Hiring standards are dropping

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midwestpa24 said:
My wife recently sent me a resume a friend of her's sent, looking for my wife's recommendation to an employer. This is a person with at least some college education, and working in a professional office environment. It was a simple, unformatted, Word document (could have been done in Notepad), with name, contact information, and the name of her current employer. That was her resume. My wife was looking for advice on what to tell her friend without being mean.

Is it the education system? I had to learn resumes in high school, and went through several classes that dealt with it in college, including one taught by a former Fortune 100 recruiter. If you so much as missed a single space or punctuation you failed.
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Failing a student customer is bad for business.
 
mandm said:
Being asked to take a drug test is demeaning and disrespectful. I understand the reason behind it, but I would never want to work for an employer who asked me to pee in a cup.
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I'm not sure that I would want to work for an employer who does not drug test employees.

Safety is the first priority. I don't want someone in my lab operating equipment at hundreds of thousands of Volts who is hung over or impaired, nor do I want them driving a forklift or assembling critical equipment.

I can respect the right to decline, but understand that in certain industries we have to accept the the random test as the price of protecting the rest of the employees and ourselves. You can decline to be tested, but you won't work in my company.
 
I’ve NEVER not been in one. Once for a short time I was in FOUR! Two for the same place I volunteered, the EAA…
 
X3 Skier said:
Or tire.
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Or toast BOTH sides the bread.
ArrowFlyer86 said:
If you're chronically desperate for employees and you don't want to pay more, then you don't have a hiring problem, you have a strategy problem.
If you're chronically desperate for employees and you CAN'T (not won't, but CANT) pay them more - then your company is probably circling the drain and no one should want to work for you. At least not if they want to envision a future at the company.
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Some work people just don't want to do. I paid young men .50 cents a bale to stack hay. You know how many bales you can stack in an hour? I usually got one day of work out of them...so I built a machine to do it.

Now the Mexican guys would work like hell for that kind of money, but apparently we have scared them off around these parts.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
If you're chronically desperate for employees and you don't want to pay more, then you don't have a hiring problem, you have a strategy problem.
If you're chronically desperate for employees and you CAN'T (not won't, but CANT) pay them more - then your company is probably circling the drain and no one should want to work for you. At least not if they want to envision a future at the company.
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Companies don't get to set their prices where they want - they have to be competitive in their market. So you can only pay your employees what your customers are willing to pay them. You'd be surprised how many times a company will sell something during a slow period @ their cost - just to be able to continue giving their employees a paycheck and keep everyone working.
 
StraightnLevel said:
I'm not sure that I would want to work for an employer who does not drug test employees.

Safety is the first priority. I don't want someone in my lab operating equipment at hundreds of thousands of Volts who is hung over or impaired, nor do I want them driving a forklift or assembling critical equipment.

I can respect the right to decline, but understand that in certain industries we have to accept the the random test as the price of protecting the rest of the employees and ourselves. You can decline to be tested, but you won't work in my company.
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The problem is that drug tests pop for past usage in addition to current usage. If someone smoked a doobie Friday, that's not going to impact their ability to work on Monday, but that test is still gonna be positive. That same person drinking a mickey of vodka on Friday will also be just fine working on Monday, but the test won't be positive. I have no problem, at all, testing people for active impairment on a job site. There are legit safety issues with operating a forklift drunk or high. But that's not the protocol that's in place.
 
mandm said:
Being asked to take a drug test is demeaning and disrespectful. I understand the reason behind it, but I would never want to work for an employer who asked me to pee in a cup.
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One of the most entertaining work meetings I ever attended was back in the early 90's when corporate decided to implement random drug testing at the research center where I worked. They actually said it was because much of the staff was young, well paid, and we were located near a college town, so we fit the demographics of a business enterprise where drug use might be a problem. This fuzzy logic did not set well with the scientific staff, who didn't seem to be exhibiting any problems in the first place.

So, corporate sent two HR reps to the research center to explain the program. Since they knew they were talking to an audience of scientists, there was a lot of emphasis on how the testing was foolproof and even (with frequent references to their notes) explaining, kinda, the wonders of how sample handling and prep and LC-MS analysis worked.

