> Edit: re "religious" argument: surely you can get some non-alcoholic drink at a bar?
Yes, and surely you can socialize in a brothel without actually engaging in their primary service, but that doesn't mean that holding part of a job interview there wouldn't create a differentially hostile environment to (among others) people who have religious objections to prostitution.
Oh dear, if you want to accommodate for all religious preferences, it will become tricky soon. What if some religious person thinks homosexuals are bound for hell and they will be contaminated if they work alongside them?
Seems like a real problem to me: either you discriminate against the religious person, or you discriminate against the homosexual, can't have them both.
In fact if you think requiring drinking is discriminating, your are discriminating against the people who drink. There is just no way to get it right. What if the company owner is religious and doesn't want to hire people who drink for religious reasons - would that be better/OK?
Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me - better to discard all the PC bullshit and go for what you really want. Honestly, personally I'd prefer to have colleagues who are not very religious. Maybe the law forbids screening for that, but I still think it is a sensible preference to have. (I am not currently hiring anybody, so I hope I am allowed to say that...).
Or you keep interviews in a professional setting so as not to discriminate against either. That's the whole point of being professional.
I'm a Christian, but I have no problem working for or with practising Muslims, as long as regular attendance at the Mosque is not a job requirement. I don't drink, but I have no problem working for or with people who like to drink, as long as regular attendance at the bar is not a job requirement.
Edit To speak to your examples: the religious person should have the professionalism to keep their views of homosexuality out of their attitude at work. Similarly, the homosexual should keep their views of religion out of work. Tolerance does not mean agreement. It means we agree to disagree and get along with each other despite the disagreements.
> Seems like a real problem to me: either you discriminate against the religious person, or you discriminate against the homosexual, can't have them both.
A differentially-hostile work environment created by legal requirements of the job, e.g., working alongside people who you disapprove of because the employer is prohibited against discriminating against them to suit you, is not illegal discrimination.
> In fact if you think requiring drinking is discriminating, your are discriminating against the people who drink.
No, you wouldn't be, because not requiring drinking isn't discriminating against people who drink. (Not permitting drinking might be, but given alcohol's demonstrable effect on cognitive function, and the fact that a preference for drinking isn't a presumptively-illegal basis for discrimination in the first place, there are all kinds of reasons it almost certainly wouldn't be illegal discrimination in most cases.)
> What if the company owner is religious and doesn't want to hire people who drink for religious reasons - would that be better/OK?
Unless the "company" is a bona fide religious institution hiring people for a religious function, discrimination against employees (or potential employees) because they don't fit the company's (or owner's) religious preferences is textbook illegal discrimination, so, no, it wouldn't be "better".
" not requiring drinking isn't discriminating against people who drink"
Neither is going to a bar, because you are not obliged to drink alcohol at a bar.
Again I think this whole thing is ridiculous. Why shouldn't people allowed to do what they enjoy in their company? What if you quit a job to found a company, precisely because you want a company where colleagues go to a bar together occasionally? Why should you not be allowed to do that?
You can found a company where colleagues occasionally go to the bar together - as long as it is not mandatory, either implicitly or explicitly. But things that are a part of your hiring process are different than things that are optional parts of after-hours socializing. You should not be allowed to require such behavior because we, as a society, have decided that our employment should not be contingent on our lifestyle.
Also: bars are places that people go to socialize while drinking. You are not obliged to drink at a bar, but you are expected to. People who do not drink are likely to feel some social pressure about their decision while in a bar. That is not okay for a job interview. I have friends who do not drink. I consider it rude to ask them out to a bar because then we are going to an establishment that is clearly not for them.
The point is that religion, sexual orientation, etc., aren't supposed to be criteria in your hiring process, one way or the other. It doesn't matter if you prefer atheists or devout Christians. You are welcome to hold personal beliefs about religion -- but the topic itself shouldn't come up in the interview. And unless you're a religious organization, I can think of few reasons why it should ever come up in the workplace at all.
Same thing with sexual orientation, or any other protected status. In a professional work environment, these things aren't factors.
Surely there's a way to test for "cultural fit" that doesn't involve directly, or indirectly, testing for protected status. And if your company's culture can't find a way to test for fit without testing for protected status, then your culture needs serious work.
> Surely there's a way to test for "cultural fit" that doesn't involve directly, or indirectly, testing for protected status.
I'm not sure that's the case -- a major part of "cultural fit" in many cases seems to be selecting along protected axis of discrimination by other names. (Heck, phrases very similar to that have been used to cover covert discrimination on protected axis since legal protections against discrimination were first adopted.)
Oh, I generally agree. "Cultural fit" was the reason my grandparents couldn't get into certain schools, clubs, organizations, or jobs. "Cultural fit" has a long and notorious history as a coded or indirect form of discrimination.
That said, company culture can very real and very potent, provided it's founded on professional and non-discriminatory criteria. That's why the burden of non-discrimination is on the company and its culture, not on the candidate.
What are valid forms of cultural-fit tests? ESPN, for example, gives candidates for many of its positions a sports-trivia test. This makes sense. If you're going to work for a sports network, you should probably enjoy sports and be generally knowledgeable about the subject. And ESPN, for its part, probably notices an empirical correlation between people who love sports and people who succeed in sports-related television.
Now, this sort of thing would be discriminatory if it involved any aspect that tested for status. Holding evaluative games of pickup basketball or touch football would discriminate against the physically disabled, pregnant women, and heck, just about any woman placed on or against a mostly male team. ESPN is welcome to participate in intramural sports game, or to hold weekend sports outings. But those activities cannot be used to evaluate employment status or candidacy, and an employee who doesn't want to participate should not feel pressured to do so.
