Things get worse for workers over 40.

As if things weren’t bad enough with the subtle systemic age-bias against older tech workers, now overt discrimination is not illegal for job applicants.

A divided U.S. appeals court on Wednesday dealt a setback to older job applicants, saying they cannot invoke a federal law against age bias in employment to challenge hiring policies they believe have a discriminatory impact.

In an 8-4 decision, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said the “plain language” of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which forbids discrimination against people 40 and older, showed that Congress intended that law to cover current employees, not outside job applicants. “Court rules age bias law does not cover job applicants”

We expect job postings, HR and companies all around being more overt about excluding and rejecting older workers.

Job postings like this that we previously pointed out are, sadly, legal.

Use GlassDoor.com to review prospective employers? Beware!

Do you use Glassdoor to evaluate prospective employers for culture, etc.? A report in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled, so no link) reports:

An analysis of millions of anonymous reviews posted on Glassdoor's site identified more than 400 companies with unusually large single-month increases in reviews. During the vast majority of these surges, the ratings were disproportionately positive compared with the surrounding months, the Journal's analysis shows.

Slashdot, “How Companies Secretly Boost Their Glassdoor Ratings”

Your recruitment actions can impact your sales.

If you're treated badly during a recruitment process, are you less likely to buy a company's products or services? A recent study by ManpowerGroup - of over 18,000 candidates - states that for 54% of candidates globally "a negative candidate experience makes them less likely to buy a company’s products or services in the future.

Paul Drake, on LinkedIn

Additionally, the candidate you treat poorly today could be in a position to influence purchase decisions at a company you are trying to sell into.

Are you willing to risk this? Treating candidates with basic respect, following up on communications, and being professional isn’t difficult.

Follow up on "Older Workers"

This is a follow up to the previous post.

The blog post was still warm when this was brought to my attention:

ageism.PNG

The job description itself by implication excludes older workers as most college graduates are in their twenties. What if I’m an older worker that’s changing careers? What if I like sales?

There is a not-so subtle implication that only young people should apply for this position, many people will see this and feel that “I’m not just out of college, I probably shouldn’t even apply”.

Based on the implied bias in this posting, how many talented people are they alienating?

Older Workers

It’s a well known anecdotal “truth” that companies, especially silicon valley and high tech, tend to eschew or avoid older workers. Recently there have even been allegations, and lawsuits alleging age-bias in redundancies, layoffs, and downsizing.

In a report from the Urban Institute, it appears that the problem most likely worse than believed:

“we find that about one-half of full-time, full-year workers ages 51 to 54 experience an employer-related involuntary job separation after age 50 that substantially reduces earnings for years or leads to long-term unemployment”

Link to Source, Full Report

The idea that older workers are somehow “less technical” is silly, many of the people that innovated or created the technologies that the internet, and society run on are over 50.

Are you guilty of interviewing an older candidate and passing on them for a younger one? Have you ever really considered your motives? Only by honestly examining and being aware of our own biases can we be sure we are choosing the right candidate.

Self congratulatory HR groups are self congratulatory

Human Resources and Recruiting are some of the most self-absorbed, tone-deaf groups you will find in any corporation.

HR Self_congratulations.PNG

This person received an award for personal development in Talent Acquisition. Not filling positions, not bringing in candidate.

Ever see “Talent Acquisition” awarded for filling X # or Percent of open positions in a month/quarter/year? Ever see Talent Acquisition proactively looking for candidates for an internal position or group build-out? Not to mention the big lie of ATS’es ever known anyone to get a call when their resume/application matches a new job opening? Yeah, me neither. What do they do with all that data? Why collect it? But I digress…

Candidates are reporting that Talent Acquisition/Recruiters often don’t a) return calls, b) return linked in messages and c) don’t reply to email inquiries for positions that the candidate would fit in well at.

A little less self-congratulation and a little more effort and they will find that there really isnt a shortage of cyber-security professionals. Anyways, what’s your experience been like with internal Talent Acquisition and recruiters?

"Catbert level sadism 101"

From an anonymous submission, I would say that an email like this says:

  1. We don’t care about you

  2. We don’t care about the hiring process

  3. We don’t care about the company we work for.


Dear [REDACTED],

You are receiving this email because you have applied to [REDACTED COMPANY] 
in the last 3 months. We have recently made a switch in our applicant tracking 
system and this has caused us to lose some of our candidates in the process. 
If you are interested in continuing to engage with us and our opportunities, 
please go to our new careers site at https:/[REDACTED] and fill out either a 
generic application to get into our system or search for a role that fits your 
qualifications and apply that way.

