I think the hiring managers at my place of employment need some lessons in the art of sexism.
We've had an opening in our division for months - seven months. The doofus who has been assigned to fill the gap is singularly incompetent and unresponsive, and his customers complain constantly. So the leadership team finally get around to posting the job and interviewing candidates, and make a final selection. The decision goes up to the division Director, and he decides that the woman his leadership team selected isn't "young and hungry" enough. And he selects some twenty-something with less than ten years experience in our industry. To handle demanding, manipulative accounts worth millions of dollars.
So the senior leadership team basically passes over a qualified, older female candidate in favor of a less qualified, younger male candidate. And guess who's going to be burdened with this entitled, know-nothing snot as he takes months and years to come up to speed? Yeah. That would be me.
It wouldn't be so damn insulting if they hadn't been so utterly blatent about the whole thing. They didn't even try to hide what they were doing. I know I shouldn't be surprised - the division has only 20% women associates, and no women in leadership positions, a demonstrable lack of commitment to gender diversity. But it still pisses me off.
2 comments:
At one of my old jobs, the manager actually told an applicant he wouldn't hire her because he had enough women -- he wanted some men to balance things out.
I was very young at the time and didn't realize this was most likely illegal.
Two questions: 1) are you on the leadership team and 2) do you know for a fact that the director decided that the recommended candidate wasn't "young and hungry"?
In my experience, many stories get created and circulated to explain why someone was or was not chosen for a promotion or position --- almost all of them are usually false, or missing key pieces of information.
If this "younger" person had 10 years of experience in the field, it is entirely possible that both people were equally qualified for the position, yet the younger person had attributes (ie drive to succeed and move up in the organization) that that gave him an edge in the competition.
Having once been a "younger" person, put into a position based on my "potential", I hope that you will give this person your full support - whether you agree with the decision to hire him or not.
As for the decision to hire a man over a woman - this appears to be an issue with your organization. If you were involved in the hiring process, I expect that you are at a level in the organization that you can raise this as an issue; if not, then this issue may be raised under human rights/discrimination legislation. Bottom line is that YOU can't do anything about the decision to hire this person, so make the best of it, YOU probably can do something to address systemic discrimination in your workplace.
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