“Our policy is not to hire people who are not currently working at another job.”
According to a post at Reddit’s recruiting hell, this comment comes from a job seeker who applied for a position at a restaurant in the Pittsburgh area.
It’s not only restaurants that have this attitude. Nolan Church, former Google recruiter, told CNBC, “There is a truism in recruiting that the best people are not looking for jobs.”
The job posting restaurant at least allowed candidates to argue their point by asking this question: “Why do you think we should change our policy and hire you if you are not currently working?”
This approach has fallacies. Recruiters who automatically reject the unemployed miss out on great candidates, and it’s just a flawed approach to hiring talent.
Layoffs don’t always discriminate based on skill.
If you need to reduce your headcount, it makes sense that you’d choose to terminate the least productive employees on staff. Assuming that other people would do that leads to the idea that the victims of layoffs are necessarily worse employees than those who kept their jobs.
This is undoubtedly true when you have ten people doing the same job. If you have ten cashiers and you need to cut two positions, you’re most likely going to choose your two worst cashiers.
But most layoffs aren’t in situations where you have many people doing the same job; even if they are, there are other reasons not to pick the “worst” performer. For instance:
- Availability matters. For shift work (like in a restaurant), availability may be a crucial decision point that matters more than skill. You can always increase training, but if someone can’t work weekends, they can’t work weekends.
- Some companies value tenure over skill. Last-in-first-out is a common part of the decision calculus for layoffs.
- Decision-makers eliminate positions, not people. The company terminates whoever happens to be in the position at the time, regardless of knowledge, skills, and abilities.
- Entire teams lose their jobs at once. If a company decides to cease selling product Q, the entire sales team for Q loses their jobs. They could be great Q salespeople, but that product is no longer available for sale.
There are many other reasons why layoffs don’t reflect skills, and recruiters should be aware of this.
Poor performance isn’t the only reason for unemployment.
If you accept that there are people who perform poorly at work, you also need to accept that some managers are poor performers. If you accept that some managers are poor performers, you accept that managers sometimes make poor hiring and firing decisions. If that is true, then not everyone a manager terminates deserved termination.
Bad managers exist, and they sometimes fire the wrong person. Sometimes, good employees voluntarily leave companies because of bad managers. Do not assume that the unemployed person was the problem–it could have been the manager.
People have personal reasons for being unemployed.
Not everyone who is not in the workforce voluntarily chooses that because they are lazy–what appears to be the view of recruiters who don’t want to hire the unemployed. Consider the following reasons:
- Staying at home with children but are not ready to return to work.
- Taking care of an elderly parent or other relative but are now ready to return to work
- Resigning from a position to relocate with a spouse’s job (including military relocations) and are now ready to find a new job
- Quitting work for health reasons (including mental health reasons) and are now healthy enough to work again
- Needing a job with less stress and are searching for a job with more reasonable expectations.
None of these reasons indicate a lack of knowledge, skills, ability, or work ethic. While you could argue that you want someone who puts career over family (and plenty of companies want all your time and your soul), is that something you want to advertise? “We only hire people who don’t have any family obligations!”
If you don’t want to advertise it, it’s probably not what you want to use to make decisions. And those top three items? Far more likely to be women than men. Women make up 82 percent of the stay-at-home parents and 59 percent of the unpaid caregivers for the elderly.
If you’re looking to discriminate against women, rejecting people who have been caregivers is a great place to start. If you’d prefer to have a robust talent pool, looking at unemployed people is a great way to do so.
Practical reasons for hiring the unemployed
If going through all the logical reasons isn’t enough to persuade you, consider the financial and practical reasons. People who are currently employed will not leave their current job unless you can offer them something better–whether that is pay, benefits, or work-life balance. People who are unemployed aren’t as picky.
This doesn’t mean you can lowball them–because they become more desirable to your competitors as soon as they are hired–but it may make negotiations a little easier. It can also save time and money. They don’t need a notice period for their last job.
Overall, don’t be like the Pittsburgh restaurant. There are plenty of good people out there who are currently unemployed. Some are better than those who have jobs.
