The conclusion of my employee hunt saga. More things you may not like to talk about, but have to deal with.

Affirmative Action?


I work in a town that has long been more or less half-white, half-black. Since the library I direct is a public place, we have many of both communities who come here. I’m under some pressure to have a staff that represents both. No law or policy says so. It’s just an understood thing. My predecessor as director tried to keep a balance in the staff, especially the public service staff who spend most of their time on the front desk. I try to keep that up. It’s common sense, really.

Recently I had to hire a new full-time worker. Of fifteen applications I checked, four stood out as better qualified. Two were white and two black. These four I actually interviewed. The interviews all came one after another, making for a busy morning.

Each one went more or less the same way. I welcomed the interviewee into my office, asked how she was doing, and engaged in just a bit of introductory small-talk. It wasn’t too hard to find something to talk about. One used to work near my hometown. Another spent some time living not far from where I was born. You can usually find something to talk about with people pretty easily in a small town, if you grew up in the state yourself and keep your ears and eyes open. It’s good to do that in a job interview; you learn about people that way. Sometimes they volunteer information an interviewer isn’t really allowed to ask.

After that I went over the terms of the job, noting that there were benefits that helped to compensate for the low starting pay, mentioning that there were incentives to stay on for a long term. I stressed the priorities of public service, collection maintenance (which keeps you busy when there aren’t a lot of patrons—even when business is slow there is always something to do), and reliability. In the past I’ve been too easygoing at times with workers and have seen them take advantage of that by slacking off in slow times and constantly asking to rearrange their work hours. Better to get my bluff in on them at the start.

All of them professed their agreeability to the terms and their willingness to work. When I mentioned that being able to work with children was a plus, three cited experience working with them (two had it on their resumes). The fourth professed to love kids. They said what they figured I wanted to hear. I listened carefully to how they said it, what questions they asked, and what sorts of things they had said in their less guarded moments. Personnel people who do a lot of hiring and interviewing must know all kinds of ways to evaluate interviewees. I’m still learning.

When all was said and done, I had no really obvious frontrunners. Each had pros and cons. One really impressed me overall, but had two young children and so quite a lot of potential for conflict with the work schedule. One was past responsibilities with children and had solid work experience, but seemed less professional. The third had left her last job because she “needed a change”—not really what you want to hear if you hope to hire someone who will stay, but then she put in seven years at that last job and so doesn’t appear flighty. She was also the one with no real experience working with children. The last had worked with children, including underprivileged children, a good deal and had references from someone I know personally speaking very well of her work ethic. She was also the youngest candidate and had little work history. In some ways she was the most unknown quantity.

Candidate #2 called the next day to let me know that she had joint problems that could make bending over and reaching up to shelve books and read shelves difficult. I had made a point of mentioning that part of the job in the interviews, giving fair warning that this job would not involve sitting behind a desk all day. I appreciated her honesty. Unfortunately that honesty meant ruling her out.

And then there were three. Two of them ran ahead of the third—the woman who did not have much experience with children. Something I can’t quite articulate about her manner in the interview also left me wondering about her. Of the other two, the first interviewee, the woman with the two children, was just ahead in my book.

So I spoke with two senior staff members to get their input. One is black, the other white. They voiced a concern. Both my front-runners were black. They were concerned that if I hired another black employee (my last full-time hire for the desk was black), I would skew the balance. They were concerned that some days in the schedule there would be too few white staff in the library for the taste of white patrons. These senior staffers used to work the desk themselves as a team, and they had learned how many patrons showed an affinity for people who looked more like them.

It was not a concern I could dismiss out of hand. “Personally I think they should just get over it!” one of them said of patrons who gravitate toward members of their own group. I felt the same way. But I could not just ignore the reality of how patrons are. At the same time, I did not like the thought of taking on someone I did not consider the best candidate just because she was white and I wanted a racial balance. I don’t really like the concept of racial quotas, regardless of who is supposed to benefit. None of the three of us did.

In the end we decided on a plan. I would hire a black staffer, since she was the best candidate. And I would take special care to make sure we had white staff at the desk. The black staff could do a bit more of the shelf reading to keep the white staff on the desk more. Those of us whose work is mostly away from the desk will make a greater effort to be on it, especially on days when our white desk staff are off. With a few tweaks in our work routine, we should be able to maintain a good enough balance to keep all the patrons happy—while not antagonizing any of the staff or chaining those of us who have other responsibilities to the desk too much of the time.

That settled I dropped Interviewee #3 from consideration. It came down to the two black candidates. I was leaning just a bit toward #1. My advisors leaned toward #4, the younger candidate. They made a good case. In the end they persuaded me. They have always given me good advice in the past.

I called Candidate #4 and gave her the good news. She starts soon. We’ll see what happens.

Wow! Your job is so tough. I think you did a good job, DL. You are obviously a good listener and you respect your employees opinions. I hope it all works out. And even if it doesn't, you have hopefully one back up candidate to call. But I hope it'll be ok.


Btw, did you ask them what they thought the biggest selling book in the World is?



It's the Bible, btw...

Jeeze...what a world we live in today based on political correct thinking.

Poison.

Just hire the candidate who is the BEST CANDIDATE. Its that simple. Otherwise what? You pass up good people (whatever race) so you can have another cattle call?
For petes sake, you arent going to please everyone, so stop trying. People going into a library are going into the library to get books. If they have a problem beyond that then its something that is going to be MORE than you can or even should have to deal with.

The problem with this cancer of political correct thinking is that its not honest about what it is.
The next time someone is faced with this, hang a sign outside of the library saying something to the like of:

"All booked up on whitey, need more blacks!"

or perhaps:

"HIRING! Already have two homies. Need two honkeys for meeting our quota!. experience a plus but not as important as your color!"

Hire the best candidate. Regardless of color.
Experience, temperament, personality, and availability......and of course character.

content and character....over color.

(hey! that might be good material for a speech! )

Affirmative action is racism. Period. It should be based on ability and nothing else.

Hiring is rarely, if ever, based purely on ability. That's just silly idealism.

That's true. George W. Bush is living proof of that.

Elections are even less purely based on ability.

Steve horton hears a who:

""Elections are even less purely based on ability""

The fact that obama is doing so well in the primaries is proof of that. Funny enough from the same party pushing affirmative action.....hmmmmmmmm

Well THIS hire was, even if we did stop to think about other considerations along the way.

And, in some cases, are based even less on what the people actually voted for.