Questions recruiters ask that you shouldn’t answer

Questions recruiters ask that you shouldn’t answer

Question

questions recruiters askI’d like to ask you about questions recruiters ask. I had a call with a recruiter for a well-known recruiting firm. It was a “get to know you so we can potentially work together in the future” type of call. During our conversation the recruiter asks where my family lives. I tell her some of my family is in X state and my husband’s family is in Y. That being said, I am open to various locations. Then she asks where my parents live. In the moment I am thinking, does she really need this info? But I tell her they are not in the U.S. Then she asks, “So where are they?”

Am I obliged to answer this question, especially when it comes across as pushy? I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she is looking out for me but it made me uncomfortable. How should I handle it in the future?

Nick’s Reply

You are never obliged to answer any questions that make you feel uncomfortable. And I agree — something’s up with that recruiter. I cannot imagine how your parents’ place of residence would affect your job.

How will that help you place me?

There is no reason to not ask why she needs to know. You can reject any question you feel is too personal, illegal, or indicative of bias — especially if the recruiter offers no explanation about how that information will help her to place you.

And that’s the key point about any questions recruiters ask: How will that help you place me? That’s a perfectly professional way to challenge them without being confrontational.

I wouldn’t bother bringing it up again because it will serve no purpose. If she asks another such question, that’s when you should state your position. (Here’s a batch of interview questions that are illegal.)

What’s she look like?

As a headhunter, I’ve encountered questions that have been surprising. Some were questions clients asked me; others were questions employers asked job candidates. Here are some examples.

A new client asked about a candidate I had presented: “We looked her up on LinkedIn but her profile has no photo. Can you have her add her photo?”

When I inquired about the reason they wanted to see a photo, they said they just wanted to get a look at her. I fired the client. A photo and what she looked like were irrelevant. (Then there’s this stupid interview question to ask a woman.)

Man to man?

After two rounds of interviews went very well, the HR recruiter wanted to discuss the Quality Assurance Engineer I sent him.

“Is he, uh, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” I responded. “Is he what?”

“You must have noticed. You know. How do I put this. The other guys on the team here prefer to work with, you know, a man’s man.”

“A what?”

“You know, doesn’t the guy seem effeminate to you?”

Oh, I suddenly knew. His company missed out on a great Q.A. engineer that day, and I fired the client.

Can you steal?

A senior executive came to me for coaching while she navigated a complex interviewing process at a company she really wanted to work for. The company was a direct competitor of her current employer. At the second interview they asked her to bring certain materials to her third interview: her current company’s price lists for customers the new company competed for.

She felt she had no choice but was worried about the ethical problem. I told her not to do it. She was relieved because she agreed. I suggested she tell them she would no more reveal her current employer’s confidential data than she would reveal the new company’s data to her next employer. To her surprise, they hired her anyway and never brought up the subject again.

I’ve got more: The high-tech employer that wanted to know “What kind of accent is that?”  The retailer who wanted a new HR executive but only females need apply. I’ll close with these two really insulting interview questions. Now let’s hear yours.

What inappropriate questions have recruiters and employers asked you? How did you handle it? What questions have you answered that you wish you hadn’t? What was the outcome?

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Age 70, working and job hunting again

In the August 13, 2019 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter a reader fends off age discrimination.

Question

ageI am 70 years old and still actively working. I have been a consultant for an energy company since early this year, serving in an interim role. The company had a disastrous last year. I was brought in to help turn some of this around in the first quarter and “stand in” until a full-time person arrived. This was to have been a 4-5 month assignment; I am still here. I know I will not be brought on because of my age and I accept this.

I have started searching again, now that the assignment is drawing to a close. I had a recruiter locate me on Monster.com and ask for my “full” resume, which I sent. Later in the day I received a text asking for “your DOB.” I responded “16 July,” to which I received a note saying, “Before I submit your resume to my client I need the year.”

I told her to remove me from her database and thanked her for bringing ageism into play. Is there anything I should have done? Just because I am 70 doesn’t mean I’m senile or moving around using a walker!

Thank you for your column. Even in my “advanced age,” I get what you teach.

Nick’s Reply

I collect stories from people who continue to work well into their 60s, 70s and even 80s. Thanks for yours! They all have one thing in common: They are forthright and spirited.

The age question

No recruiter needs your date of birth (DOB) for any reason I can think of, so I’m glad you told that one to take a hike. But please consider that if you’re going to swim in shark-infested waters, you’re likely to get bitten. Monster.com and its ilk are thick with recruiters like the one that found you. It’s up to you to avoid risky waters.

