As I read through An Indiscreet Conversation on Hiring for the first time, I became increasingly

disappointed and agitated as I pictured the friends as profit-driven, cold-hearted, sexist

businessmen. However, upon finishing the case and classroom discussion, I had mixed feelings:
Matt, Andrew, Steven, and Joe had discussed a truly controversial topic and presented strong
points for both sides. I had particularly disappointed in Andrews point of view about hiring
women in his small business despite the fact that his wife had taken a 10 month maternity leave.
I was disappointed because it made sense firms aim to make profit and employee leave can
cause a huge impact to finances and team relationships. As I thought about the topic I imaged
that this issue could be countered with a contract. However, I realized that an employment
contract may not necessarily prevent employee absence from maternity leave in fact, Andrews
company would certainly get into more trouble if they denied the female employee from leaving. I
believe that benevolent racism/sexism is definitely something that is real but at the same time,
it's still racism. If Andrew is committed to his company for the long run, a few months of leave
from an employee shouldnt have such a huge impact. With a dynamic HR strategy that will
strategically distribute job responsibilities, I believe that the benefits of hiring the female
employee will outweigh the potential risk of employee leave in the long run.

Where is the line drawn when businesses are considering candidates for employment? While I
was not able to attend the second HR class due to my attendance at a weekend conference, I
have reviewed readings and researched concepts such as BFOQ before. I believe that HR is
highly subjective and legal consequences for discrimination can be avoided by twisting
explanations. I can recall an experience in first year as I tuned in on the hiring processes of one of

the organizations that I am a part of where hiring executives stressed the importance of fit.
Despite being a highly technical and analytical organization, employees would be no good
without fit with the rest of the team members as a result, executives were able to turn away
highly-skilled candidates whom they were not friends with by using the reasoning that they didnt
fit. I believe that friends can be thought of as friend groups and that this could also be ruled as a
form of discrimination. Had the executive known all candidates equally as well, they could have
made a much better assessment of fit and avoided the (potentially unintentional) discrimination.
I believe that this is an opportunity for change what if the candidate spoke up and got to know
the hiring managers better? What if a system or application or procedure could help the
candidate do so? While I dont have the skills or knowledge to make this happen today, I will
definitely follow the idea further throughout the course of COMM181.

While working on a competition case study in first semester, I found a statistic from StatsCan on
reports of discrimination of people age 15 and older. Reports of experiencing discrimination
occurred mostly during work, applying for jobs, and promotion at nearly 50% of visible and nonvisible minorities, male and female. Discrimination while attending school or classes was 4th,
resulting in approximately 25% of minorities. Thinking of this, I realized that as a full-time student
spending most of my time on the campus environment, I am likely to have not experienced as
much discrimination as others older than myself in the workforce. On the other hand, I believe
that this stat proves that older generations are more likely to conduct discrimination as
Millennials continue to enter into their later stages of life, significant change will be expected in
HR practices and discrimination will be addressed with increasingly greater importance.