2006-02-17
Qualification
I am not really quite sure what to make of this news item. Apparently the examination for job candidates at the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs includes, among its 300 questions, items asking people what sort of sexual practices they prefer. This may simply be an effort to avoid potential scandals in advance, or there may be a more elaborate plan. No indication is given as to what kinds of sexual preferences best qualify a person for the job, but it would seem that the best qualification for diplomats would be to incline toward compromising positions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I have a friend who was applying for jobs here and he said he was asked about his sexual preferences, and on one questoinaire there was even a question asking if he ever thought about killing his mother. He was asked point blank in interviews if he had/or ever had homosexual tendencies. Granted those weren't for government jobs, but still!
This is the kind of thing that makes a person wonder just what they are being hired to do.
Just a bit different than interviewing practices here in the states where you'd have a lawsuit on you in a NY minute if you asked a person if,
1) They were married.
2) They had kids.
3) What age they were.
Eric, having been on the other side of the interviewing desk and having had quite a lot of "character issue" employees, I sometimes yearn for the days before Name, Rank, & Serial Number job interviews. Label me too inquisitive, but current American interviewing practices, handcuffed by, IMHO, overly rigorous employment laws, makes hiring someone a tru roll of the dice.
Yeah, Darko, I know the problem. Then there is also the business of what you should leave out of CVs and recommendation letters. A lot of this derives from discrimination cases involving government agencies and (especially!) law firms, where questions such as what sports a person likes have been interpreted as coded strategies of getting information on race and ethnicity. Some of the regulation is silly, of course, even if the purpose of preventing discrimination is legitimate. And the question of what is intrusive depends on standards which constantly change (sometimes I still regret agreeing to a "drug test" as a condition for taking a crummy entry-level job years ago, which I hated and quit after six months). This seems like an area where it is hard to strike a decent balance between personal privacy and the fact that it is a person who gets hired, though you would probably agree that the ministry went too far.
On the other hand, it would at least serve to keep Seve Nazionale out of the diplomatic service. After all, some might say Miroslav Škoro having been in it was bad enough :)
Post a Comment