Posted on 05/06/2015 8:49:28 AM PDT by MNDude
Interviews take time. And they can be emotionally draining (I personally HATE meeting someone and not hiring them, it kills me to get to know this person just well enough to say no). The whole pre-interview process is about saving that time and energy, gathering the data necessary to reject them before going through that. Also going through their FB page gives you an idea of how well they think things through. When I’m looking for a job step one is sanitize my public presence, make sure the voice mail message is boring, remove any odd signatures from my e-mail, hide the cool stuff on FB. Job hunting is a time to put on your Pro From Dover costume, and somebody who’s not thorough about that is probably not going to be thorough about stuff.
would you consider celebration of drug use to be disqualifying?
So true. People be crazy on Facebook.
Not necessarily. I regularly advocate for legalization, but my drug tests come back clean. Anyone may advocate for legalization and such, but until their drug test comes back dirty, you really don't know what's going on.
Well said.
Dunno, I think I’d still ask if he’s comfortable dressing down, that your dress code doesn’t say “may” but “should” to the informal attire.
Again, you are absolutely, 100% correct in this statement. Now, answer me this: Are you completely, 100% sure this gal would have shown up with blue hair, or is there a chance she may have showed up with normal color hair and piercings removed?
My buddy had to get rid of his ear gauges when he started working more professionally.
Your buddy sounds like he's got a lot in common with the blue haired gal. Also sounds like it turned out that he's responsible about it like the majority of us professionals who both work hard and play hard.
However, many of the candidates he mentioned had FaceBooks full of profanity, hating Mondays (their job), and a lot more than just an odd appearance.
Hmmmm, let's see....I have a bad habit of cussing like a sailor, but I reserve that for the non-professional environment. The profanity is put on the shelf when I walk in the door to work, and has never been an issue for me in the professional setting. As it happens, I also hate Mondays with a passion (that has NOTHING to do with how I feel about my job) and most of my bosses tend to agree. The fact is, anyone in their right mind would rather do anything but work, but because we are responsible adults, we deal with it and do what we must.
Overall, I'd say he was successful in not wasting time bringing several of those people in.
You may be completely correct on this. You may also be completely wrong, and he could very well be passing up on the best candidate his company has seen in some time. Reagan was a democrat and had some slightly liberal ideas. He turned out pretty awesome.
Could be the guy would have worked out. It’s all a guessing game. At the time if felt like the right call, the guy we hired instead worked out well. But yeah, somewhere out there is a parallel universe where I think hiring the suit and tie guy was the best decision I ever made.
I’ve rejected a person for showing up to the interview in a suit and tie, this is Tucson, we aren’t financial or a mortuary, there’s no room on the team for somebody stuffy.
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Coat and tie <> stuffy (necessarily)
For me, it is the only thing to wear to a professional interview. But I have no idea what you were interviewing for, a bouncer at a strip club? A guitar player in a punk rock band? Yea, a coat and a tie might be wrong in those situations.
Someone was demonstrating respect for the process and you reject them out of hand.
That’s funny.
Usually it’s a matter of competition. If you found an alternative who looked like a better match right off the bat, there would be little need to agonize. That’s part of the executive “thang” — to shoot from the hip when too busy to get the gun fully aimed.
Would you consider someone how advocates killing cops (and has pictures of a gun to a cop’s head) to be disqualifying?
I don’t know, maybe was there a competitor who looked better out of the box. Sometimes that’s how the game goes. It could say the casual guy might have been wearing formal suits too until he scoped out the office, then he went to K-Mart and switched outfits.
I can argue both for and against something with ease....
Well, because of the fact that we're talking about supporting murder, and in general, the types of people that would post such a thing tend to be socially retarded liberals, sure. That would, in fact, be something I would take into consideration before granting an interview, and if I were to post the same, I would expect to be left out. Posting those types of things is just plain stupid. Advocating violence against others, in general, is certainly grounds for disqualification.
You’re from Maryland. I don’t normally poke at people’s profiles for discussion “ammo” but in this case it’s important. There are VAST cultural differences between the East and West coasts (which for this discussion includes the desert Southwest), and one of the places that really shows is in the office. The East coast is all about the suit and the tie, anybody in a vaguely professional job on the East coast is going to where them. The West coast, especially the software industry I’m in, looks on suits and ties largely with horror. I mentioned financial and mortuary sectors in that part, because out here that’s most of who where’s suits to work, add in the law and public facing government official and that’s probably 95% you’ll see wearing suits. We don’t even wear suits to weddings unless we’re in them. The CEO of my current company almost never is seen in them, and we haul in $2 billion a year.
So for being here they weren’t showing respect for the process, he was showing that his fish was not for our water. He’d have probably been a lot happier in Maryland. This dress code conflict between the coasts goes back decades. There’s a great Tom Wolfe article on the rise of Intel that touches on that issue, the day the jeans and t-shirt West coast tech guys flew to the East coast to get venture money from guys who still wore suits in the weekend at home is pretty funny.
Yeah. Sometimes you gotta take the punt. And “too professional for us” is probably not a bad punt.
Like it or not, with the advent of social media, it has become our business, look at the example of people who have been fired for Tweets, because they do reflect on the employer.
“Are you completely, 100% sure this gal would have shown up with blue hair, or is there a chance she may have showed up with normal color hair and piercings removed”
This makes my point. There is a VERY good chance she would have shown up looking normal and I would have hired her, only to discover later on who I had hired and probably suffer the consequences of hiring someone like that.
An interview and resume are more of the often false advertising “cover” on the book. FaceBook is more about what’s inside.
Not everyone will approach the same ethical situation exactly the same way, and that doesn’t turn the difference into a (proverbial) Federal case.
I try to believe in more grace in a situation of one, but again he wasn’t the only competitor either and maybe the more-ready chap would win out after all. If wise, the formal guy might take a hint and see if less formal would suit his next interview better. I’ve learned a lot about business in the school of hard knocks. Co-workers can be jerks, so can bosses be. Might be best to go on by.
That is a good point. As the environment more and more resembles a fish bowl, the connection between person and business image grows tighter.
Decades ago when there was only Usenet on the interwebs, it was customary for folks to disclaim that their views had anything to do with their office’s views. It was only considerate to do.
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