The key word in the open house issue is "open" to allow for transparency currently lost in the limited disclosure game that is the modern interview process. That benefits everyone. Not to mention we offer evening events to respect those with full time jobs.
I think his point is that if someone has cancer and they end up needing to fire them it's going to become an issue for them emotionally. Good, bad or indifferent-- I understand what he's saying, if that is what he is saying.
But Dan's point is well taken: is this what we want to incentivize? A culture of lying and partial disclosure? Now, that doesn't mean 100% disclosure of all things at all times-- people have a right to privacy. But what I think is often lost here is the understanding that when we force everyone to wear masks, we often end up not knowing where the masks end and the real faces begin.
I'm no lawyer but these issues usually fall under "fit"-- which is legal. If there's an email floating around saying, "I think this guy has a mental disorder" and they get sued, yeah there's a case. But it usually never gets that far.
This is a fair point too, at least in as much as job seekers should be screening employers for a variety of things. Not enough job seekers do that. They just say whatever they think will make the employer happy.
You are both right though. 1) Discrimination is real and should be discouraged and may indeed have affected Michael's chances at finding work but ferreting out discrimination and fixing its isn't a great use of an individual job seekers' time when so many other people can use good workers but 2) if the points about his choosiness are true-- and I don't know if they are-- they would probably affect things as well in a way he is refusing to acknowledge. But again, I don't know Michael so I want to move away from that. Because a larger point can be made here: this would be an example of how MANY people have blinders to their own reasons they aren't finding work-- and certainly not only people who blog about their personal problems.
I get this all the time. Every excuse in the book and then I ask: "Did you follow up?" "No." "Did you send a physical letter or make a physical cold call, or even a telephone phone call-- something to break through the noise?" "No." And then I prod them to do those things and they don't. An unfortunate part about the job search is that its a sales process and many people don't require sales skills to do many jobs yet suddenly we expect them to sprout sales skills like wings when suddenly its time to look for work, often when they are at their most vulnerable moment-- the time they NEED that job. It's a cruel farce. But there are ways around it.
That's why I talk about exploding toilets-- a lot of companies just need the work done. Ask any sleazy late-night locksmith if he works on his sales skills. No, he has the tool you need when you are locked out of your apartment at 3am. You want him or not? Fortunately or unfortunately, there are enough exploding toilets out there that job seekers who really want to fix problems don't have to worry too much about navigating the job search as a sale-- they just have to get some attention. But in order to get attention, they need to want to get it and that's often a bigger problem than you know b/c most people don't want to fail or risk looking ridiculous, as if these people they are contacting will even remember them-- and then they create excuses for why they can't and often blame others.
But again, back to the original point: the reason we think is the problem often isn't so trying to deconstruct it is pointless. It's like dating. If someone isn't a match, move on. Someone out there wants you desperately-- but only if you want to help them and can.
Correct, but unfortunately you will probably never, ever, ever know if this is the case and you would have a hard time proving it anyway so the point is probably moot. The real question is: what can someone who is having trouble finding work do anyway? See my response below.
Let's put Michael's specific situation aside for a moment. The truth is, neither of us knows WHY he isn't finding work. We each might have our own inklings as to why but there are surely some causation/correlation flaws we have no insight into. (And I will get to this)
So let's take him out of the equation and create a fictional person having a hard time finding work-- call him Bob. Maybe Bob went to a poor school-- or no school-- or blogs about satanism or who knows what. Bob's getting passed on and he doesn't really know why but can only suspect. You or I certainly cannot know why either sitting where we are so we really shouldn't speculate, even on the reasons this fictional person claims are the reason. That's because only the hiring managers passing on him know and their reasons might be different from what he thinks AND each other. This is not to mention that they might not even be able/want to verbalize it. Maybe some are bigoted and don't like his nationality. Maybe he smells funny when he walks in the room. Maybe they are all just assholes. Maybe he is terrible at what he does and doesn't know it (I went to school with someone like this who thinks the world has it in for him but he's really just very uncomfortable to be around and he can't help it and can't be made aware of it for whatever reason.) Sometimes these things are "gut" feelings-- right or wrong-- and they make hiring a particularly inexact science-- especially for the job seeker trying to reverse engineer it.
