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Wednesday Wisdom: Do you Tattoo?
- Rating:
4.8 after 7 votes
Dear Claudia,
I recently submitted a highly qualified candidate to a search and the hiring manager called him directly for a pre-screen. While they were talking on the phone, the HM did some snooping on the Internet and found this candidate’s Facebook page, complete with pictures of his near full-body tattoo. It turns out the HM doesn’t like tattoos, so he closed the candidate off. I’m pretty angry over the whole thing, because candidates with this mix of skills are very hard to come by in any economy. The HM is an idiot, but isn’t this also a form of discrimination? I’ve seen the candidate in an interview setting, and he looks completely professional (nothing shows below the wrist or above the shirt neckline). How can I get the HM to rethink his decision?
Amazed by the Stupidity
Dear Amazed,
Isn’t it funny how recruiting (matchmaking, really) always seems to be dancing with personal bias? Everybody has a bias in the hiring process, even when they try hard not to: the Hiring Manager, the candidate…heck, even your own bias as a recruiter (what you think the HM needs, or even your own likes and dislikes in personality types or communication styles) screens folks in and out of the pipeline. It’s just how the human brain works: we categorize things that are similar, and we tend to perceive what we expect to perceive.
In and of itself, bias isn’t a bad thing. But it’s good to keep in mind the domino effect it has: bias influences what we perceive about the world around us, and what we perceive influences how we choose to behave. And behavior most often gets us into trouble: social norms evolve to help people understand how to play nicely with others in the sandbox; legal systems evolve to provide consequences when we cross the line.
So is this manager discriminating against the candidate? You don’t say if the company has a tattoo policy -- but if they do, and if that policy is applied equally to both men and women in the workplace, there’s no foul here. Employers have the right to implement grooming and dress policies to protect legitimate business interests.
But if this is nothing more than a Hiring Manager’s bias affecting his decision making process, you have two choices: reason with him, or take your most excellent candidate and market him to the competition. I’m guessing that this difficult-to-find skillset will be most interesting to Managers who couldn't care less about body art but are highly biased toward market dominance.
Happy recruiting!
**
In my day job, I’m the Head of Products for Improved Experience, where we help employers use feedback to measure and manage competitive advantage in hiring and retention. Learn more about us here.
Do you have a question you'd like answered in this weekly forum? Drop me a line!
I recently submitted a highly qualified candidate to a search and the hiring manager called him directly for a pre-screen. While they were talking on the phone, the HM did some snooping on the Internet and found this candidate’s Facebook page, complete with pictures of his near full-body tattoo. It turns out the HM doesn’t like tattoos, so he closed the candidate off. I’m pretty angry over the whole thing, because candidates with this mix of skills are very hard to come by in any economy. The HM is an idiot, but isn’t this also a form of discrimination? I’ve seen the candidate in an interview setting, and he looks completely professional (nothing shows below the wrist or above the shirt neckline). How can I get the HM to rethink his decision?
Amazed by the Stupidity
Dear Amazed,
Isn’t it funny how recruiting (matchmaking, really) always seems to be dancing with personal bias? Everybody has a bias in the hiring process, even when they try hard not to: the Hiring Manager, the candidate…heck, even your own bias as a recruiter (what you think the HM needs, or even your own likes and dislikes in personality types or communication styles) screens folks in and out of the pipeline. It’s just how the human brain works: we categorize things that are similar, and we tend to perceive what we expect to perceive.
In and of itself, bias isn’t a bad thing. But it’s good to keep in mind the domino effect it has: bias influences what we perceive about the world around us, and what we perceive influences how we choose to behave. And behavior most often gets us into trouble: social norms evolve to help people understand how to play nicely with others in the sandbox; legal systems evolve to provide consequences when we cross the line.
So is this manager discriminating against the candidate? You don’t say if the company has a tattoo policy -- but if they do, and if that policy is applied equally to both men and women in the workplace, there’s no foul here. Employers have the right to implement grooming and dress policies to protect legitimate business interests.
But if this is nothing more than a Hiring Manager’s bias affecting his decision making process, you have two choices: reason with him, or take your most excellent candidate and market him to the competition. I’m guessing that this difficult-to-find skillset will be most interesting to Managers who couldn't care less about body art but are highly biased toward market dominance.
Happy recruiting!
**
In my day job, I’m the Head of Products for Improved Experience, where we help employers use feedback to measure and manage competitive advantage in hiring and retention. Learn more about us here.
Do you have a question you'd like answered in this weekly forum? Drop me a line!
Tags: bias, dear claudia, dear_claudia, perception, recruiting, tattoos, wednesday wisdom
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by KarenM on
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sandra, re your comments about Allstate, so as not to confuse the Gentle readers, -- there were two lawsuits against them.. i am sure the article was mentioning both situations -- anyways re the lawsuits.. there was the one for Age discrimination, that is by the EEOC
and the other is Misclassification that is by the IRS - one of many that they have had. --AllState settled 120 million..
