The Hiring Bias Against the Unemployed | Hacker News Reader

The Hiring Bias Against the Unemployed

nytimes.com

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You might be interested in reading the comments from previous times this story has been submitted:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1408813 : 88 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439742

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2233443

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2305491 : 42 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2807824

I wish there was a merge option for posts...

Discussion of that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822041

damn, i wanted to comment but now definetely won't :)

This gives me a slightly evil business idea: Fake Employment

Create a tech company with a sufficiently heavy load of buzzwords describing what you do. Basically copy the website of a random consulting firm.

Then charge people for the privilege of getting hired. You could charge them $5000 a month under the table and cut them a check for $4900 in "salary". If you are brave you could take a form of credit in payment.

Then when your employee gets hired away from you it looks like they were never unemployed.

Sure some people would see through it, but the people smart enough to see through it would presumably be smart enough not to implement a stupid policy of not hiring the unemployed.

Fake references services already exist. One example: http://www.thereferencestore.com/

It's dishonest, but it is also an example of the market adapting to what is happening. People who need work badly enough may not be too worried about the ethical concerns of using such services.

If they pay you $5000 you can't pay them $4900. There are quite some taxes that you also have to pay.

Any thoughts on whether the stronger version of this bias, against anyone who has ever been unemployed in their lives, is still prevalent? It used to be common advice to make sure to hide or have excuses for any 'gaps' in your CV's work history, lest a potential employer realize that you had ever been unemployed. Is that still the case?

It is easier to hide by claiming to be freelancing which is gappy by nature however there are always questions about what you did while freelancing so I suspect the bias still exists. Having said that, a lot more work is purely short-term so having gaps is not the black mark that it used to be.

Previous stories on why unemployment is so much higher this time around focus on the types of jobs that were lost: secretaries, planners, and other logistical middlemen who kept their jobs even after computer programs were advanced enough to do their work. When the economy tanked, these well-liked employees were the logical ones to be cut when a company's bottom-line was concerned.

Unfortunately, it's these kinds of occupations that likely have the least opportunity for freelance gigs.

My mother just listed "Mom" as her job for several years and nobody gave her too much grief about it. As long as you're doing something that somebody might respect, that's probably a better option than just saying you didn't have a job.

My current employer said that they did not like to even offer interviews to anyone who was currently unemployed because there was probably a reason for it and they didn't want people that couldn't keep a job.

That's pretty myopic. People go through periods of unemployment for all kinds of reasons. Maybe they had a child, or wanted to travel the world. I have a computer scientist friend who took 6 months off to hike the Appalachian Trail (no, really). According to this logic, he would be a no hire. It would be the company's loss though, and I wonder if that company would be one writing blog posts about how "it's impossible to hire technical talent."

That's certainly true in tech now, when companies are scrambling to get any talent they can. But the unemployment in many other sectors of the economy is much higher, and there's not much of a competition between companies for talent.

"There's probably a reason for it" is a vile and disgusting justification for discrimination that is sadly heard quite frequently.

It's also a perfectly reasonable justification for making (correct!) decisions in many, many situations.

My father used a variant of it to justify the idea of invading Iraq (a couple of years prior to us actually doing it): "Where there's smoke, there's fire."

Don't anyone ever get sick then.

Why should I as a hypothetical employer be particularly keen on hiring someone who has taken extended leaves of medical absence? There is a strong financial risk and no reward for doing so.

So if I ended up with a one-time sickness that put me up in the hospital for, say, 3 months, then I'm more likely to catch another long-term sickness than the rest of the general population? Logic!

In the individual case the probability can only be calculated by a physician.

In the general case? I am sure (to a certainty sufficiently high to factor into hiring decisions between otherwise equally qualified candidates) that the increase in probability it is non-zero. So yes, I am saying in the general case that people who have been seriously sick before have an elevated chance of being seriously sick again.

Actuarialy, you probably are.

You should do exactly what you want. My advice was to employees, not employers.

Apologies. I thought I detected a note of disapproval.

Regulation will not change underlying biases.

Hypothetically, if employers are behaving irrationally by ignoring a significant pool of talent, then they are shooting themselves in the foot. A rational company would swoop up the talent at below market rates and have a competitive edge.

I doubt that all companies are irrational. The unemployed are likely have less relevant skills. And there is a sampling bias where those unemployed longest are over-represented.

To an extent, you are at increasing risk of ruining your life, if you lose your job and you are unable to make money in any other reasonable way, such as through a web-site, or through consulting.

And if you don't have savings you can be completely screwed basically.

A lot of people in this country have gone from: high-paying job, lots of credit card debt, living lavishly, to poorer paying job, living frugally, low debt / savings.

If you don't owe anyone money, and have a low burn-rate, and can live frugally, this gives you substantially more options in terms of taking a lower-paying job and making it work, or striking out on a start-up which may limp along for a couple of years.

And if you don't have savings you can be completely screwed basically.

I really, really don't understand people who don't have savings. I would adjust my lifestyle down until I could save money, no matter how far down I had to go. I'd share a two bedroom apartment with three other people, get rid of my mobile, forgo cable, heat, new clothes... whatever I had to do.

Shit happens. You need to have some cash to deal with it.

Well, but all that needs to happen to be caught without savings is for shit to happen twice in close succession, with the first problem depleting your savings. If you have a major medical or other expense, and then you lose your job less than a year later... Well, there you are.

That's true even if you are in a position to save. There are those who are not: sometimes you can't reduce your expenses as your income drops. This is especially true if you have children.

So really, you don't understand people who don't have savings... assuming they have, up to now, had relatively problem-free and low-commitment lives.

I'd share a two bedroom apartment with three other people

Yes, but would your wife and two teenage children? People who usually get caught in such traps usually aren't twenty somethings who can get by on nothing.

Though if you're not twenty-something you have even less excuse for not having savings.

If you're twenty-something you should have tens of thousands in savings. If you're forty-something you should have hundreds of thousands in savings.

There's something different about us. We're smart. It really is an exceptional trait. If you're anything like me, you may well mute commercials, or just not watch TV at all. That and a baseline of saving 15% of your income. I did that for years, allowing me to survive a jolly long unemployed patch.

In general, too many people have crappy jobs, a long stressful commute, 8 hours in a cube, a poor diet, and debt up to their eyeballs, because everyone on TV has an SUV, so they need to have one too. And with little time, they have to eat out a lot, or eat processed foods. That's a huge stressor.

Lifestyle is expensive and easily eats up the $120,000 income of a couple working a job each, if you aren't careful. And if they spend it as it comes in, just getting by really, then there's no savings for when they hit that rough patch.

I think it is more symptomatic of the terrible job market than anything else. For most jobs available today (talented engineers in NY/SV excluded) there are usually hundreds of applicants for almost any half-decent position, and so employers have the luxury of culling based on any non-protected class that has any sort of predictive value, even if the correlation is extremely weak.

If the economy ever turns around, I suspect this issue will disappear. I certainly don't recall this when unemployment was at 4%.

It almost seems backwards though. When unemployment is high, it is less likely for someone that is unemployed to be so 'for a good reason.' If unemployment is low, and you are unemployed for long periods of time, I would think that would be the time to raise questions, because it would presumably be easy to actually get a job.

I would illustrate some hardship that company had to go through in the past and say: "I don't apply to companies who had to go through this hardship in the past". Good companies would not have had that problem to begin with.

The problem is that employed people ARE desirable to unemployed people. Just as younger employees are desirable to old ones.

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