If you score a virtual job interview in the middle of a pandemic, the initial euphoria of potential employment may soon be replaced with anxiety over what to wear – as well as putting your home life on display for 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.
When this happens, interviewers make subjective judgments based on irrelevant information, such as physical appearance and nonverbal cues. Illegal stereotypes based on gender and race may also be at play.
Employment litigation has not succeeded in tamping down these practices. Companies have little incentive to ensure their interview practices relate to on-the-job performance.
That left job candidates focusing much of their energy on making a good impression instead of demonstrating important job skills. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic, when applicants had the benefit of a neutral conference room as a backdrop.
My advice: 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.
Virtual job interviews upset the balance by revealing the contents of your home.
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.
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 such as, “What are your weaknesses?”
Ordinarily, you can expect a little help from the law in this regard, since companies shouldn’t be asking questions that hint at a discriminatory motive – such as your religion or whether you have a disability.
Virtual job interviews upset the balance by revealing the contents of your home. This is fundamentally unfair in the interview concealment tug of war.
I set up my laptop to point at a bare corner of wall. That way, I reveal nothing about my questionable interior decorating and life choices.
Should you hide your children?
Certainly, you are under no obligation to voluntarily disclose your children’s presence – and your prospective employer really shouldn’t ask. Asking about children is often a proxy for gender discrimination, as mothers are disproportionately penalized for their status as parents.
For example, an experimental study by Stanford University 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 in the experiment than their childless peers.
Does this mean that 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 that they perform.
So parents, if you’re inclined to shove a device and a lollipop in the general direction of a child who might blow your cover, don’t feel guilty – you’re not the only one trying to pass for a productive employee these days.
Elizabeth C. Tippett is an associate professor at the University of Oregon School of Law. Distributed by The Associated Press.