You could be discriminated against anyway, but job hunting online makes it even more likely a person will be rejected due to their age. The impersonal, rapid-fire Q&A that recruiters can do via e-mail, chat and texts with eager job seekers makes it easier to discriminate.

So, no, there’s nothing else you should have done. You avoided wasting your time further. If you expect to get hired because of your qualifications, then it’s up to you to control how a recruiting exchange occurs.

Show them the green

The only way I know to test a recruiting pitch is to expect the recruiter to evaluate you for what you can do to make the employer more successful. That’s also how you will get past biases. In the case of age, you want to arrange it so you can show them the green — how you will benefit their business — before they get distracted by the grey of your hair or your birth date. (See Age Discrimination: Help me market my dad!)

You don’t say how you’ve gotten your jobs during the past ten years. Whatever it is, keep doing it. My guess is that you rely on your reputation and abilities, not on random queries. Don’t be distracted by recruiters demanding to know your age. Fast-paced, high-volume, automated online recruiting doesn’t permit you to communicate the information that will get you interviewed and hired. That requires a one-to-one dialogue.

So ask yourself, no matter who is recruiting you, do they take time to talk with you about the job and about how — exactly — you might be able to help do the job profitably for the employer?

If the recruiter declines a substantive discussion about those two topics, you know you’re not being recruited. It’s just a cold call that’s not likely to go anywhere.

Personal contacts

If a recruiter indicates they don’t really know anything about you, don’t waste your time because that’s not really a recruiting call. I strongly suggest you rely on your personal contacts – and develop more of them – for your job search. Here’s a four-step outline for how to leverage this: Ask The Headhunter in a nutshell.

You’ve been doing this long enough that you probably know everything in that article. I just want to remind you that it works, and that the likes of Monster.com don’t.

Are you still working in your 60s, 70s or later (hopefully by choice)? How do you do it? How do you handle queries from recruiters? Have you encountered age discrimination? What can we do about it?

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Never work with jerks

In the May 21, 2019 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter a reader fails to see that the problem is jerks.

jerksQuestion

I need help with a recent job interview. The position was customer service work in a software engineering office setting. This is a start-up company with an 18-month history. I was interviewed for 3 hours by 5 people including the CEO and COO. The CEO asked me, “Why is your English so good? You don’t have an accent?” I have an ethnic name and I am a woman in a male-dominated field. Unbelievable! Then he asked me where I was born. Right here in this city, I said. The guy was speechless, puzzled. But how could that be? How should I respond to this?

Nick’s Reply

You must decide for yourself, but I’ll share the advice Gene Webb, my mentor at Stanford, gave to me and his students many years ago: Never work with jerks.

Period.

How we deal with jerks

The first time Gene Webb shared his rule about jerks I of course understood it — intellectually. But it took me 25 years to accept it, because we rationalize working with jerks. We all instantly know a jerk when we encounter one. Then we make a profound and very stupid mistake.

We tell ourselves that, “Dealing with jerks is part of the job. I just have to do it.” It’s so much a part of our social and work culture that articles and books abound and preach that, “There are jerks everywhere. We must learn to work and live with them.” We’re told that dealing effectively with jerks is a skill that must be learned and practiced.

None of it is true, yet we knowingly walk ourselves into a hornet’s nest only to act surprised when we get stung.

Rule #1 and Rule #2

I’ve dealt with jerks most of my life. Like you, I was proud that I knew a jerk when I encountered one.

Rule #1 is to recognize a jerk and accept the fact.

That was when my “dealing with jerks” skills kicked in. I could deal with the worst of them. But that wasn’t Gene’s instruction. Gene didn’t say, “Deal with jerks.” He said don’t work with them. Ever. That was very difficult for me to act on.

I finally learned there is no reward in dealing and working with jerks. I got hurt one too many times. It had become exhausting to accommodate yet another jerk. Jerks depend on our ability to deal with them. You can’t win with a jerk when you concede to be around them.

Rule #2 is: Leave.

I quit two jobs in rapid succession before I realized my pain was caused not by me, or by circumstances, but by two specific people. In the end, Gene’s truth hit me extra hard because the second jerk had surrounded himself with more jerks. It was like showing up every day to a Jerk Fest. Maybe I was lucky to be surrounded by jerks because what should have been obvious was now blinding.

So I finally started practicing what Gene Webb taught me: Decide whether someone is a jerk. Act immediately — don’t rationalize. Leave.

Listen to jerks once

Judge the manager

Judge a manager’s sincerity about working together. Does she want to hire you because you can add something to the way the work is done, or does she want another interchangeable part for her machine? Listen carefully to what the manager says. You will hear either a mind interacting with your own, or a machine waiting to grind you up.

