Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit

dcblogs writes: An Ivy league graduate, with a Ph.D. in geophysics, Cheryl Fillekes, who also specializes in Linux and Unix systems, was contacted by Google recruiters four separate times over a seven year period. In each instance, she did well enough on the phone interviews to get invited to an in-person interview but was rejected every time for a job. She has since joined an age discrimination lawsuit against Google filed about two months ago by another older worker. "The amended lawsuit also alleges that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 'multiple complaints of age discrimination by Google, and is currently conducting an extensive investigation.'"

Comments

First

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to google this but I told me the news was too old.

Re:First

[Nick Number]

I tried to google this but I told me the news was too old.

Why did you tell you that?

Commission

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very common for people to pass phone screens but fail onsite interviews. The phone screen is just an early warning system for people who have no chance. The fact that this lady got equally far in the process 4 times is probably a good thing - it means the process is consistent.

The problem is that the recruiters actually contacted her 4 times and misled her about her chances. If you have already been rejected once, you are obviously NOT an "ideal candidate". And the reason why the recruiters did this is simple: they are paid on commission. It's a fail system, and in this case it wasted the candidate's time, it wasted the interviewers' time, and now it will waste the courts' time.

I'm sure age discrimination is real, but that's not the issue here.

Re:Commission

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Can't just be the recruiters. Someone above them has to either be actively allowing them bring people back in who have already been rejected three times before or they're just so disorganized they don't keep records on that kind of thing. Given who we're talking about that seems less likely, but you never know. I can see maybe bringing someone in a second time if the first on-site interview is a "near miss", but four times? That's just weird.

It's not weird at all. Google had 53,600 employees as of 2014, spread over 40 countries. No matter how good Google is at collecting data, it doesn't mean they have perfect records, or processes in place for employment.

I was working for them as a contractor some years ago when I got an email from one of their recruiters (she was in the USA). So they definitely are not all-knowing. I've spoken to her since (referred some people to her) - her job is just to scour lists and development projects looking for talent. It's not like she knows what vacancies are available, or much about the people she contacts - just their work. And she is one of many Google talent spotters. They have no way of knowing whether someone else has contacted you before or if you already work for Google in some capacity.

The phone interview I had was done by HR, not the managers of the area were I wound up working - that experience was consistent with many companies (HR are clueless).

Re:Commission

[Dutch Gun]

No, they're that huge. I've worked at Microsoft as a contractor several times in the past, and the different groups might as well be completely different *normal sized* companies, each with their own hiring process, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if Google was the same way.

Re:Commission

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't just be the recruiters. Someone above them has to either be actively allowing them bring people back in who have already been rejected three times before or they're just so disorganized they don't keep records on that kind of thing.

Could be legal restrictions too.

Not sure about USA, but here in EU, employer is legally allowed to store applicant profiles only for 6 months.

Summary mentions four interviews during 7 years, so the earlier mention about non-selection would have expired.

Re:Commission

[larkost]

Google recruiting is just that disorganized. I too got to the in-person interview stage, but did not make it though for that position. Then about a week later, ironically while I was sitting in a conference session next to several of the Google employees who interviewed me, I got an email from a Google recruiter who was trying to recruit me for that exact same position.

Note that this was an internal Google recruiter, not a "bounty hunter". They really are that disorganized.

And if her interviews went anything like mine, the in-person has MUCH higher standards than the phone screen, and does not necessarily have much bearing on the job I was being interviewed for (three interviewers asked me repeated questions about how hard links are implemented in on-disk filesystem structures for a Mac Sysadmin position).

Re:Commission

[Dutch Gun]

You're thinking of Google like a smaller company, and it just doesn't work that way. I wouldn't be surprised if she was applying for different positions in completely different groups or sections of the company. I'd imagine each section manages their own hiring.

Applying multiple times at a giant corporation is not a "fuck up". You probably need to interview specifically with the group that's doing the hiring. I'm not 100% sure how it works at Google, but when I applied at Microsoft, I was applying specifically for a particular development group, for example. When I was applying as a contractor, it was even more specific, as I was interviewed by the lead developer on the project I would be working on.

This makes sense because while someone may be a lousy fit for one particular group, they may happen to have the skills, experience, and personality to fit in with a different group. There's little chance (with some rare exceptions) you could conduct a generic interview at Google or Microsoft to determine whether or not someone should be hired. Interviewing is also a highly subjective process, so you don't want to exclude someone based solely on another person's decision. You might lose out on otherwise great candidates who just didn't click in another interview.

