As I read through An Indiscreet Conversation on Hiring for the first time, I became increasingly

disappointed and agitated as I pictured the friends as profit-driven, cold-hearted, sexist

businessmen. However, upon finishing the case and classroom discussion, I had mixed feelings:

Matt, Andrew, Steven, and Joe had discussed a truly controversial topic and presented strong

points for both sides. I had particularly disappointed in Andrew’s point of view about hiring

women in his small business despite the fact that his wife had taken a 10 month maternity leave.

I was disappointed because it made sense – firms aim to make profit and employee leave can

cause a huge impact to finances and team relationships. As I thought about the topic I imaged

that this issue could be countered with a contract. However, I realized that an employment

contract may not necessarily prevent employee absence from maternity leave – in fact, Andrew’s

company would certainly get into more trouble if they denied the female employee from leaving. I

believe that benevolent racism/sexism is definitely something that is real – but at the same time,

it's still racism. If Andrew is committed to his company for the long run, a few months of leave

from an employee shouldn’t have such a huge impact. With a dynamic HR strategy that will

strategically distribute job responsibilities, I believe that the benefits of hiring the female

employee will outweigh the potential risk of employee leave in the long run.

Where is the line drawn when businesses are considering candidates for employment? While I

was not able to attend the second HR class due to my attendance at a weekend conference, I

have reviewed readings and researched concepts such as BFOQ before. I believe that HR is

highly subjective and legal consequences for discrimination can be avoided by twisting

explanations. I can recall an experience in first year as I tuned in on the hiring processes of one of

the organizations that I am a part of where hiring executives stressed the importance of “fit”.

Despite being a highly technical and analytical organization, employees would be no good

without fit with the rest of the team members – as a result, executives were able to turn away

highly-skilled candidates whom they were not friends with by using the reasoning that they didn’t

“fit”. I believe that friends can be thought of as friend groups and that this could also be ruled as a

form of discrimination. Had the executive known all candidates equally as well, they could have

made a much better assessment of fit and avoided the (potentially unintentional) discrimination.

I believe that this is an opportunity for change – what if the candidate spoke up and got to know

the hiring managers better? What if a system or application or procedure could help the

candidate do so? While I don’t have the skills or knowledge to make this happen today, I will

definitely follow the idea further throughout the course of COMM181.

While working on a competition case study in first semester, I found a statistic from StatsCan on

reports of discrimination of people age 15 and older. Reports of experiencing discrimination

occurred mostly during work, applying for jobs, and promotion at nearly 50% of visible and non-

visible minorities, male and female. Discrimination while attending school or classes was 4th,

resulting in approximately 25% of minorities. Thinking of this, I realized that as a full-time student

spending most of my time on the campus environment, I am likely to have not experienced as

much discrimination as others older than myself in the workforce. On the other hand, I believe

that this stat proves that older generations are more likely to conduct discrimination – as

Millennials continue to enter into their later stages of life, significant change will be expected in

HR practices and discrimination will be addressed with increasingly greater importance.