The problem was, my department included not just the synthetic chemists who already understood this pretty well, but also the Analytical Sciences group, a bunch of high-power Ph.D's who had at various times in their academic careers been involved in developing the analytical methods and/or the analytical instruments that HR was so badly explaining.

The systematic dismantling of HR's 'foolproof' claims by the group was both thorough and hysterical. HR slunk away, and during my remaining years in that job, we never heard another word about drug testing.
 
172andyou said:
The problem is that drug tests pop for past usage in addition to current usage. If someone smoked a doobie Friday, that's not going to impact their ability to work on Monday, but that test is still gonna be positive. That same person drinking a mickey of vodka on Friday will also be just fine working on Monday, but the test won't be positive. I have no problem, at all, testing people for active impairment on a job site. There are legit safety issues with operating a forklift drunk or high. But that's not the protocol that's in place.
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Not all jobs nor are all drugs are created equal. I don’t mind that some folks don’t want/don’t support pre-employment or random screening but, as mentioned, for some jobs/employers it’s the price of entry and last I checked most folks aren’t forced to work in those industries/roles.
 
Half Fast said:
Ya gotta have some fun with 'em.....

When they ask to see your receipt, act like you didn't hear them and begin to walk past. When they ask again, turn and say "Eh?" When they again repeat the request, ask them to speak up. With just a little effort, you can have them shouting "RECEIPT!" at the top of their lungs. Once you've gone about as far with it as you think you can, just smile and say, "Oh, I don't need any help. I'm sure I can carry this to my car, but thank you!" Then walk out.
:devil:

(And yes, I've done this.)
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I'll try that. :lol:

One thing I have done is when the person says ''receipt?'', I hold mine up and say, ''No thanks, I have one''...

Sadly, in this area, Walmart is the pinnacle of many folks career ladder.
 
X3 Skier said:
Since I had the highest Security Classification (and Position) possible, I was subject to random drug testing. No big deal to me. I didn't even need a "Safe Place" for the test.
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And good for you. When I held a security clearance and had a sensitive job, it wasn't a big deal for me either. That was a long time ago.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Point of fact. It wasn't the Karen's that released the involuntary committed from institutions. It was the Reagan administration deinstitutionalization in '81 to cut budgets that released the mentally ill to "community care".

From JAMA:
"With the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, the federal government ended direct federal funding for community-based nursing homes that primarily treated patients with mental health problems and required the screening of patients entering nursing homes to assure they had legitimate medical illness [18]."

So, not being political, just correcting the record.
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While I don’t disagree, that is only half of the story. But ROC stops me educating y’all.
 
Consider workers comp insurance effect on this. Then you have to treat everyone equally - can't test production w/out testing engineering.
 
mandm said:
Being asked to take a drug test is demeaning and disrespectful. I understand the reason behind it, but I would never want to work for an employer who asked me to pee in a cup.
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Not all industries/offices are the same. If you have a business/office that is nothing but a bunch of pencil-pushers and computer jockeys, fine. No reason to waste expense on drug testing unless you suspect something that violates company policies. When you work in most any manufacturing environment, you can't afford to have people working impaired. Whether it's working with lathes, driving forklifts, or office personnel on the premises. Worker's comp and company liability policies would skyrocket (read: high expense to the company) if you DIDN'T have a drug-screening program in place. Each company's policy on what drugs they want to test for is up to them and their own risk tolerance.
 
TCABM said:
Not all jobs nor are all drugs are created equal.
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Yeah, that's fair. I suppose part of my position is just on the pro-freedom grounds. I don't think that people should lose jobs unless their drug use actually interferes in their job. Or, really, that an employer dictate anything that happens outside of the workplace unless it's going to cause a safety issue within the workplace. But, yeah, it's fair to point out that some drugs are more defensible than others.
 
I've never worked in a job requiring random drug testing, but I've had to take a pre-employment drug test a couple of times. It was a joke, with several weeks warning. It did nothing to eliminate the hiring of drug users, but it prevented the hiring of drug users lacking the self control to abstain for a few weeks... which perhaps was exactly the point.
 
As an Air Force pilot, I was drug tested. As a television news employee, I was drug tested. As a commercial pilot today, I am drug tested. No big deal.

Years ago, I had a friend at the airport who owned two auto dealerships. He told me how hard it was to hire salespeople, despite good wages, use of a late model car, etc. He said once they found out they had to pass a drug test before getting hired, most never came back.
 
