Hiring the right person is hard. It’s truly difficult to judge someone’s value based on atwo-page summary of her career and a few interviews. Therefore, hiring managers use something called proxies to help determine someone’s potential. One of these proxies is a college degree, another is current employment. Many managers reject anyone who is not currently employed because — the logic goes — if they were truly good employees they would not be unemployed.
While it’s true that bad employees are more likely to be unemployed than good employees, it’s absolutely not true that all unemployed people are lousy. In fact, some of them are fabulous. Strike that — many of them are fabulous.
Now, there is big difference between someone who is unemployed because they were laid off, took time off to raise children or take care of ailing relatives, or is a recent grad, and someone who was fired. A layoff is a business decision where someone loses a job because the position is going away. A firing is a where someone loses a jobbecause that person isn’t the right fit. You should considered laid off people equal to their currently employed counterparts. You should be more cautious about fired people, but here’s why you should strongly consider hiring someone who has been fired.
To keep reading, click here: 5 Reasons You Should Hire Someone Who Has Been Fired
Well said!!!!
Been laid off twice and fired once. In the latter case, my boss’s boss lied to me in material ways at least twice that I know of. In all three cases I landed very well afterwards and have zero regrets about the termination events.
Bravo Suzanne! Unfortunately some managers have a blindness to certain things – hiring those “fired” is one of them.
Take my manager as a case in point. We recently had a candidate who was “fired” from one of his positions a couple of years ago.
Unknown to him (or at the time of the interview, my manager) is that I was recently in that same position! I knew what the manager at that old place were like (and it wasn’t pretty). After seeing that this guy, who I thought was an otherwise good candidate, was going through for being fired I was so glad that I left before they fired me.
Try as I did, I couldn’t get my manager to understand just how toxic that old environment was. He was just too stubborn to listen. His response to anything I tried to explain was “I just don’t hire those who were fired. period.”
Sigh, it is not only the candidate loss; but, also our team’s as well. This candidate was, in my opinion, a better candidate then me in one regard – I was in that old position for 14 months before I called it quits while this candidate was in the position for 2 years before being fired.
Oh, and in the last 5 years that old company had 7 people in the position. Someone other than the employee should be fired – like that old manager!
And perhaps my new manager should be fired as well. Here was an insider (me!) to explain that firing and explain the truth and, yet, my manager refused to listen.
Well said!
Often I do feel that management simply wants to make the hiring process a lot easier by shrinking the pool the easy way. Getting rid of those who have been fired from their previous job does not make them inexperienced nor a liability. It can simply be someone who was fed up with the way the old system worked and spoke out against it. When managers dislike hearing the truth, they tend to fire that person. That person could be a great asset to another company, despite having been fired!
Thank you for writing that! As someone who had to choose between keeping their professional ethics and keeping their job (guess which I choose) and then thanks to the rules of unemployment ended up in a toxic company that article is really important. I finally found a part time job but it was really hard and its still a struggle to even get an interview.
Hiring is an investigation, and most managers are uncomfortable with that. Almost all people think they can interview by common sense and gut feel. Hiring managers avoid their lack of technique by talking about their projects and the company. They judge candidates by enthusiasm for the job. I was sometimes tempted to say that I had dreamed of working for XCompany since I was a teenager.
When I became responsible for hiring people, I asked about what the person had done in general and accepted what the person stated on his resume. I found out that this was ineffective and read some books about interviewing. That helped a lot.
I was much more successful after asking people to describe the detail of some things they had done. This was an eye-opener. Only 2 in 5 could “remember” the details of their past school courses or work experience. Their memories were not bad; they had exaggerated their experience.
Regardless of good interview technique, the worst applicants are trying as hard or harder to be hired as the best applicants. I estimate 1 in 5 will be a mistake no matter what. About 2 in 5 will lie on their resume about their experience and duties. Large companies have a difficult time dealing with that.
The corporate response is to increase the objective procedures used to hire, seemingly without limit. Degrees, system knowledge, narrow and direct experience, are all used to screen out bad applicants in a situation where the company remains ignorant of individual detail even after the interview.
Managers shift responsibility to Human Resources to avoid failures. HR shifts responsibility to a detailed checklist to avoid blame for failures.
There is a pernicious idea of “best hire”. It is a way for HR to justify itself. Among 50 applicants, how can we hire the best one? Attempting to do that leads to sorting, keywords, strict, narrow criteria, and delays. Everyone must be considered, and all but one must be rejected.
Instead, companies should screen the 50 by very loose criteria, then choose the first applicant who meets the reasonable requirements of the job as interviewing proceeds. This is fair if resumes are chosen at random, and it saves a lot of time. There is no “best hire” in the pile. If the manager knows what the person will do(*), then the first person to solidly meet the criteria will be fine. Good hiring requires an extensive, direct interview and checking of references. There isn’t time to do this to 40 people to find the best one.
Often, a person who will learn something in the job will be more interested and pleased than an expert who finds little challenge in it.
(*) I have twice talked myself out of a job by asking what I was supposed to do or how I would in practice accomplish the thing being proposed.
In one case, the hiring manager wanted me to work with two senior managers in the software company to harmonize their plans. They often came into conflict about what they wanted to do. I asked what my authority would be. I was skeptical that I would have authority to tell them what to do. What would happen when they were telling me what should be done?
The hiring manager thought about this for a minute, agreed with me, and decided he didn’t need a person after all for the proposed position. Unfortunately, he didn’t pay me a consulting fee for saving him much grief.
Thank you for this article!
I was fired once because “I wasn’t a good long-term fit,” i.e. the Director didn’t like me that much. My job was easy, so I did my job in 1/2 a day, then did work for the notch above me, which I was supposedly woefully underqualified for. They didn’t like that I pointed out “but I’m already doing it.” I feel that if the higher-ups liked me more, they would have made an intermediary position for me. There was absolutely no performance-based reason to fire me.
This is definitely a great and relevant article!
I remember working at a cafe once, when someone came in to inquire about any open positions. He informed my manager and me that he had been fired from his previous job for being involved in a physical fight with another employee. He also informed us that he had already gone thru several interviews, that he felt were going well until he mentioned having been fired from his previous job for the physical fight. My manager decided to give him a chance, and he turned out to be one of the greatest, hardworking co-worker I ever had. He truly regretted the incident and was glad he was given a second chance from which he can build until his next job opportunity.
It pays as an applicant to take the time to explain (or at least address) anything that might be cause for concern in a cover letter. Hiring managers might be leery of applicants that are not currently employed, especially if they’ve been fired, but if you can set their mind at ease right off the bat you have a much better chance of getting in the door.