But if you can't go to a bar with your colleagues, suddenly religion enters the equation. Should your colleagues never go to a bar to respect you? Or should they just go without you - but then maybe you don't get the promotion because your boss became friendly with a colleague who went along to the bar.
I didn't enter religion - somebody else started mentioning it as a reason to not go to a bar. I don't think there should be a rule that companies should never go out for drinks just because somebodies religious feelings might be offended.
Nobody is saying your company shouldn't go out to a bar "just because somebody's religious feelings might be offended." If you want to have company outings at bars, that is totally fine, provided a) attendance at said outings is optional and not mandatory (or even de facto mandatory, i.e., employees are held in some sort of disregard for not attending); b) attendance at bars is not evaluative, i.e., you are not using the bar as an indirect test of someone's fit on a protected dimension.
Ok: You invite everyone out for drinks.
Questionable: You make someone's ability to hang at a bar an explicit or implicit criterion for hiring them.
Not ok: You determine that you are going to use the bar as a direct "test" for religious affiliation, sexual orientation, personal beliefs about alcohol, etc. (Extreme example: "I don't want to hire any Muslims or Mormons here. I'm going to ask all candidates to a bar as part of the interview process and offer them a drink, to suss out their religious affiliation.")
Obviously this isn't a binary situation. There is a spectrum of acceptable and unacceptable practices to be navigated. Some of it comes down to personal judgment, some of it comes down to common sense, and some of it comes down to the law.
> I'm sure if they are desperate enough they will overlook the drinking requirement. Maybe the hiring situation is not that desperate yet.
Right now, IT is a strong labor environment [e.g. Programmers get multiple offers if they look for a job and pick the best/highest one].
If you are so foolish as to make "drinking" a requirement, that means you are reducing the pool and raising the cost of the employee.
You are free to do that. Your competitor who is more sensible is going to have more breathing room financially because of your poor choices. That tends to be a feedback cycle that causes them to slowly and inevitably beat you in a capitalist society.
Capitalism solves the problem? Let's say a company is based on a highly successful concept (say, like Paypal). Couldn't their potential advantage over their competitors in other regards than employment practises offset the cost of only hiring drinkers?
I really don't think that handling this on a "free to do that" basis is practically useful. If you don't feel like excluding non-drinkers is an issue, feel free to entertain that opinion. I just don't think that capitalism is a viable solution.
Many people do not drink for religious reasons. You are not obligated to hire people who drink, but by virtue of employment discrimination laws, you are obligated not to discriminate against women and minorities in hiring.
The issue is partially that pregnant women don't drink (and disclosing pregnancy shouldn't be part of the job interview), and partially that bars can be uncomfortable places for women. A woman should not have to worry about the guy one table over eying her up while she's trying to land a job. Bars are casual places, and it's not wrong to check someone out or hit on them. Indeed, that's one of the reasons people go to bars: to find a date. But these characteristics also make them inappropriate settings for a job interview.
Personal aside: my daughter isn't job searching any time soon (she's a toddler), but the idea of her having to do a job interview at a bar makes me want to sue someone. "Scorched earth" wouldn't even begin to describe it.
Wouldn't that depend on the choice of bar? There's a big difference between a nightclub at midnight and a gastropub during lunch time, especially since the latter will tend to also serve a selection of non alcoholic drinks.
People checking you out would also be a problem you could just as easily encounter at starbucks or indeed in the office.
Obviously you have to consider the social context. A place that's the local watering hole at night could just be a convenient lunch spot during the day. But the article mentioned going to a bar after dinner, which is generally a time and setting where people are out to drink and meet people to date.
And yes, you can encounter unwanted attention anywhere, but at a bar at night, certain sorts of advances are acceptable and expected. Indeed, I'd raise an eyebrow if someone complained about getting unwanted but otherwise harmless attention at a bar. Those advances aren't what is inappropriate--it's holding a job interview in that setting that's inappropriate.
If it's after dinner that would suggest it's a social event rather than part of the interview itself. I can't imagine asking somebody serious questions about programming in a loud bar.
Most socialisation in western culture seems to be based around alcohol, not saying that is good or bad but it's doesn't really apply to one gender over the other. I've probably been to just as many drinking events organised by women as I have men.
> Wouldn't that depend on the choice of bar? There's a big difference between a nightclub at midnight and a gastropub during lunch time
Typically, one does not refer to a gastropub or other restaurant (even one which, as most do and as a gastropub does by definition, includes a bar) as "a bar". When one refers to an institution as "a bar", that generally implies that one is referring to an institution that is solely a bar, not a restaurant with a bar.
Having part of an interview at a restaurant (even one which serves drinks) is a very different environment than doing so at a bar.
I'm thinking of something that is more half way between, this might be more of a British phenomenon as I think our bar culture is somewhat different to the one in the US.
English pubs are not quite the same as American bars. I wish that we had more pub-style establishments. American bars - even the ones that serve decent food - typically turn into semi-nightclubs after 9 pm.
There's a difference between each of these three things:
1) Drinking, and
2) Going to a bar of one's own choice, with one's chosen companions, socially, and
3) Being expected (even if not stricly required) to go to a bar "socially" with one's employer or potential employer as part of an activity which may have consequences for one's employment.
It is really inefficient to pick IT, UX, Sysadmin, etc. talent based on whether they drink or not. So I'm assuming they are oblivious.