Hiring Paradox
I just had the brilliant thought, “What if you answer an illegal interview question on your resume?” For example:

So now anyone who reads my resume has violated my right to keep my race and ethnicity out of the hiring decision. Although it’s my fault that information was disclosed, I can certainly argue that it now affects the hiring decision!
| This entry was posted on Saturday, September 24th, 2005 at 6:32 am and is tagged with interview question, paradox, resume. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |

You could argue it, yes…but you can argue ANYTHING, sonny-boy…could you prevail in a legal argument? NOT A CHANCE. The problem here is that YOU volunteered the information. The law, at least as I understand it, prohibits the HIRING party from MAKING INQUIRIES about your race and ethnicity. The fact that you offered the information up unsolicited leaves the ball in your court…there is no way you could prove those factors were used to deny you a position. And, of course, in a Real-Life hiring situation your inclusion of the statement would probably weigh against you, since it would be indicative of poor judgement – but that’s a completely legitimate reason to not hire someone. I would think someone dealing with this programming stuff would have a better grip on issues involving logic, but then what does an old Parody Writer know…
When you’re in an interview and you feel it’s going poorly, it might be fun to make the interviewer squirm and say something like this:
“Oh, I really do hope I get this job, my boyfriend [substittude "girlfriend" if you're female] will be really disappointed if I don’t get it.”