danger is in giving too much weight to these.
People are more likely to find people of the same background more “friendly”. For example, some cultures, eye contact is confrontational; a person may misinterpret lack of eye contact as evasive, when it is only polite. Judging character is a tricky business. Beyond that, people will feel more comfortable with an applicant who will discus the same sport team or go out to the bar after work with them - which can rule out a large number of diverse applicants.
This is another reason why modern HR departments push diversity. When like hires like, then the statistics get skewed and a corporation is liable for unplanned discrimination.
IMHO office politics can get very nasty, and in my career I’ve seen some pretty inept people get promoted for some very stupid reasons. One lady was incredibly incompetent as a programmer (another story in itself) so was put on a corporate committee because we couldn’t spare anyone competent with our workload. A cliché but true - the amount of face time she had with higher-ups actually got her the offer to run the sub-department next vacancy. Familiarity overrode any concept of finding qualified candidates.
Similarly, VP’s seemed to be selected mostly by their ability to kiss butt, if the president is more interested in affirmation than discussion. Most people are uncomfortable when challenged or told their decisions were wrong, even though everyone makes wrong moves sometimes. The ones less likely to speak truth to power get promoted - which makes these flawed characters most likely candidates when the top position comes open. And of course, the boards that help in these decisions are made of the same executives. There’s a reason why “yes-man” is a common description of second-level executives.
Or as Dilbert succinctly puts it:
“I used to be intimidated by management, until I figured out they were just morons with good hair.”
“I hope you don’t think that about me.”
“Oh, no. That looks like a bad toupee.”