They say there are two topics you don’t discuss at the dinner table.
Religion and politics.
However, a study shows that if a person’s beliefs with the latter are represented on a job application, it could affect whether or not they get the position.
Casey Hasten is a corporate recruiter and she appeared on “Live and Local” with Jordan Miller on 1480 WHBC on Monday and she talked about a study that was conducted that showed interesting statistics about job hirings and different political views between a hiring manager and an applicant.
There was a study that was done recently that took the exact same resume,” Hasten said. “The only thing that changed was the political affiliation. On one resume, they were affiliated with the Republican Party and on the other, they were affiliated with the Democratic Party. Exact same resumes otherwise. They looked at 3 potential areas when they showed these resumes to potential hiring managers and they looked at whether or not the applicant was perceived as trustworthy, confident, or if they were likely to get an interview and depending on what affiliation they had on their resume and which party it was shown to greatly impacted how they rated in each of those categories. With a Democratic resume and a Democratic hiring manager, they were 95% more likely to interview that applicant. If a Republican resume was shown to a Democratic hiring manager, it would only be an 83% chance that they would get interviewed.”
Hasten says that if you want to make your political stance on a job resume known, then go for it. However, she says that you might be taking a chance.
““There are people that are very passionate about this and if that is you and you are passionate about the political affiliation and that is something you want to make very well known, that is fine,” says Hasten. “Just be aware that there is a chance you may not get your dream job by including that on your resume. But, at the same time, is it really your dream job if that’s something that’s very important to you and that company doesn’t align with your values. You have to look at it from both sides.”
An action that a lot of applicants tend to do when applying for the job is “scrubbing” their social media pages by going back and deleting old posts that they think could affect whether they get the job or not.
Hasten suggests taking that initiative.
“I had one candidate who was offered a position and when the hiring manager went to look at her social media, all over her Twitter were complaints about her current company and they were pretty bad complaints. The client took the offer off the table and pretty much said ‘We do not need that toxicity here.’ So things like that for sure you want to scrub, even if it was 5-10 years ago.”
You can listen to “Live and Local” with Jordan Miller weekdays from 10-noon on 1480 WHBC.