Does indeed happen.

[BrookHarty]

Getting into my late 40's, I find my friends are experiencing this all over. EMC keeps contacting a buddy who is a storage architect, he designed storage hardware at sun, they never make an offer after multiple interviews, he says its because hes almost 60. Facebook keeps calling a few of my buddies, but they too never get hired and are in their 50's. I was turned down by 2 companies when they learned my age and I had a family. But I dont want to work in a sweat shop anymore, so its good to know exactly how bad some places can be. Amazon so far seems to be hiring everyone, because they burn them out quicker than they can hire.

Yeah, people are working until retirement age now, so this is a problem. (You know, that reset button that wipes out your entire life savings called divorce)

Re:Does indeed happen.

[Dutch Gun]

We don't really know what the facts of the case are, but I wonder what it is about people that lead them to believe they're being discriminated against based on a particular factor, like age, race, etc? I've gone to plenty of in-person interviews where I didn't get the job. I could often tell when I didn't answer the questions as well as I'd have liked. For instance, I'm a pretty decent programmer, but my math skills are not outstanding. If the interviewer asks a bunch of math-intensive questions, it's nearly always game over for me. I've had other interviewers ask me really abstract problems, such as how to calculate the number and types of elevators a particular-sized building needed. Honestly, I had no fucking clue. I'm a videogame programmer, not an architect. I reasoned it out as best I could, and obviously I didn't guess well enough.

Has anyone ever had an experience where they were positive they had a good chance at the job, but nothing came of it? Honestly, I don't think I ever have. Rather, the ones I came away from feeling really good about were generally the ones in which I was offered a job. I'm also sort of curious why someone would interview at the same company four times. Good lord, after the second or third time being rejected, I would have told the next interviewer to piss off, and let them know exactly why.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[quantaman]

Getting into my late 40's, I find my friends are experiencing this all over. EMC keeps contacting a buddy who is a storage architect, he designed storage hardware at sun, they never make an offer after multiple interviews, he says its because hes almost 60. Facebook keeps calling a few of my buddies, but they too never get hired and are in their 50's. I was turned down by 2 companies when they learned my age and I had a family. But I dont want to work in a sweat shop anymore, so its good to know exactly how bad some places can be. Amazon so far seems to be hiring everyone, because they burn them out quicker than they can hire.

Yeah, people are working until retirement age now, so this is a problem. (You know, that reset button that wipes out your entire life savings called divorce)

Any theories on why this is happening?

My thought is it might be culture thing, unless the new hire is coming on as a team lead or manager they're probably going to be working under someone in their 20s or 30s. I'm wondering if this is simply a case of people feeling weird having a subordinate 10-20 years younger than themselves or bringing a 45 year old onto a team with a bunch of twenty-somethings.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[Darinbob]

That's what "culture" often means. The word makes little sense elsewhere. Anything I can think of that's "culture" a good corporation will want to mix up anyway; otherwise you get monoculture. If you're got a group that's all gamers, then that is bad. If you've got a group that's all dope heads, then that is really bad too (and I've seen that group). If it's a group that's all foodies stuck together in a clique, then that's also bad.

The other thing that "culture" means can be just a code word for "we all work 80 hours a week here, and we don't enforce that because it's obviously illegal, but if you don't voluntarily work 80 hours a week too then you're just not the right fit for the culture." Which also in a roundabout way is also age discrimination, or at least discrimination against people who know better or who would rather have a life.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[sexconker]

Have you tried submitting your resume to dice.com ?
As a member of DHI Group Inc., Dice® quickly delivers the opportunities, insights and connections technology professionals and employers need to move forward.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[narcc]

Wouldn't the more obvious answer be "because she wanted to work for Google"?

Re:Does indeed happen.

[Maxo-Texas]

Infosys cuts the chase. When I forwarded the resume of a friend of mine to them, they kicked it back saying they *required* the high school graduation year. Not proof of graduation (tho why high school graduation should matter to someone with a degree plus experience anyway...).

You see, college degrees might be obtained at any age. But highschool degrees are mostly earned at 18. So they are asking for the applicants age.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[Maxo-Texas]

While older people feel comfortable working with younger people- the reverse is not true.

I've had younger people specifically tell me they hired a team like them that they could hang out with after work.

It feeds on itself once you have a younger team in place. Back in 2009, Scotus gutted age discrimination protection and it's exploded since then.

PRE- ACA, increasing insurance premiums were a cause for not hiring- and for laying off large groups of older employees as they reached 50 to 55.

