Interview Preparation

A reader writes:

My company recently hired a new shipping manager. When his name was announced, my heart sank as I realized that he was an acquaintance of mine from a previous job. At the same time, I was very relieved that I wasn’t involved in the hiring process, because I would have had a hard time being objective.

My last job before this was a few miles from a highly conservative Bible college/seminary. We hire lots and lots of your students. Probably 25 of 40 part-time workers on that shift were from that university. No one placed any type of restriction on them from having impromptu prayer groups or devotions in the break room, nor discriminated against them in any way. Far from it, it was usually seminary students coming forward with complaints that they heard someone say a bad word or that someone’s rock radio station is profane and they shouldn’t have to listen to it. (Instead of music, some of them listened to recorded sermons and lectures blaring on their portable speakers as they worked.) In general, they were mostly nice kids, well behaved and hardworking, but my point is that they were very open about their core beliefs. .

One of those core beliefs specific to this particular university and branch of Christianity is that wives should submit to their husbands in everything, because women are the weaker sex and need spiritual guidance and leadership. At least a dozen coworkers I met at that university got married while they were studying, and some of the new wives worked until the children were born, but none worked outside the home afterward. After graduation, some students stayed on as supervisors while they searched for a church to pastor. The new shipping manager at my current company had been one of them.

At my old company, female warehouse employees were hired, but their training and opportunities always lagged significantly behind their male counterparts. The warehouse she used to work at opened in the 1990s and her first assistant supervisor was hired in 2020. She was hired externally and remains the only supervisor in a 24/7 facility with a total of 11 warehouse supervisors. that constantly change. . (I finally retired after six years of being told I wasn’t enough to be a supervisor. Once at this new location, my career took off and I am in my third management position here. I was proud to hire and promote women for the warehouse job and happy to leave that environment behind.)

If I had been involved in hiring this round, I would have been very concerned about putting someone who believes that men and women are not equal in charge of a department and expecting them to manage it fairly, just based on my personal knowledge. of their beliefs. Is there a fair legal question that can be asked to determine if this would be a problem?

It is good practice to ask all managerial candidates about their experiences working and managing people who are different from themselves. It’s important for all of them, not just the people you already care about, because while the people you used to work with had their biases up their sleeves, many other candidates will come with biases as well. So it’s smart always Investigate how potential managers operate with people who are not like them.

Some ways to do this are with questions like:
• Can you tell us about a time when you worked to make sure your team was a place where everyone could thrive, particularly women and people of color? Possible follow up: How did you check to make sure those efforts were working?
• Can you tell us about a time when you navigated difficult dynamics around race, gender or other identities in your work? Possible follow up: What do you think were some of the root causes of that dynamic?
• How do you think about fairness and bias around things like race and gender when hiring or developing people? Possible follow up: How have you known when your equity efforts were working and not working?
• In your job as a manager, how do you approach learning about equity and inclusion issues? Follow: What is something you are working on to learn? What strategies are you using?

(If someone reading this is thinking, “I wouldn’t have anything good to answer those questions with,” that’s a sign to start thinking about it, especially if you’re managing people or want to manage people.)

Ideally, you would also have a diverse group of people involved in the hiring so that you can observe whether candidates treat people with similar respect, regardless of their race, gender, disability, and other possible differences.

But also, in this specific situation with your new shipping manager: I had worked with him before and had firsthand knowledge of how he operated at the time. It’s fair game to consider when you’re hiring, and to share with others in the hiring process. “He is a member of religion X” is not something that can be considered legally when hiring, but “he treated men differently from women, did not promote women regardless of their abilities, and made the two women on the team They felt left out.” decision-making” certainly is.

And of course, not all biases will show up in interviews, so you also need your company to commit to fairness once people are hired, such as implementing systematic ways to see who gets hired/promoted/ listened to/offered opportunities/paid more, having safe processes for people to report concerns and making sure they are addressed in a meaningful way, and having leadership that is willing to address things that are uncomfortable (to themselves and/or for the people around them).