172andyou said:
Yeah, that's fair. I suppose part of my position is just on the pro-freedom grounds. I don't think that people should lose jobs unless their drug use actually interferes in their job. Or, really, that an employer dictate anything that happens outside of the workplace unless it's going to cause a safety issue within the workplace. But, yeah, it's fair to point out that some drugs are more defensible than others.
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Not to mention some jobs have an on-call requirement, so you’re never really ever not at work.

Personally, I find mandatory OT and shift work much more draconian than being subject to drug testing as a condition of employment.
 
TCABM said:
Not to mention some jobs have an on-call requirement, so you’re never really ever not at work.
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Also some jobs require a security clearance and involve access to classified information, and you don't have to be "at work" to make an unauthorized disclosure. Apart from inadvertently disclosing while stoned (and who'd trust what you say then anyway?), the bigger concern is that it puts you in a vulnerable position where you can be leveraged or blackmailed into obtaining and providing info. And yes, that really does happen.
 
Try passing a lifestyle poly as a condition of employment
 
Half Fast said:
WTH is a poly lifestyle?! (I probably don't want to know....)
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I bet he's talking about a lifestyle polygraph, which until somewhat recently was used screen for LGBT people under the excuse that they could be blackmailed to prevent being outed.
 
I got random drug tested a lot when I flew for a living. It appears they go by alphabetical order.

Yeah, my last name starts with ''A''.

Even the testing folks noticed all the random pilots seemed to have a last name starting with either A, B or C...

I once got caught in ANC for 3 days waiting for the weather to clear living on the company dime...well, company penny.

And yes, when notified I needed to report to the drug test place, I would remark, ''I picked a good day to quit sniffing glue''...
 
X3 Skier said:
Since I had the highest Security Classification (and Position) possible, I was subject to random drug testing. No big deal to me. I didn't even need a "Safe Place" for the test.
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You were the President??? :D
 
Gilbert Buettner said:
As an Air Force pilot, I was drug tested. As a television news employee, I was drug tested. As a commercial pilot today, I am drug tested. No big deal.

Years ago, I had a friend at the airport who owned two auto dealerships. He told me how hard it was to hire salespeople, despite good wages, use of a late model car, etc. He said once they found out they had to pass a drug test before getting hired, most never came back.
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They’ve tried to nab me twice at work with “random” drug tests. Just because I’m strange doesn’t mean I’m on drugs.
 
mandm said:
Being asked to take a drug test is demeaning and disrespectful. I understand the reason behind it, but I would never want to work for an employer who asked me to pee in a cup.
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I have had to take them a couple of times... I agree it is a little demeaning... but, if they require it for one, it has to be for all.

Have even taken a few psychometric and "pre-hire aptitude" tests. Guess some bosses don't want to hire someone smarter than them... :p:D:cool::);)
 
Ventucky Red said:
I sent this to my HR department after I had to let 2 "kids" go last year, it was a disaster.

Nearly 4 in 10 employers avoid hiring recent college grads in favor of older workers - Intelligent

Intelligent.com surveyed 800 U.S. hiring managers on why Gen Z college graduates are less desirable to hire.
www.intelligent.com www.intelligent.com
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Interesting article. What jumped out at me:
However, employers who want to keep their younger hires may have to shift their own expectations and training protocols

“Gen Z hires need a lot of mentoring,” Gayeski says. “They may need very specific guidance about what to wear, how to write an appropriate business email, or how to speak up in a meeting.”
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Given the number of places I’ve worked where anything beyond the three days every six months or year that we spent in training was frowned upon, I can see where a large proportion of companies don’t even want to deal with employees who would need mentoring.
 
Ventucky Red said:
I sent this to my HR department after I had to let 2 "kids" go last year, it was a disaster.

Nearly 4 in 10 employers avoid hiring recent college grads in favor of older workers - Intelligent

Intelligent.com surveyed 800 U.S. hiring managers on why Gen Z college graduates are less desirable to hire.
www.intelligent.com www.intelligent.com
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1 in 5 employers have had a recent college graduate bring a parent to a job interview

Wow..!!!

I am guessing the had to get their mother to drive them to the job interview.??
 
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