Recruiters, don’t hide on a remote job that can only be done in certain states

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Recruiters don’t hide on a remote job that it can only be done in certain states.

I just spent 20 minutes and after filling out lots of information the form said that it could only be done in certain states and asked me if I was in the states listed below. There was a yes/no and I choose no.

Other job listings will say Remote and then list the states if they have limitations. This is a waste of time for everyone. Why hide this information?

There are a couple of other things that recruiters need to keep in mind when they are screening candidates. I’ll list them below.

  1. Don’t say a job is remote if it requires travel. In this case when I asked the person said that the person would need to travel for their job to a remote state and that may not be possible for many people.
  2. On LinkedIn screening questions many inappropriate and assuming questions are asked. I’ll give you an example.
    1. Do you have these certifications (list of certifications follows). If you don’t then you get rejected. I get the idea that you have to quantify someone’s knowledge but plenty of people have certs who are terrible. I know because I worked with them. Ask someone questions and be open to answers if you want to gauge someone’s knowledge.
    2. This job requires a degree. See above. Many major companies have understood that a degree doesn’t necessarily mean a more competent and capable worker.
    3. Are you a US Citizen and do you need sponsorship for this job? Just ask one. That is all you need to know. Tons of applications seek extreme detail about a person’s legal status. Is the screening process designed to find legal workers, or rather a thinly-veiled attempt to hire one kind of people over another?
    4. Can you pass a drug test? I have taken many drug tests in my life and never had a problem with the results. However, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t pass a drug test and it would mean absolutely nothing about their character or competence. I am not here to debate drug policy but rather what is the point of the drug screening? 95% of the jobs that require this aren’t some critical safety function and they are normally low-paid and minimum wage jobs. This is just another way to discriminate against minorities who may not share the same views on drugs as others. I myself have worked with many people who used marijuana and they were just as capable as anyone else.
    5. Are you ok with random background checks? Again this goes to the concept of trust. If you can’t trust the person then don’t hire them. Most people who don’t have a criminal background don’t become criminals. I worked with a company that did this and I never understood why. If someone becomes a criminal and it affects their job then there is a reason to address that. However, the truth is that I worked for people who were criminals and no one was doing background checks on them. They got away with criminal behavior and they still did their job. I don’t approve of criminal behavior, but in my experience from watching it happen first-hand, it didn’t stop them from being an asset to the company. In fact, it was necessary for the company to prosper.
    6. Don’t ask about a person’s past. It isn’t relevant. Don’t act like your company is a paragon of virtue and ethics. I have worked in many companies that have done some really illegal things. Either by ignorance or maliciousness. One company told me that I was exempt when I was not. I was surprised to hear that and I looked up the law and shared it with HR the exact code that stated my job title/class was non-exempt. They agreed with me after they had been educated. The more a company tries to prove how legal and compliant they are, the more there is something they are hiding.
    7. Name one of your weaknesses. This question is such a piece of work. You are supposed to share something that is a problem for you. We can understand our own challenges but that doesn’t mean we have to share that with others. No one has the right to know something about you that you don’t wish to share. What would be a better question is, name a problem that you had at work, and what did you do to solve it? That gets down to the real thing that happens at work. There are problems that need to be solved. Work isn’t about your personality, it’s about what you can do for the company.
    8. What high school did you graduate from? If I see this on a form I close the job application. This is about checking some random box that no one cares about. No one high school has any relevance to any job even minimum wage jobs. How you did in high school is not the real world. Why would you think that graduating makes any difference? If someone didn’t graduate high school and I was a hiring manager and I thought they were good for the job I would hire them. People’s past does not determine their future. People can grow and change and become more than they were.
    9. How many years of experience do you have with X? If you think that the number of years that you have done something means that you are better at it, you are sorely mistaken. Plenty of people do the least possible and they may have 10 years of experience and understand it less than someone who is motivated and only knows it for a month. Time has no relevance in learning. In fact, many people forget things and you could say that the longer they work with something the more likely they are to forget something. Why don’t you ask instead something like “Do you remember things you don’t want to remember?” That shows who has a good memory and who will work with the details.
    10. Tell us more about you in the box below. Why don’t you give someone 10 minutes and call them? That will tell you more than 10,000 words will ever do. Words are tiny in meaning.
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Recruiters if you want to be efficient, change how you are treating candidates.