What I have found working with the un-, under- and mal-employed is that a lot of times the reason they suspect they aren't finding the work they want-- and the reasons third party observers suspect-- is not really the case. Put on top of it the fact that hiring organizations often refuse to say why they didn't hire someone to shield themselves from lawsuits and that compounds the problem. Sometimes candidates walk into job interviews they had no chance of getting even before they walked in through no fault of their own-- I wrote about this here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140917152632-29657051-make-...
So what's the solution? Well, there is no perfect solution but there's also know obvious answers either. Coming back to Michael for a moment, in my experience, a lot of times people don't look at personal webpages so-- even if his suspicions about the mental illness affecting his job chances are right-- I highly doubt it has lost him EVERY single opportunity. Which, to be fair, it doesn't seem he is suggesting. What does that mean? Well...
tl;dr: there's something going on none of us knows and/or cannot know that's at play here.
Lesson: STOP DECONSTRUCTING THE JOB SEARCH! It's stupid. It's like trying to figure out why someone doesn't want to date you. What are you going to do? Argue with them?
Yes, sometimes these practices are inane, frustrating, even illegal-- though the burden of proof is so high it's probably not worth most people's time.
And yet-- and yet-- there's SO MUCH WORK TO BE DONE in the world, SO MUCH, and money is so cheap-- SO CHEAP-- creative job seekers with a modicum of skill can usually find meaningful work if they circumvent the traditional job search process. Indeed, these jobs are often better. I wrote about this as well: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140912054444-29657051-explo...
Only three questions matter when screening a candidate: can he/she do the work, does he/she want to do the work and do you want to work with him/her? The current process of resumes and keywords and personality-based interviewing biases toward the last question-- in my mind the least relevant. Lots of people didn't want to work with Steve Jobs because he was a certified maniac-- but so what?
Certainly you don't want to hire unnecessarily disruptive people but I'd suggest companies be wary of passing on candidates too quickly for reasons we SUSPECT (key word) will make them poor fits-- including matters of which probably only trained medical personnel are qualified to speak about, even if to do so makes us feel safe.
In my mind there are two types of organizations-- growth-focused organizations and risk-averse organizations. Generally speaking, risk-averse organizations will accept almost any reason not to hire someone if they don't fit a pre-determined mould (the right profile, the right background, the right look-- yes, the right school, etc) and depending on the firm's market position and corporate strategy that may make sense. This is the opportunity for the growth-based organizations.
The market for people who are good at getting jobs is fierce and tight. If you can find these candidates on LinkedIn with the right keywords, they will be expensive and possibly flight risks anyway because they are very liquid in terms of marketability.
But if you are looking for people who can and want to do the work, the market is wide open. And the benefit will be to the organization that sees this inefficiency and exploits it. 80% of people are in the wrong job or don't have one, per Gallup and gov't statistics. If that's not an opportunity for any enterprising organization, I don't know what is.
"The ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage, since very few organizations are very good at it." ~Peter Drucker
I'm Noah, Brooke's partner in crime at Staffup Weekend. To me this has always been an emperor-has-no-clothes situation. People seem to think in terms of "hackathons" whereas we more simply think of things as "doing the work." Since when did resumes and brain teasing interview questions and all this nonsense become MORE obvious and sensical than DOING THE WORK. Let people DO THE WORK that needs to be done and you can save dozens of person-hours, lots of frustration and heartache AND get a better hire than the "traditional" method.
Hi, I'm Noah and I head BD for Better Work World, the organization I have started with Brooke to help firms hire the way he did. As for the above comment, this is true but the larger point is that, if the job isn't explicitly a sales position or doesn't require gaining internal agreement (like, say, many managerial roles)`one's ability to sell one's self in an interview is somewhat irrelevant, wouldn't you agree? Think about it: if you are a coder and happen to have several social anxiety issues, you would probably be an awful interview. But who cares? The market for coders is so hot it seems that has been largely accepted, albeit implicitly, but for less hot positions, not so much. We believe candidates win and hiring managers win when you focus on getting people to DO the work as opposed to talk about doing the work. When Brooke hired this way he found people he would have never hired through reviewing resumes, so thats a win for both of them, and those whom he did not hire-- many of whom had been unemployed-- would usually quickly find jobs elsewhere because they were given the opportunity to do relevant work, network, etc. To me, that beats the standard, "what's your biggest weakness?" line of questioning any day of the week.