Back then- an older person's insurance could be 12x the cost of a younger person's insurance (now it's 3x).

Re:Does indeed happen.

[hairyfeet]

Which makes these companies run by idiots IMHO. I may be pushing 50 now but even when i was in my 20s I always tried to get the older guys on my team because the old guys knew how to roll with the changes and adapt. Which only makes sense, the old guys when I was in my 20s had gone from punch cards and paper tape to tape decks to the first HDDs, from time sharing to micro computers to desktops, from ASM to Fortran to Basic so they knew about change and were able to adapt.

Compare this to the young ones where as long as nothing went wrong they were fine but heaven forbid something out of left field went wrong as they just sat there with their thumbs up their ass with no idea how to proceed. When you have had to deal with multiple OSes and form factors you learn the steps wrt basic troubleshooting and how to work their way through a problem logically. It reminds me of a story one of my colleagues used to tell about being sent down to figure out why the "new hot shot" hadn't gotten the server back up, he gets in there and the kid has got the thing practically torn down looking for blown caps or burnt traces as he was sure there HAD to be a hardware problem...there was a hardware problem alright, somebody had knocked out the power cord to the UPS.

Are their clueless old guys? Sure but you should have those weeded out before it even gets to the one on one interviews, and if this woman had a good enough resume they called her in not twice, not thrice, but FOUR times only to reject her when they saw her? Yeah it really wouldn't be surprising if it was strictly based on age. What somebody needs to do is turn in identical resumes and send two people in, one young and one old, and have them give as close to identical answers as possible and see what happens. If they hire the 25 year old and reject the 45 year old with the same identical resumes and answers? Well it would be damned hard for them to argue anything but age discrimination.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I had an interview that went extremely well and I didn't get hired. I interviewed right before another person that was friends with people already working there. I'm sure the only reason they interviewed me was so they could meet some bs company requirement of interviewing X number of candidates before hiring.
I had a mediocre interview another place but my former manager was best friends with the VP so I was hired.
The people you know can matter more than qualifications.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[AmiMoJo]

Sometimes there are ways you can tell. I was once asked at length about my name, which sounds Islamic. The guy was trying hard to find out if I was a Muslim, without actually asking the question directly. The only reason he would care is if he wanted to discriminate against Muslims. I thought about trying to work that fact that I'm not religious into the answers, as he seemed to be hoping I would, but instead I just ended the interview early and left.

For age discrimination it is often in the form of being asked excessively about how much energy you have, what commitments you have outside of work, that kind of thing. Being asked if you intend to work full time, or where you will be in 10 years when you only have 5 to go before retirement. Pretending to reminisce about ancient technologies in an attempt to guess your age. It's a bit like when women are asked, sometimes indirectly, if they have a family or are thinking of having one or might get married any time soon. I know a couple of women who would remove their wedding rings before interviews because of that.

Of course, it's much easier if you can just send two nearly identical CVs, one with a lower age (or apparent age, i.e. just delete some of your older work history) and one gets an interview while the other does not. It's mostly done to detect racial bias, but it works just as well for age. Even something a simple as having an old fashioned name has a measurable effect.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[BVis]

If you still haven't found a decent job you want to stay at in a 7 year time span, you're probably willing to consider a lot of unpleasant options...

Or, you wanted raises larger than 1.5%. The only way you get a raise of any significance (or a promotion) these days is by switching jobs. After all, your current employer has you right where they want you; why would they want to spend more on you if they don't absolutely have to? They probably resent every dime you get paid and would love nothing more than to chain you to your desk and make you work for nothing. But, since, technically, that's "illegal" (some large-government bullshit like "slavery is illegal".. why can't they let the free market work?), they resort to other methods of minimizing costs at the expense of their employees.

Re: Does indeed happen.

[BVis]

Well, you'd think so. Try living near enough to an urban center so that recruiters/HR think that you can commute in, but in reality that's a 2 hour trip for everything except driving and paying a fortune for parking (and even then is probably closer to 90 minutes with traffic). Once they find out you're not willing to make that trip 5 days, or (holy shit) you want to work REMOTE, you stop getting called or getting your applications looked at.

Originally I was taking the approach that I'm a valuable asset and I should be able to ask for a better situation than what I have now (asking for more money, work from home/remote, not working with assholes, etc). What I found was that, in general, employers don't like it when you ask for stuff. What they want is people who will take what they are given and smile. So now I don't mention any of that in the interview process. It's a giant waste of time, to find out that, while they do want to hire you, they want to give you half your current salary and will write you up for not having your ass in the seat at 0830 and only leaving when your boss thinks you should leave (which is always more than 8 hours, but they don't tell you that), but that's the only way to get the offer in the first place, and then you can negotiate for what you want. Or, they'll tell you the offer is final, and everyone's wasted their time.

