Privilege, illegal interviews, and burning curiosity

Photo by erin leigh mcconnell .

By Melissa Nightingale

After my post about how to kill your startup referral pipeline in a single interview, many members of the tech community DM’d, emailed, and slacked me to find out which startup had messed up. A couple messaged to find out which part of the interview was illegal.

Which company?

In response to the first question, we need to talk a bit about privilege. We need to start by acknowledging that many people, particularly minorities in tech, are not in a position to write a post about every sexist or illegal hiring practice they encounter.

In my early career, I worried that speaking up about the sexism I encountered in tech would make it harder for me to get hired. Only after nearly two decades in tech am I finally at a point where I can be vocal about this stuff and not worry that it’ll adversely impact my career. I don’t fear that local startups will blacklist me. I don’t worry that my techie friends won’t want to hang out with my anymore.

It is the hallmark of privilege that I can write a post about a startup’s messed up interview process and send it out into the world, hoping I spelled everything right but not at all worried about whether it’ll change the trajectory of my career.

Coming back to the original question — which startup are you talking about?

Frustratingly, we’re still not at a point where minorities can call out unfair hiring practices without concern for their careers.

The friend who had the bad interview experience is earlier in her career. She is clever and quick and eminently hirable, and some company will be incredibly lucky to have her. However, she doesn’t have the privilege of giving zero fucks about pissing off hiring managers.

I do. So I wrote the post with her permission, but I’m not about to undercut her ability to get hired in the future by outing her.

Which questions are illegal?

The second question that came up was from people who worried they’d been accidentally asking illegal questions in interviews. Ideally your HR teams would do interview training for first time hiring managers, but in the event that they haven’t, The Co-pour has you covered.

Here are a couple links to help you out. The out of bounds questions are similar for the US and Canada but there are a few notable differences. Interview rules in Europe and in Asia are really different so if you’re hiring globally, you’ll want to check on the country-specific rules before you get started.

Illegal interview questions in Canada.

Illegal interview questions in The States.

If you still find yourself teeming with curiosity about which company it was, I encourage you to shift that restless energy inward and focus on rooting out bad interviewing techniques within your own organization.

When I was first starting out, I learned a lot by shadowing seasoned hiring managers during the interview and offer process. I’ve also been fortunate to work with passionate recruiting and HR teams over the years. For more information about hiring, diversity and inclusion, there’s loads of great reading over at Model View Culture.