I don’t mean to knock what you’re saying, because I get it and agree—there’s not really anything on the level of a personal recommendation from someone you know and generally trust. It takes many of the unknowns out of hiring. But it definitely does underscore a certain systemic unfairness in the job market and hiring process. For instance, I remember when I was in college, it felt like legacy students or those from big feeder schools had a very serious leg up in terms of knowing how to “navigate” the institution. They knew what professors to take for certain classes, how to use January terms or summer semesters to knock out notorious pre reqs, and when to interview for prestigious paid internships at a time where I didn’t even know that was a thing (truly thought all internships were unpaid, and some of the really neat-sounding ones actually wanted you to pay them). Imagine my surprise coming back for senior year and learning there were people with job offers by fall semester from internships that paid them enough money to live in NYC over the summer and save a little extra on top of that!
And yet even then I had tremendous privileges, insight, and an advantageous network just by being at that school, which I never would have attended if a teacher hadn’t hassled me, considering my parents were pushing me to go to community college or, at most, a commuter school.
But in short, it makes me sad to think how insular the hiring process really is. Not even on the level of who you know—which is an obvious exclusionary barrier to many people—but even what you know, and knowing how to present yourself. Last year, our team passed on a POC candidate with the general consensus being that she never mentioned her team or shared credit with others when giving examples of her work, even when describing things that obviously took a lot of time and involvement from others. I agreed at the time, especially as we had another candidate, incidentally a white man, who spoke at length about his team and mentoring others (it made her omission that much more obvious). But with hindsight, I worry we didn’t cut her enough slack. It’s probably much easier to share credit and talk up the contributions of others when you don’t feel like your personal contributions are in danger of being minimized or erased. Maybe that woman was so used to people discounting her input on big projects, she didn’t want to risk mentioning anyone else and give us the opportunity to give them the credit and write her off. Would knowing that make it a less irritating trait in a colleague? Maybe not in the day-to-day…and maybe we were right to pass on her as a candidate, but it is pretty sobering to stop and consider all the ways we’re influenced, not only in who we hire but in how employees themselves act and view themselves, and where we each go to college, what we studied and accomplished there, and how it all comes together to reinforce unfairness and inequity in the job market.
