And they would be not hired for those reasons you mention, in my opinion. As you said, who would want to work with someone like that?

He said that, you know, women and minorities who weren't as good as he was got hired unfairly, instead of him. I just thought I'd give him some useful advice. He seems confused.

Like Steve Bannon? White supremacy is delusional. Trump superior to Obama? What a fucking bigot fantasy.

but...

People don't get passed up by mediocrity except in very rare circumstances.

More likely, these people are no better than mediocre themselves, and think they're much better at a given task than everyone else.

Then, a company disagrees and it's someone else's fault.

Being a whiny brat is not a characteristic most companies pursue in hiring decisions.

And given that other thread, there is no objective view of this issue absent data. "I read it carefully and he's right" is not objective. It's just another whiny brat's opinion.

And suing a company for not hiring you is not a great way to get hired by another company in the same industry, I'm afraid. People do talk. I just find such people to be laughable, really. Without changes, someone like that is in for a long, rough career, I think.

They deserve it, too.

Last edited Tue Jan 9, 2018, 04:59 PM - Edit history (1)

And ironically he’s going to miss the diversity- because he wanted to be the turd in the punch bowl and now he’s just another turd in a pile of them.

What amazes me is that such people file lawsuits. Amazing!

After Sixty years plus in the work a day world,your rationale rings so true. If one doubts,pay attention to this summery.

something like this. White male privilege is a real thing. If you can't get hired, it's not because you're white and male. Nope. Look elsewhere for the reason is my advice.

My neighbor just yesterday was bitching about his Son not getting a Job Republic Service's,which btw,are the highest hourly paying employer in the Valley,because he is White and Republic only hires Minorities. Met his son only once,what a Bigot,and you just know that Personality Trait is not going to cut it in a Service Business that has a almost 50-50 population base.

Works in Utah,but not in Nevada.

It would be interesting to visit it and check it out. I'm betting it's probably fairly well racially balanced for wherever it's located.

who work our Community. Would say about equal amount of Hispanic,African-American and Whites. What is missing are Females and that might be because of the heavy lifting involved. Did see a Female operator running one of the Automated Pick up Units in another area of the Valley,not sure if she was faring that rig or was a operator.

Do know their Office operations are a Female run super tight ship.

haulers in my area.

and ran the Operations with some Guy sitting in his Glass cage scared crapless to set foot in their space. Still to this day,remember Bev telling the Boss to take his company pick-up and pick up Donuts and Rolls for Afternoon Coffee Break.

First, I'll confess my bias: I'm a plaintiff's lawyer. I've represented people alleging discrimination based on sex, race, or age. Once I represented a defendant in such a case but that was more than 30 years ago.

Now, suppose one of my clients, who at one point brought a lawsuit alleging illegal discrimination, is applying for a job with a different employer. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that the prospective employer is entitled to blacklist someone merely for asserting his or her rights under the law. OTOH, off the top of my head I don't remember any statute that would prohibit it. If such a client came to me, I'd see if the EEOC had regulations about it. If there is no such regulation, there ought to be.

Of course, some whiny complainers assert their rights under EEO law and make a big stink about the quality of the coffee in the break room or whatever. Disentangling legally protected whines from general-pain-in-the-ass whines wouldn't be easy.

There's your answer. Why an individual doesn't get hired is not generally listed. No company has an obligation to hire any particular individual. No reason is required to be stated.

"We've decided to go with a different candidate for the position..." is perfectly acceptable language. If you think you could be successful in a reverse discrimination case without some genuine evidence, you're incorrect. HR Departments know exactly what they can and cannot give as a reason for hiring someone other than a particular candidate. They also know the characteristics I described above in the OP and apply them when making hiring decisions.

Genuine cases of reverse discrimination are vanishingly rare. The opposite, however, is quite common. Sex and race discrimination in favor of white men is very, very common, even today. If you're looking for cases to bring, look for those, not reverse discrimination cases.

You write, "'We've decided to go with a different candidate for the position...' is perfectly acceptable language." Sure it is, but it doesn't end the lawsuit. A discrimination plaintiff isn't required to take the employer's explanation at face value.

You write, "If you think you could be successful in a reverse discrimination case without some genuine evidence, you're incorrect." You could drop the word "reverse" from that sentence and it would still be correct (and of course I as a lawyer would never take a case for which there's no evidence -- I'd just be wasting my time). Any discrimination plaintiff, even an elderly black Muslim woman in a wheelchair, has the burden of presenting some genuine evidence.

In most of these lawsuits, neither side can establish its position beyond a reasonable doubt. Fortunately for the victims of discrimination, that's not the standard in civil cases. Adjudicating employment decisions gets messy because they usually involve a multitude of factors. Employer-defendants will typically go over an employee's personnel file with a fine-tooth comb, looking for faults that can be cited as justifying the decision (a firing, a reassignment, or a non-promotion). Some of these factors are noted in your OP. Sometimes those are the real reasons for the decision and other times they're pretexts to cover illegal discrimination.

As for soliciting reverse discrimination cases, I don't solicit any EEO cases, regardless of the would-be plaintiff's demographic traits. There are rules about attorney solicitation. If a prospective client comes to me about bringing a discrimination case, I need to see at least some indication that there's a prospect of success. I've never been approached by a white male about a reverse discrimination case. If it ever happens, I'll apply the same standard. You're certainly right that genuine cases of such discrimination are not the norm.

Anyway, what caught my eye about your OP was the implication that discrimination is legal if it's based on a job applicant's having previously alleged illegal discrimination. That situation would arise more often with respect to the traditional victims of discrimination, not white males. This guy who's suing Google may make new law in that respect when he applies for his next job.

I'm over here playing the world's smallest violin.

