I’ll tell you the truth: I’m tired of cultural fit. It seems to have evolved into this “let’s get around discrimination laws” thing. Yeah, I know some of it is valid. If everyone else in the company adores working in the office, hiring someone who hates the office makes no sense. If your culture is working 70 hours a week, then you want that right type of cultural fit by golly.
But this? This type of cultural fit assessment has to go:
The text reads: Please record a short video clip telling us two silly or funny stories of something that happened in your life. Be casual and fun: we want to see what your personality will be like.
Can we just say no to things like this? Unless you’re trying to hire a comedian, this type of thing just screams, “we don’t know what we are doing, but we sure love discrimination for random reasons!”
Do you know when you should assess a person’s personality? In the interview.
I’m hilarious in person. (I swear…_)
Ask me to tell two short silly or funny stories on camera with no guidelines, and I may not come off that way. Plus, what is this job for? Yes, I do a lot of standing on a stage and speaking (or at least I did pre-pandemic and hope to do so again), so yeah, you want to know if I can tell a story.
But in my previous life as an HRIS analyst, this would have nothing to do with the job.
Stop doing things like this. It’s off-putting to candidates. It doesn’t help you find the right person (for most jobs).
Please. Stop this. NOW.
We want to see just how badly you want this job, so — in addition to the usual stress of a job interview — we want to see if you’re willing to abase yourself by putting on a totally irrelevant, dumb, little dog and pony show for our amusement. Hey, what’s the problem? It’s not the Squid Game or anything.
It’s hard to imagine this process attracting any serious candidates, or leading to any type of meaningful position. But, if there ever were a case for paying people for interviews — a topic recently covered — this might be an apt one.
This is dumb. Who at the company has time to sit there and watch all the videos anyway?
I applied for a floater admin job at a law firm and they wanted me to do a video interview. It was timed, you didn’t get the questions in advance, and of course, it went about as well as you’d expect. A Zoom interview where you actually interact with someone? That’s fine. But I decided I wasn’t going to do this again, nor was I going to do the recorded phone screens. It’s so dismissive.
I am fine with this because it tells me immediately I have no desire to work there. If they don’t do this but it’s who they are and I get the job won’t last long. At least this way I know to run away fast.
That’s a thinly veiled way to age discriminate too. A younger eager influencer will bust out a video in a minute. A seasoned worker may struggle technologically, or may decide not to act like a circus monkey and walk away. They’ve effectively made it unlikely for anyone under 35 to apply and go through with the video.
It could enable other types of discrimination too. A video will also show sex, race, color, possible disabilities, as well as age, before the decision is even made whether to interview the applicant.
I wouldn’t work at this company. Probably filled with overly exuberant pranksters who egg each other on. Doubt that much work gets done either.