Excerpted from Fearless Job Hunting, Book 8: Play Hardball With Employers, p. 28

This book includes: “Avoid Disaster: Check out the employer,” “Due Diligence: Don’t take a job without it,” and “Judge the manager”

With a few short questions, that CEO told you he’s a jerk. He wanted you to know his biases. He wanted you to acknowledge him.

If you think you’re dealing with a jerk, pause, consider carefully and be brutally honest with yourself, no matter how much you “really, really want this job.” Do the calculation: Is this person telling you they are a jerk? If yes, walk away and don’t have any regrets. Jerks will always hurt you – maybe not for a month or a year or two, but they will hurt you.

(Legal recourse is your other option. You can hire a lawyer and pursue action against the employer for possible discrimination. It’s a long, costly path. For more tips about avoiding trouble at the end of the interview process, see 13 lies employers tell about job offers.)

The good thing about jerks is, they can’t hide it. Their jerk-ness slips out in little ways, like the comments this CEO made to you. He believes he’s entitled to give you a backhanded slap during your interview, perhaps to test how willing you will be to tolerate him in the years to come.

Here’s the hard part: You must listen when a jerk tells you they’re a jerk. Listen just that once and you won’t have to suffer.

My advice

Unfortunately, there is nothing unbelievable about how this CEO behaved toward you. “Unbelievable” is the fallacy his ilk rely on to convince people to take a job with their company anyway. It will all be very believable once he’s your boss.

Like I said, you must use your own judgment. But you asked my advice, so here it is: Find a good CEO to work for. This is not one. He just told you so. Listen to him.

There are lots of good, honest, respectful, smart people in the world. Find one of those to work with for the next several years. No jerk is worth fooling yourself about – because you will have only yourself to blame if you rationalize.

Let’s explore jerks.

  • How do you recognize a jerk?
  • Who’s the biggest jerk you ever worked with and why?
  • How have you accommodated a jerk and why?
  • Can someone make a good case for working with a jerk? (There may be a case and it might make sense to some people.)
  • Got a good story about a jerk’s demise? Or success?
  • Did you have an epiphany about jerks like I did? What was it and how long did it take before you had it?

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Age Discrimination: Help me market my dad!

In the December 4, 2018 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter a reader complains that age discrimination is killing his dad’s career.

Question

age discriminationHelp me market my dad. He’s over 50. It seems that as soon as his age becomes evident in a job interview he is somehow no longer qualified. Are there any businesses who hire someone with 25 years’ experience any more? He was a vice president until he got caught in a downsizing. People are still young and bring a lot to a job at his age. What can I tell him?

Nick’s Reply

Have you noticed the ridiculous conundrum in the recent news about the economy?

  • The trend in unemployment claims is down.
  • Employers are creating record numbers of new jobs.
  • Talent is in short supply — companies can’t find the workers they need.
  • The economy is booming and indications for growth are positive.
  • But highly talented, highly skilled, highly experienced people like your dad can’t get hired.

Are we stupid, or what? (See B.S. on the jobs numbers euphoria.) There’s a problem here. Employers should be in a mad competition to hire your dad — and others like him — and they should be making insanely high job offers to get him.

But they’re not. So, what gives?

Stupidity.

The stupidity of age discrimination

There are some bright spots — and employers — however. For example, see Boeing Is Bringing Back Recently Retired Employees in AARP magazine. It’s no accident Boeing is one of the most successful companies in the world and that it actually makes something you can touch that doesn’t run apps.
Employers are not so rational or smart as you might think. The recruiting technology they rely on — ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, Indeed, and their ilk, along with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSes) of many flavors — instruct employers to keep looking for the perfect job candidates, and employers (and their silly HR departments) keep barking up that tree. They don’t just discriminate against older workers. They discriminate against anyone that doesn’t match ridiculous lists of requirements.

That’s why your dad can’t get hired. Automated recruiting makes it easy for employers to discriminate because the data they need to practice age discrimination is right there in the databases they use to select candidates.

But we’re not going to change how employers hire. We can’t. We’re not going to waste time complaining about employers. We’re going to try and change how your dad interviews so he can get hired in spite of age discrimination.

People your dad’s age (50+) bring a lot to a job. They’re not too old to contribute significantly to a company. (Check the article about Boeing in the box at right.) You clearly believe it. So does your dad.

The question is: How can your dad change his behavior in job interviews to overcome this discrimination? The answer may not be so obvious as you think.