I firmly believe this is the reason for the recent rise in the white supremacy movement. They had to invent reasons why they weren't being hired by blaming it on affirmative action, because of course "those" people must be inferior. In fact, though, the actual data will show that it is mediocre white men who are in fact falling behind, academically, intellectually, whatever. All these "bros" that used to be able skate into whatever available job there was and then end up top of the heap only benefited from the sexist/racist idea that EVERYONE ELSE was inferior.

Now the tables have turned (a little bit anyway) and they are finding out that it is no longer sufficient to just "get by" in school or at work and, instead of looking at their own weaknesses and seeking to strengthen those areas, they chose to blame others, egged on of course by others like them.

And the fit of different personalities in the workplace does matter. Now, the workplace "bro" culture (particularly in some types of businesses or tech) is often toxic and unwelcoming to women or people of color, but in general an introvert, say, is not going to happy in a room full of extroverts. Still, most employers look for intangible qualities that might work (agreeableness, willingness to take on new responsibilities, initiative, etc).

There's still a lot of blatant sex and race discrimination out there in favor of white men. Things are getting better, but mostly in larger organizations, rather than in smaller workplaces. The mediocre white guy still has privilege in many areas of employment. It's going to take some time for that to disappear, assuming it ever does.

In the not so recent past (and mostly still today), even things like shift supervisor or store manager were all likely to be white guys.

is a common explanation for one's shortcomings. Rather than face the fact that a drinking problem or bad records of the criminal, driving variety, poor grammar and communication skills, may be an explanation, some blame racial preference.

A blue collar worker may tell his friends he would have been hired but they had to give the job to an African America, then it spreads like wildfire. Then it becomes more of the glue that holds the group together. The saddest part of this is that it becomes a case of resentment that is passed along to children who believe this without question.

I've interviewed thousands and hired hundreds over my career. All high-end, technology jobs. I can only think of a few times where folks were disqualified for those reasons (and rightly so).

The #1 reason why a highly qualified, experienced, certain to be successful person wasn't selected? There were other, maybe many other highly qualified, experienced, certain to be successful folks applying...and we could only hire -one-.

It always broke my heart to tell (or instruct HR to inform) candidates that they were not hired. Not a singe thing wrong with them, but we could only hire one, and only one. The person hired usually had some other minor advantage that was enough to break the tie, but not enough to make a practical difference in performance.

I always told candidates (especially in cases where we had multiple great candidates for one spot), to reapply if they don't get selected, as we usually open one spot at a time, then a few weeks later open another spot. But they rarely did.

Over time, I learned to really hate hiring. It's an inherently unfair and heartbreaking process, even in an organization where everything we do everything humanly possible to make it fair and human.

It's hard to take rejection over and over, even from people you speak to only once for just a short time. This is from my experience from jobhunting in Flint, MI, in the mid 1980s:

I applied for hundreds of jobs and one of these happened:
- never heard anything from anybody
- interviewed and rejected
Only to see the same job advertised a couple weeks later. What was the rejected applicant supposed to think? He or she thinks "they didn't like me before so why would they like me now? They won't."

So, rather than go through the whole process again only to risk rejection without ever knowing why again, people will come to the conclusion that this particular company isn't going to hire them at all at any time. If that isn't the case, why are resumes held for 6 months or a year and made available to a manager who is looking to hire? I've never heard of a case where someone got a second interview that way.

Tell the truth: how many formerly rejected applicants get a position on the second, third, fourth, or subsequent try?

I wasn't born in that job (and I'm not there anymore after a long career). I've gone through the same experience of applying for jobs that everyone else does. It sucks, it's frustrating and maddening. I wish I had a solution for "1 job opening but more than one qualified applicant". One person gets a "yes", everyone else gets a "no".

I asked the same question - let me use the same pool of resumes from the last round. While I could certainly peruse them, even reach out and ask them to apply, the rules based upon tons of case law, required that the applicant apply specifically for each job. (some sort of lawsuit defense)

The answer to your question? I think you'll be surprised. EVERYONE SINGLE ONE. If I wanted to hire them on the first try, but could not, and I saw them apply on a later req. I hired them every single time. Interestingly, every single time this occurred, they turned out to be great hires.

Unfortunately, you are right though, top candidates tend to not re-apply. Some because they were frustrated, others because they got a job elsewhere, and others for probably a million other reasons.

As to your comment about "knowing why". Blame the lawyers. HR would only tell them that they weren't selected. Corporate legal advised that any additional information provided could be used for lawsuits. Sigh.

I don't work there anymore. I freelance now. So nowadays I go through a "selection process" multiple times a year. Not fun. I hate it. But it's the classic "Only 1 yes available, infinite supply of no's"

I've freelanced ever since. I never missed it. But, I'm one of those people who got hired. I never applied for any job and did not get hired. Not once. I'm not exactly sure why, but that's what happened. I worked for small businesses, major businesses, and government agencies.

I guess I interviewed well, was a good test taker, and always learned as much as I could about the business and the job before interviewing. I was probably lucky, too.

But you are correct, much as people like to believe their own talents and skills are unique, the vast majority of job openings will have many qualified applicants.

It's progress that people other than straight white males are considered for highly technical work these days, but we still have a long ways to go. My wife and my sister have both crashed into a few glass ceilings in their professional careers, denied admittance to the straight white boy clubs at the top.

And there are plenty of bitter straight white males out there who are upset they no longer get first dibs on jobs and promotions anymore, and HR people in progressive companies who can smell them a long way off.

Where did she go wrong?

Every discussion topic in an interview can be simplified to one of these three questions:

1. Can you do the work?
2. Will you do the work?
3. Will you be a pleasure or a pain to work with?

and blaming it on so-called reverse discrimination or affirmative action, that:

"Maybe you are just not a good as you thought."

That sure ticks them off.