Ask a Manager: Rejecting a candidate for including "servant of God" on their resume

[minoanmiss]

Can you reject someone for including “servant of god” on their resume?

I recently saw a question come up somewhere else about receiving a candidate’s resume that included the phrase “servant of god” prominently under their name, with no connection to work experience or job-relevant context. I understand that religious identity cannot be used as the basis for hiring decisions, but can you consider a person’s judgment in including something like that on their resume or must you entirely disregard it?

Technically you should disregard it. I completely get what you’re saying — you wouldn’t be rejecting them for their religion, you’d be rejecting them for their bad judgment in injecting religion somewhere it doesn’t belong — but you risk being on shaky legal ground if you’re trying to split those hairs in court one day. If the person otherwise would be someone you’d advance to an interview, theoretically you should do that and then probe into how well they’ll be able to work respectfully with people with different beliefs. (That said, in my experience the people who include stuff like this on their resumes tend not to be the strongest candidates anyway, even when you remove that.)

Comments

[movingfinger]

My feeling on this is that if you insist on blowing your dog whistle, you shouldn't be surprised that non-dogs hear it too.

[full_metal_ox]

My feeling on this is that if you insist on blowing your dog whistle, you shouldn't be surprised that non-dogs hear it too.

An example: dogs can hear frequencies up to 60-65 kHz; cats can hear frequencies from around 50 Hz to 64-85 KHz; mice can hear between 1kHz to 70-100 kHz. The logical conclusion is that cats and mice can sure as hell hear dogwhistles.

[lokifan]

Mmm, I guess, but I worry with 'servant of God' especially because it's a pretty common thing with Nigerians (and sometimes Ghanaians) these days - as someone mentioned in the comments there too - and the political/cultural implications of it are different. Like I absolutely recommend my students NOT do that, the same as I tell them not to put a photo on their CVs, because our norms are different. But I don't think not hiring people because of it is necessarily fair, even though I do sympathise a lot with the 'it's about their understanding of professional norms' argument. So I think Alison's approach is best.

[elf]

"But it said right there on the resume that they already had a job! They're a servant of, um, well, I don't know what company that is, but obviously they're only looking for part-time pickup work, and we're looking for dedicated employees."

[petra]

"What are your plans for the next five years?"

"Immanentizing the eschaton."

"Thank you. Next!"

[conuly]

LOL.

[liv]

For the early part of my career, I put a lot of Jewish community work on my CV. I don't know if it caused some employers to reject me because they don't like Jews or overtly religious people. In many ways I would rather be rejected from the outset than work in antisemitic workplace who hired me because they didn't want to get into legal trouble for discriminating!

Anyway, it definitely did positively get me jobs; you can't really advance in white collar jobs unless you do a lot of that kind of thing unpaid, and in my case, moving from post-doc to lecturer / professor track was only possible because I had masses of teaching and leadership experience that is really difficult to get from your day job as an early career researcher. When I found a job that took that seriously rather than saying, oh, it doesn't count, it's not in academia / not paid employment, that job was a really good fit for me.

Once I had that job I put less emphasis on my Jewish community experience (though I also didn't hide it) because being a lecturer in a medical school is more obviously the kind of experience that employers are looking for. And now I'm training to be a rabbi so I would be very stupid if I didn't mention that I'm Jewish.

[conuly]

And now I'm training to be a rabbi so I would be very stupid if I didn't mention that I'm Jewish.

But if they don't, wouldn't they just assume...? I mean... actually, nevermind, people can be ridiculous, there probably is somebody out there who isn't Jewish in any way but still has applied for a job as a rabbi.

[magid]

Given there are Jews for J out there, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them attempted a rabbinical job at a Jewish organization. Not a lot, but I can picture it happening.