Hi Friends,

The answer to this may be obvious, but I don't see it. I would like your input. 
 
I have been interviewing to fill an engineering position. I have an  excellent candidate who has been out of a job for a year. I tested  and tested the candidate on technical issues etc., and this person  seems to know her stuff. My other staff members interviewed her and  they couldn't find flaws either. Her education and prior employment  have been verified. The criminal background check is clean as well.  She is within our price range. 
 
She had been at her last place of employment for several years. None  of the people she reported to are still with the company (she says  she lost her job through reorganization/ downsizing) but the company  has verified her employment there as an engineer. 
 
However, she has been out of work for a year. She says she has been  job hunting through that time. I'd like to hire her but I wonder why  no one else has. The only thing I see is that she is a very big black  woman - which I don't normally see in engineering jobs. Do you think  this could be the problem or is there some other question I should  ask or some other check that I should do? 

Take Care

Tracy

Tracy,

I hear stories like this one several times a day. I do not hear it from hiring managers but from the job seeker's -- all very skilled, professional, over 40. Mostly I never get to see in person or over a video messenger session, so I can not say it their looks or dress gets in the way.

Most of the time when working with them to in their job seeking mode, we find a lot of times there is no click - connections. Also, someone starting out looking for a position after a downsizing has a lot of adjusting to do; and frankly it takes awhile for them to become their-self again and stop being bitter about what happened to them. Who would want to hire them with an attitude, not me?

I find when I get clients like this person out of work as long as she has, a year or more, are carrying some "Big Baggage", usually focused around "What is wrong with me, I can not get a job?" and it comes through in an interview. This could be a good reason no one has snapped her up yet.

So it comes down to a couple of things; if there was problems, trouble, etc., at her last job, why was she around for several years? If you can find out, was there a change of management or supervisor at her last place of work. Do we not find when people leave or are asked to leave for what ever reason, you find this change of management or supervisor has effected the employee's performance and they leave or are asked to leave?

Maybe you are reading too much in to this. I had a whole bunch of new hires we were uncertain at one time where we had so many come on board at once, I could not handle. The ones I had not spent enough time getting to know or seeing how they interacted with the other employees in a department; we had them go to our favorite Temp Agency and sign up. They came to work for us as Temps and the ones that worked out, we brought them on board as employees. Out of the twelve, two turned out to be a wrong fit. One we
found out within two weeks and the other almost 90 days. I suggest, you give her a true test and she what she can do for several weeks. If she is a bad apple, it will show up before 90 days. Hope this helps.

Regards

Rajul