We appreciate your time and past interest and we are hoping to continue to 
engage with you!

Thanks,

[REDACTED]
Sr Mgr Talent Advisors
[REDACTED COMPANY]

This is even sadder when you consider that the company is one of the big cloud e-commerce providers. Would you host your data with a company that can’t even keep track of it’s own data?

The tone-deafness for them to say is “we respect your time” is incredible. No. No you don’t. ATS systems are some of the most infuriating things a user can deal with, and the failure of them to work properly ensures that any serious candidate spends a significant amount of time fighting with the system to make sure their details are fully entered.

How to smell a bad company

Read this, then reflect on the “cyber-security professional shortage”

An extremely annoying and potentially fatal problem that seems to run rampant among many companies is "information constipation". You, the poor schmuck who will actually be doing the work, hear about an upcoming project. This great new project is of course very important and "we're really gonna do things right this time." You ask questions and probe for details, but get only vague hints of what is to come. "We're waiting to hear from..." is a familiar reply. Days, weeks or even months go by. Now and then you get another little tidbit of information. Then, all of a sudden, you get about 80% of the information you need to start the project and are told that they need it finished TOMORROW! Sound familiar?

Is this the kind of company where you ask for those nice smooth rolling pens you like so much, but get the bulk pack cheapos instead, then hear about the boss's new car? Does management think they can save money by choosing consumer equipment over more expensive professional products? A professional painter may spend $20 or more for a single brush. Is he a fool for not buying the six piece assortment at the local discount store for $5? No, he simply understands that quality comes at a price, but that it's worth paying for in the long run.

"It's unwise to pay too much, but it's unwise to pay too little too. When you pay too much, you lose a little money.....that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

 Full article: “How to Smell A Bad Company”

https://www.jollyrogers.com/blog/2017/4/28/how-to-smell-a-bad-company.html

We use AI to take the Human out of Human Resources

In the continuing quest to shirk their jobs, and interact with candidates even LESS than they do now, Human Resources is turning to AI to do their job so they can do… what is it HR does these days?

algorithms may also lower wages in these fields, said Bo Cowgill, an economist at Columbia University who has studied the use of artificial intelligence in hiring.

“You get the more nontraditional, equally qualified, equally high-performing people,” Mr. Cowgill said. But the employer “doesn’t seem to have to compete for them as much.”

For years, employers and online intermediaries have used algorithms to help fill job openings, but their methods were often crude.

As previous entries to this blog have shown, crude doesn’t begin to describe the issues with the algos used by HR to avoid having to look at any resumes. The article, despite all the gushing praise almost comes to it’s senses at the end though:

All of this presumes, however, that deep-learning technology is viable for use in recruiting and human resources and could eventually become commonplace.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/business/economy/artificial-intelligence-hiring.html

On the phenomenon of contracting instead of hiring FTE:

members of Google's"shadow workforce" of temporary workers and contractors is demanding higher wages and equal benefits.

Many, many, many companies have decided to force skilled workers into contract positions, putting risk and burden on those that have NO choice but to accept contract work, or unemployment.

Google's 'shadow workforce' of contractors demands higher wages, equal benefits, in a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai

Follow up on HR social media engagement:

We thought it would be beneficial to do a follow up on the previous blog on company social media and recruiting and talent acquisition.

The Walt Disney company still has a protected account, and has lost followers. RIP.

Disney

General Mills’ Career account likewise shows stagnation.

GenMills

We wonder if it has anything to do with the apparent outsourcing of all cyber-jobs?

General Mills Cyber

SuperValu continues to lose followers, apparently they still have all the talent they will ever need, and nobody has quit or retired, GOOD FOR YOU!

SVU

Best Buy is still hiring jobs like it’s 2012, and losing followers. :(

Best Buy

We have some NEW entries suggested by readers, first up? Job and Career site Monster!

MonsterDOTcom

Oh - nothing since 2017. Guess everything is going peachy at Randstad oops I mean Monster.com ;)

monster randstad

I guess the woes of the publishing industry aren’t exaggerated:

Time1

TIme2.png

Speaking of apparent dead companies walking JC Penney’s poor social media team must have been axed end of 2017.

JC pennys

Poor Target, their recruitment account is doing customer service. Social media Engagement, even if for the wrong purpose is good I guess.

Target.png

Have other examples for us? Submit them!

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