The way we hire people is fucked up. Over-entitled employers still think the pressures of supply and demand don't apply to them, and they insist that they still have the FSM-given right to treat their workers like shit; that extends to the hiring process. It's not that you're a valuable asset to the company, it's that you cost the company money and therefore are a terrible person. Then companies wonder why they can't keep good talent. It has to be greedy lazy employees! Yeah, that's it! They're all lazy and greedy! Couldn't be the fact that we treat them like shit at all!

Re: Does indeed happen.

[BVis]

Because I bought a house in a community that was as close to the city as I could without selling a kidney. I have two children in the school system. I would lose $50,000 if I sold my house due to the state of the market.

I am not going to relocate for a job. It is way too easy to get fired (or have your job inexplicably "eliminated") and find yourself in a new place with no network and no family support.

Not everyone is single and 23. I'm sure some asshole is going to chime in and tell me that it's my own fault for choosing to have a family, and that I deserve whatever misery I get for my "bad" decision. Then they'll go back to watching Japanese scat porn in their mother's basement.

Re:Does indeed happen.

[FlyHelicopters]

Or, you wanted raises larger than 1.5%. The only way you get a raise of any significance (or a promotion) these days is by switching jobs.

That isn't always true...

I have had employees that were worth keeping and I offered more money to.

My office manager/book keeper, a few years ago, was doing very well and I was paying her $40k per year. When it came time to do the annual review, she asked for a 5% raise, instead I gave her a 20% raise to $50k.

Why? Because she ran the office, knew everything day to day, and the place just wouldn't work without her. She had taken on more duties since I hired her and deserved more pay.

She was shocked when I offered the money, to which I replied, "when a company has a great employee who does more each year and makes themselves valuable to the business, a company would be foolish to not compensate them for that.

All you have to do is walk around Google...

[Anonymous Coward]

and see the age discrimination. I've been to their SF and Kirkland, WA campuses about two dozen times, and very few people I saw were over thirty. When I interviewed there, they said I was a good fit due to my age. Yes, that's age discrimination, but I can't argue that they were wrong.

Re: All you have to do is walk around Google...

[bill_mcgonigle]

kids are easier to boss around and they don't tell the product manager that his new Maps is a piece of shit.

Re: All you have to do is walk around Google...

[henni16]

I don't know if maps is a steaming pile, but I do know that the new maps and especially street view are really, really sluggish in comparison to classic.
As a n00b driver in a big city with heavy traffic I loved being able to "drive" through key points of an unknown route the day before to see what the streets were like, what lane would be best before entering a 5-lane-roundabout, what the parking situation near the destination looked like etc.
F_ck that with the new version, too slow; even on an i7, there's almost no such thing as having a _quick_ look.

Ageism is a problem everywhere, not just in tech

[blind biker]

From my observations (not just personal) I came to the conclusion that, if you are out of job at 45, you're fucked, especially (but not limited to) in tech and science/research.

Re:See, I told you.

[lucm]

Grow up, idiot. Not every male hiring manager is a boob guy. There are quite a few ass guys out there too.

Clearly a shoo-in

[lucm]

"For 40 years, I programmed in C, C++ and Python, primarily in the Unix and Linux environments. In 2014, I bought a dairy farm in upstate NY. I designed and built an on-farm creamery to produce farmstead sheep's milk cheese and yogurt. "

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ch...

To superficial people out there: yes, there's a picture in her profile. Semi-SFW.

Re:Clearly a shoo-in

[mwvdlee]

TFA states here last interview with Google was in 2013 and the bought the farm in 2014.
These do not overlap. Her LinkedIn profile would have been different in 2013.
It may very well be that she got into dairy farming due to being jaded with the job market.
She may only be joining the case because she's no longer interrested in IT jobs (which certainly will become impossible after the case).

It's discomfort at working alongside older people

[DNS-and-BIND]

My impression isn't that it's age discrimination per se, it's the culture of twentysomethings. The way they were raised, they are simply uncomfortable with anyone but their own kind. It's not that they hate old people or anything, it's just that they feel weirded out and feel they couldn't possibly work every day with such a person. It's lack of empathy with "the other". It's also a form of oikophobia, in which they welcome people from other cultures but fear and loathe people from their own.

