Unseen effects of employment discrimination

This is the third time a window on this vehicle has been hit by vandals in the dark of the night. The owner is a foreclosure refugee. He lives with friends on a block developed before the Model T; the houses have no driveways and residents must park on the street. Apparently window-shooting is a sport among local lowlifes.

A couple years ago, the guy who owns it was a top candidate for a job, but the would-be employer discriminated against him on account of his credit record. With that job, he would have caught up on mortgage payments. That means Wells Fartgo (WF or WTF?) would not have foreclosed on his house (with an attached garage). The employer ass-umed that this applicant's bad credit signaled a thief. Congratulations, dumbasses: Instead of preventing crime, you in effect caused three cases of vandalism and an attempted burglary (foreclosed-on buildings attract trouble).

Employee Screening Questions Too Intrusive

I just filled out an online application for a major retail chain and, after the main application where I submitted my legitimate information, came across the "personality screening" section that included the following:

• You have big regrets about your past.
  
• You were absent very few days from high school.
  
• Your stuff is often kind of messy.
  
• You have always had good behavior in school or work.
  
• Your friends and family approve of the things you do.
  
• You have to give up on some things that you start.
  
• You look back and feel bad about things you've done.
  
• You sometimes thought seriously about quitting high school.

The answer choices were "Strongly Agree," "Agree," "Disagree," and "Strongly Disagree." You couldn't weasel your way out with a choice like "Neutral" or "Neither."

Personally, I wish there had been one labeled, "None of your damn business!"

After that one about quitting high school, I stopped worrying about whether they'd like my answers or not. I'm not sure I want to work for a company that weeds people out based on how they click radio buttons on a web form before they actually get to meet me in person or talk to people who actually know me.

Breaking Résumé Rules and Getting Away With It

As a lot of us have seen, "rules" (or perhaps guidelines is a better word) appear in books aplenty on how to compose a résumé, what to include, and what not to include. The most common mistakes include:

• Putting "résumé" (or curriculum vitae (CV), if you're in academia) at the top (it's obvious what the document is).
• Including personal information such as your birth date/place, marital status, spouse's, children's, pets' names, etc.
• Including hobbies, especially the mundane, e.g., reading, being with family, or worse potentially controversial, e.g., religious or political activities, etc.

As Richard Herman and Linda Sutherland so aptly put in their book: The 110 Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters Make (And How to Avoid Them), "don't use as 'filler' something that is potentially dynamite [explosive, that is, not awesome/rad/phat]."

So it was to my dismay that, while temping in an HR office recently, I ran across dozens of CVs of doctors and others that have enough information to delight a stalker or identity thief and make HR staff say, "whatever." But these folks got good jobs with these papers. My résumé has been praised by my alumni career counselor (after seeking a variety of counsel). I occasionally get interviews but no further.

Perhaps the discrepancy is best explained by that conventional wisdom that seems mercilessly true: "It's not what you know, it's who you know."