StateFarm just settled their re mislcassification, as did Farmers :)
Re your friends, have them call.. sure I will enjoy meeting them as well; I am also pretty Sure we can find a lot to talk about :)
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Permalink Reply by Carissa Jordan on -
Has anyone taken into consideration that maybe just MAYBE there are individuals out in this world that seperate their personal lives from their professional lives? Without even knowing this so called "tattoo" person, he/she could be extremely professional during work hours, but love to express themselves differently during NON work hours. Last time I checked Facebook, MySpace, etc are used primarily for sharing details about yourself with friends and others on a more personal level rather than used as a tool to advertise yourself to potential employers. I am shocked that employers would base their hiring decisions from such PERSONAL social media. What a person does on their own time doesn't always affect their ability to get the job done and be professional...
It's a shame that this world has allowed us to take something that was created to have fun and meet new people from all over the world, and turn it into something that employers use to dig up the lastest dirt on any new employee....Isn't that what Background Checks are for, is to dig up the "real" reason why someone shouldn't be hired?
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Permalink Reply by Thomas Patrick Chuna on -
Well yeah..in a perfect world. BUT, we have to remember that hiring authorities screen people out.. they don't screen people in, or look for reasons to hire them - the hiring authorities mindset is to weed out the "bad" candidates until they find someone with the most amount of skills, and the least amount of real or imagined negatives..
the facebooks and myspaces of the world help them achieve this.
Carissa Jordan said:Has anyone taken into consideration that maybe just MAYBE there are individuals out in this world that seperate their personal lives from their professional lives? Without even knowing this so called "tattoo" person, he/she could be extremely professional during work hours, but love to express themselves differently during NON work hours. Last time I checked Facebook, MySpace, etc are used primarily for sharing details about yourself with friends and others on a more personal level rather than used as a tool to advertise yourself to potential employers. I am shocked that employers would base their hiring decisions from such PERSONAL social media. What a person does on their own time doesn't always affect their ability to get the job done and be professional...
It's a shame that this world has allowed us to take something that was created to have fun and meet new people from all over the world, and turn it into something that employers use to dig up the lastest dirt on any new employee....Isn't that what Background Checks are for, is to dig up the "real" reason why someone shouldn't be hired?
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Permalink Reply by Amitai Givertz on
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Permalink Reply by Harold Ensley on -
Carissa I can't agree with you more.
On another note, I think this is all about people that should not be in positions of power - government or no government. This manager should not be a manager in nothing short of a severe manager shortage. Put a note on this guy's file - if you have one.
Managers should manage by fact. What kind of manager makes decisions on assumptions (publicly even...).
Re: this situation, I would present 3 candidates max, and if the best candidate was the tattoo guy - and he had the gall to say so, I would either:
A). Call him an idiot.
B). Try to impact his thinking, and barring a successful outcome, call him an Idiot after hanging up the phone.
C). Outsource the search to another agency and take a split.
Depends on the day... :) My tendency is number one, but maybe that's why I'm not in sale right now :)
Carissa Jordan said:Has anyone taken into consideration that maybe just MAYBE there are individuals out in this world that seperate their personal lives from their professional lives? Without even knowing this so called "tattoo" person, he/she could be extremely professional during work hours, but love to express themselves differently during NON work hours. Last time I checked Facebook, MySpace, etc are used primarily for sharing details about yourself with friends and others on a more personal level rather than used as a tool to advertise yourself to potential employers. I am shocked that employers would base their hiring decisions from such PERSONAL social media. What a person does on their own time doesn't always affect their ability to get the job done and be professional...
It's a shame that this world has allowed us to take something that was created to have fun and meet new people from all over the world, and turn it into something that employers use to dig up the lastest dirt on any new employee....Isn't that what Background Checks are for, is to dig up the "real" reason why someone shouldn't be hired?
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Permalink Reply by Slouch on -
what is a gentle reader? I would hate to think of myself as that. sounds like a good hard case of being grinf-cked. Is that what's happening to me here?
KarenM said:sandra, re your comments about Allstate, so as not to confuse the Gentle readers, -- there were two lawsuits against them.. i am sure the article was mentioning both situations -- anyways re the lawsuits.. there was the one for Age discrimination, that is by the EEOC
and the other is Misclassification that is by the IRS - one of many that they have had. --AllState settled 120 million..
StateFarm just settled their re mislcassification, as did Farmers :)
Re your friends, have them call.. sure I will enjoy meeting them as well; I am also pretty Sure we can find a lot to talk about :)
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Permalink Reply by Peter Clayton on -
Well this certainly has been fun reading! I must take exception to amazed reference to the HM as "snooping" by checking out the candidate's Facebook page. What Bush and Cheney did with emails is snooping. What that town in Montana wants to do by requiring everyone to submit their social networking names and passwords with an employment application -- is really snooping.
What the HM did is what every recruiter/HR manager does -- before running the background check, right? Who out there in this business is not going on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, MySpace, Flickr, Google, etc to find the good (and the bad) with their candidates? Anyone?
and if mr tattoo man is god-of-whatever, i agree with other comments in this thread - pitch him to your client's biggest competitor... after he cleans up his Facebook page.
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Permalink Reply by Heather Bussing on -
Thanks Ami! There really is a religion that requires tattoos. Good to know.
Amitai Givertz said:
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Permalink Reply by Slouch on
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Hi Peter, we're in the entertainment business.
Peter Clayton said:Well this certainly has been fun reading!
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Permalink Reply by Maureen Sharib on -
I have a feeling this free-for-all is over but just in case I wanna sign in so as NOT to miss any updates!
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Permalink Reply by Claudia Faust on
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Permalink Reply by Steve Levy on -
So what's the big deal about tattoos???
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