Pants or not, kids or not?

VIRTUAL INTERVIEW: VIEW INTO HOME MAY REVEAL TOO MUCH

Studies show women who disclose parental status get lower salary offers.

If you have the good fortune of scoring a virtual job interview in the middle of a pandemic, the initial euphoria of possible employment may soon be replaced with anxiety over what to wear – as well as putting your home life on display to a potential employer.

And with good reason. Social scientists have found that traditional interviews – without set questions or scoring metrics – are poor predictors of job performance.

My advice as an employment lawyer and law professor boils down to this: you are under no obligation to introduce your prospective boss into your home life through video chat. In other words, there’s no shame in attempting to recreate that conference room environment at home.

What should you wear? Pants. Definitely wear pants, even if you think they can’t see the lower half of your body, like the unfortunate half-dressed reporter on Good Morning America whose bare legs were exposed on national television.

Basically, you should dress the way you would for an in-person interview, which may be varying degrees of formal, depending on the industry and the role you are interviewing for.

When I worked in a law firm, it was common for prospective lawyers to wear a suit to the interview, even though the office itself was business-casual.

Traditional job interviews are a contest of wills between a candidate’s desire to conceal their true qualities and an employer’s efforts to suss them out, through not-so-subtle questions like: “What are your weaknesses?”

Virtual job interviews upset the balance by revealing the contents of your home. This is unfair in the interview concealment tug-of-war. It’s not like your boss, let alone a potential boss, would show up at your doorstep and demand to see your apartment – though Henry Ford used to send inspectors to do just that, in exchange for a pay raise if you passed the inspection.

Should I hide my children? Certainly, you are under no obligation to disclose your children’s presence – and your prospective employer shouldn’t ask. Asking about children is often a proxy for gender discrimination, as mothers are disproportionately penalised for their status as parents.

For example, an experimental study by Stanford professor Shelley Correll suggested that participants gave lower ratings – and offered less pay – to female applicants who listed their membership in the parent-teacher association on their resume. By contrast, male applicants with children were offered higher salaries than their childless peers.

Does this mean men should roll out their kids for an “accidental” cameo appearance to enhance their stereotypical role as family breadwinner? Not necessarily. A study by business professor Erin Reid suggests that men preserve their privileged status in part by concealing the child care work they perform. In interviews with 115 workers at a consulting firm, one man said he was able to perform his consulting duties without anyone realising that he was also taking care of his son five days a week.

Asking about children often proxy for gender discrimination

Tippett is an associate law professor, University of Oregon The Conversation

Yvonne le Roux