Mike projects his fear

Several years ago, when AT&T went through one if its down-sizings, the company hired me to coach a group of executives who were told they had eight months to find a new job before they were terminated. Most people take that kind of time and use it to engage in wishful thinking. You know: “Oh, they’ll find something for me so I can stay. I’ve been here 20 years. They won’t let me go.” (Quite a few AT&T’ers succumbed to that thinking and were still fired.)

One of the guys I coached (I’ll call him Mike), took it dead seriously and he started looking immediately. But by the time I met with him, he was disheartened and angry. He’d been rejected by one younger hiring manager after another. All he wanted to know was, “How do I get these interviewers past the problem of my age? They’re all much younger than me and all they see is the grey!” What Mike was saying was, “My age is a problem to them, and I know it.”

Mike was 58. Sure, some employers prefer younger people. Some employers are also bigoted about all sorts of things, from race to religion to sex to where you play golf. My advice in those situations: Either file a discrimination suit, or move on to the next employer.

But regardless of his skills and credentials, Mike was quite naturally projecting his concerns about being an older candidate trying to impress younger managers. Even as I talked with Mike and listened to his frustrations about job interviews, I could smell his fear and discomfort. It was understandable — the guy was justifiably frightened. The trouble was, Mike was essentially walking around carrying a sign that plainly said, “I know you think I’m old.”

Change your own behavior

Call me an optimist, but I really believe most managers are more concerned about a person’s ability to do the work than about anything else, and they’re basically busy people who will give you a fair shake if you can help them meet their business objectives.

But something funny happens, as it did with Mike. When he acted defensively about his age, interviewers shut him down. The last thing an employer wants is a worker who projects worry about his age, because the preoccupation is likely to affect their work. Never mind that Mike wasn’t worried about his abilities. It was enough that he was worried that the interviewer was worried about his age.

I spent about four hours with Mike. I taught him to focus on one thing in the interview: the work an employer needs to have done. If the age issue comes up, I told him to shift gears and ask the manager what problems he needs fixed, and then to demonstrate how he’s going to tackle them.

You should have one goal, I told him: to show the employer what you’re going to bring to the bottom line. Do that, and you control the interview. Do that, and — much of the time, not all — you transcend the age (or almost any other) issue.

The point was not just to help Mike perform at his best. It was to help Mike change his behavior from worrying to showing he could do the work.

Controlling your behavior changes your own attitude

The truth about job interviews

A good employer wants to see what you can do. If he doesn’t ask, help him out and show him. It’ll turn your interview into a working meeting where you both roll up your sleeves, and during which the employer can do a direct assessment of your worth to his business.

“Please lay out a live problem you’d want me to handle if you hired me. I’ll do my best to show you how I’d do the work so it will pay off for both of us.”

From Fearless Job Hunting, Book 6, The Interview: Be The Profitable Hire.

Mike changed his attitude, if only because for four hours I encouraged him to talk about how he does his work, and I refused to let him discuss age discrimination. It’s a simple law of psychology. When we change our behaviors, our attitudes follow — but not usually the other way around.

A week later I ran into Mike again. He had a grin on his face as wide as a barn. He walked up and clapped me on the shoulder.

“I did what you said. Company XYZ not only hired me; they’re giving me equity. When the interview started, I cut the manager off at the pass and asked him to lay out a live problem he was facing. That helped me stop worrying. I got more comfortable by focusing the meeting on what I do best. Then I showed him how I’d handle it. We talked shop. He stopped seeing the grey when I showed him the green,” he quipped. “It changed the whole interview!”

I’m proud of Mike because he got past his own age obstacle, and in doing so he got the employer’s mind off it. When an employer encounters a perceived obstacle like age, they tend to make a superficial judgement rather than deal with their bias. So the candidate has to deal with it.

Talk shop

This story is the best thing I can offer your dad. He’s got to get his age completely out of the equation and out of his own mind. Sure, he’ll encounter a jerk or two. But he’ll also encounter employers who need what he can do for them. It’s up to him to communicate that without bringing his fears to the interview.

It’s not an easy task, but it’s do-able. We all know this approach will not eliminate age discrimination. We’re not going to change employers. The goal here is to eliminate the worry and preoccupation with bias that job applicants often carry around themselves. The goal is to change our own behavior in interviews. In my experience, the best way to do that is to keep an interview discussion focused on the work the employer needs done and on how you will do it profitably. Talk shop.

I wish your dad the best — and I’ll ask you to share with him this success story: Who says 58-year-olds can’t get a job?

Talking shop is one way to get past the obstacle of age discrimination. Do you agree that older job applicants can actually control the problem of ageism by controlling their own behavior? How do you think older job applicants can help employers that are desperate to fill jobs? Is it worth being angry at employers that are prone to bias against older workers? Can we change biased hiring practices?

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