All Hiring Managers are Guilty of Legal Discrimination

I know that as soon as some of you read the title of this article, you either knew exactly what I was talking about or you became a bit upset and angered by it.  Either way, it is time that someone said what many have been thinking for so long but for one reason or another, could not find the words.  I, apparently, do not suffer from that same fate.

Here is how hiring managers display their guilt in legal discrimination each and every interview.  They enter with a preconceived idea of the perfect candidate, knowing full well that this perfect candidate does not and never will exist outside of animation or a machine.  To select this perfect candidate, a few criteria’s are set-up and guidelines are established to get to this perfect employee.  All of these set-ups and guidelines are already flawed because they are constructed by flawed individuals.  Let’s face it, we are all flawed, if we are human so anything we construct will also be.  What spurred me to this conclusion?  Check out my story.

Since 2009, I have been diligently searching for employment or a way to re-open my business, having applied to any and every job available, my resumes could paper a football stadium.  From those have come several interviews but no second one.  Now my first thought was the manner of which I appeared at these interviews.  The next was the answers that I gave while there.  The third was how my resumes were fashioned and finally it became quite clear to me the reason, I was never called back again.

It wasn't the outfit worn to these interviews because I can make a plaid table cloth look good.  It wasn't the language I used because I can speak to kings then turn around and talk street at the same setting.  It wasn't the lack of focus or knowledge about the company I was interviewing to join because I would always surprise the interviewer with knowledge about the company that even they did not know.  I figured out it is my teeth.

For a person to enter any interview and impress those who are doing the interview, the basics must be covered but to really blow the doors off that interview room and still not get a call-back, it had to be more than the normal.  My teeth are very small and rotting, so to a stranger this could only mean one thing.  I am either a crack- addict or a meth-head.  I can now recall those times when their attention was drawn to my teeth and how quickly that interview ended.  The discrimination comes in because instead of asking about them, they assumed. 

Had they asked, they might have learned that for some reason, unlike the majority of other human beings, I never received my adult teeth so these baby teeth has been with me for over 50 years.  Had they asked, they might have learned that, unbeknownst to me, I had been ingesting poisonous drinking water for over 10 years while stationed in many different military installations in America.  Had they asked, but they didn't and because of that discriminated against me and so many others because they did not ask the question that seemed important enough to deny me a job and the company one of the best employees that they could have ever hired.  If it was a drug habit that they were concerned about, the mandatory drug tests that one must take before getting hired to any business would have answered that question. 

The lesson here is for those hiring managers to change how they conduct interviews.  Instead of making a list of requirements that you must see in an interviewee, tell them exactly what you are looking for and ask them if they fit that bill.  If they say that they do, then look for proof in their answers and reactions, that way you have eliminated your bias and can better answer the question of why they were not chosen.  Just my opinion, I could be wrong and if so ME CULPA