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.

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

[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.

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.

[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: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).

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: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.