You can trot out the tired cliches about GET OFF MY LAWN LOLZ but at a certain point, there is truth there. I never felt weirded out by working with age 50+ people, even when I was a new recruit. It was just something everyone did. But now, unless you're one of their own kind, they just get freaked out and think they can't deal with having you around day in and day out. When it comes to making a decision, they drop the black ball in the fishbowl and that's it. No regrets, they just prefer the company of their own generation.

And I can sort of see where they're coming from. What happens when they share the latest meme from Tumblr around the office? You're going to show a blank look and keep on working. You're not on Tumblr, nor Twitter, nor Facebook, and this not only weirds them out, but makes you automatically suspicious. What are you trying to hide by not making your life public? You're probably a child molester of the kind that their parents constantly warned them about. "Stranger danger!"

Ageism v sexism

[Any Web Loco]

Always really interesting to see these two topics come up on Slashdot. Ageism apparently exists, sexism doesn't.

Re:the important detail

[FlyHelicopters]

Those standards are largely a joke. They are actually worse than a joke because we tell people, "oh, you're all equal, no discrimination", then everyone knows it goes on anyway.

It is like trying to legislate morality, it doesn't work.

If a group of 20-30 year old white males are running a business, guess what? They'll largely hire 20-30 year old white males to work with them. They might hire some 20-30 year old white women to work there too, they smell nice and look nice.

Sounds horrible, doesn't it? Guess what? That is life and reality, and passing a law doesn't change that.

25 year olds look at a 55 year old and see their parents. They generally will not hire someone who reminds them of Mom and Dad. Note: They SHOULD because most 25 year olds have a lot to learn (I'm 40, I have kids, I know this now, but I didn't at 25 either).

White kids largely won't hire blacks either, at least not to work with.

Is that illegal? Yes. Does it still happen? Yes. Complaining about it won't change it.

Welcome to Earth and the human race. :) People like being around people who are like them, this is largely true everywhere on the planet.

Re:Quite a few reasons

[Daemonik]

I've often thought the greatest mystery in the world was how corporations convince otherwise rational people to sacrifice their lives, their health, their families all in the name of "THE TEAM" or "THE COMPANY", as if the company will ever return even 1/10th of that devotion to the employees. Corporations are the ultimate Stockholm Syndrome with some serious Manchurian Candidate brainwashing behind them.

Re:Quite a few reasons

[gtall]

Being unemployed causes a myriad of problems one doesn't have whilst employed. In the U.S., health care is a big inducement to work for "THE COMPANY".

Re:the important detail

[dbIII]

The real question is why ANYONE would want to work with people who did not like them

If they are good at what they do then you don't have to like them. This weird concept that every single person in a workplace has to be the ideal drinking buddy is completely fucked up. A bit of professionalism goes a long way and can keep people who do not like each other from having a horrible work environment or "a life of despair".

No software solution?

[Overzeetop]

You know, they should implement some kind of a search engine on their HR database so that they can look up past interviewees to prevent multiple recruitment gaffs like this. Now, I know that not everyone can write a custom search engine in house, but I hear that both Microsoft and Yahoo have up-and-coming search engine technology they might be able to license and implement that would let them mine their existing data.

don't put utter bullshit on your linkedin page.

[lophophore]

"For 40 years, I programmed in C, C++ and Python, primarily in the Unix and Linux environments"

Really. Is your name Ken? I didn't think so.

You can't pull bullshit around smart people. Though maybe you don't notice it so much at a dairy farm.

C was not seen out side of Bell Labs until 1973 at the earliest, most likely 74 or 75, so *maybe* that is true. But the C Programming Language was published in '78, so I call BULLSHIT.

C++ was just a gleam in Stroustroup's eye until about 1983, so I call more BULLSHIT.

Python first hit the streets in '89 or '90, so more BULLSHIT.

Unix, unless you were at Bell Labs, was not seen anywhere until the earliest, 1974, so maybe not bullshit, but I'd still call more BULLSHIT.

And linux is not even 15 years old, so there's no way that anybody has been programming on Linux for 40 years, so still even more BULLSHIT.

Stupid recruiters can't tell the difference between bullshit and tasty chocolate, but Google does not have stupid recruiters.

... v racism

[Kunta Kinte]

Thank you for that observation. Apparently racism does not exist as well. Just read the comments on any diversity article. Almost every top rated comment proclaiming racial bias does not exist in tech. And you are a SJW for saying so.

The difference is that ageism does affect many Slashdot readers. Sexist and racism apparently not so much.