People from historically-excluded groups, who do you recommend at work?
April 18, 2022 3:38 PM Subscribe
I'm in a freelance industry. I'm a member of several historically-excluded groups. Sometimes I'm a new person in an org, but in a position of relative power, and when that's the case, sometimes I have a chance to recommend other people for gigs. Sometimes it's hard for me to decide whether I should or not. Can you help me come up with a metric to make this task easier?
Examples of reasons I might want to recommend someone / why I might balk:
I think they do a good job, but I'm not sure if others will have the same judgements as me
I want to increase diversity in my industry, but I worry that if the person isn't quite "ready", their out-group status may result in harsher backlash. I have intimate knowledge of norms in my industry, so please trust that my assessment is very accurate when I say that out-group people's errors are penalized much more harshly and their mistakes can follow them and cause lasting harm to their reputations)
I like them, respect them, and work well with them, but I worry that their style may not always fit with the culture. For instance, recently I wanted to invite a talented indie fine artist to a corporate gig, but I worried because I knew that he would never ever ever reply to any emails on time because he just isn't a desk guy. I can totally manage that, but I felt it was pretty likely that the team he was working with would find it really challenging and see him as unprofessional. In some ways they would actually prefer a worse artist who replied to emails faster. That would never be my metric.
I worry that the person isn't a cultural fit in a way that will reflect badly on me - similar to above with the artist. Or for another example, I recommended a genius I know for a lucrative corporate gig. She wrote a cover letter that shocked me in how off-tone and mystical it was (it's a business gig but she talked about what was "meant to be" and it sounded like a horoscope!). I could tell that the recipients of this email did NOT like it. My frantic solution was to arrange a meeting with her and the leaders, at which her in-person chops and skills shone, and they ended up loving her, but the cover letter was like whoa and I know it made me look bad til they met the person themselves.
I wanted to suggest someone, but I googled him first and his Twitter bio made him sound... very anarchist / not someone a corporation would trust, even though I know his knowledge is perfect for the role.
I guess reading all of this back, what sticks out to me is that while I feel confident that I know talent and brains when I see them, I know I am also quite flexible and accepting of people's backgrounds, working styles, communication styles, radical politics, accessibility needs, etc etc... but I know (or worry) that these more corporate environments will not embrace those traits.
I want to increase diversity, and I REALLY don't want to tone-police or only choose "respectable" people.... but I guess I also feel that my own position in these spaces is a bit precarious ,so if I bring in someone who's "not-respectable", it will reflect badly on them and me, if things go any less than perfectly. But at the same time I think these people are great, so I keep WANTING to recommend them and overthinking it all the time.
Right now, when I have these doubts, I usually obsess about it for a bit and then ultimately I don't recommend the person. I worry that by being so concerned about "fit", I'm closing the gate and not inviting in as much diversity as I could.
BUT it's also actually true that not all spaces are ready for great diversity. Spaces that AREN'T ready can cause catastrophic blowups when they're pushed outside their norms, and also harm the newcomers. I'm not wrong to try to inch organizations ahead in baby steps, and I'm being a good employee if I take my employers' politics seriously and work with them, rather than always trying to push the envelope further and further.
But at the same time, and most tenderly, I sometimes feel like I'm betraying "my kind" by not flinging open the narrow doors I've managed to enter. I don't want to be the one tone-policing or excluding others like me, even though it's totally valid for me to be selective and cautious and only bet on pretty good odds of successful matches.
My complex mixture of radical politics and respectability indoctrination makes these decisions exhausting. I really just need an easier set of rules to follow that I feel aligned with so I can reduce my decision fatigue.
For this question, feedback from people from historically-excluded groups like BIPOCs, disabled people, and LGBTQ+ people is extra-relevant here. People who are often the "First and Only" when they enter a new room in their careers. So I welcome self-identification if anyone wants to share, and I also invite those who do NOT experience these identity+politics+loyalty+respectability pressures to consider that their lack of experience in this area is important, and maybe choose not to weigh in too strongly.
All that said - Can anyone help me make sense of all this?
In short: what is an easy way for me to assess whether or not I should recommend someone for a job?
Thank you!
Examples of reasons I might want to recommend someone / why I might balk:
I think they do a good job, but I'm not sure if others will have the same judgements as me
I want to increase diversity in my industry, but I worry that if the person isn't quite "ready", their out-group status may result in harsher backlash. I have intimate knowledge of norms in my industry, so please trust that my assessment is very accurate when I say that out-group people's errors are penalized much more harshly and their mistakes can follow them and cause lasting harm to their reputations)
I like them, respect them, and work well with them, but I worry that their style may not always fit with the culture. For instance, recently I wanted to invite a talented indie fine artist to a corporate gig, but I worried because I knew that he would never ever ever reply to any emails on time because he just isn't a desk guy. I can totally manage that, but I felt it was pretty likely that the team he was working with would find it really challenging and see him as unprofessional. In some ways they would actually prefer a worse artist who replied to emails faster. That would never be my metric.
I worry that the person isn't a cultural fit in a way that will reflect badly on me - similar to above with the artist. Or for another example, I recommended a genius I know for a lucrative corporate gig. She wrote a cover letter that shocked me in how off-tone and mystical it was (it's a business gig but she talked about what was "meant to be" and it sounded like a horoscope!). I could tell that the recipients of this email did NOT like it. My frantic solution was to arrange a meeting with her and the leaders, at which her in-person chops and skills shone, and they ended up loving her, but the cover letter was like whoa and I know it made me look bad til they met the person themselves.
I wanted to suggest someone, but I googled him first and his Twitter bio made him sound... very anarchist / not someone a corporation would trust, even though I know his knowledge is perfect for the role.
I guess reading all of this back, what sticks out to me is that while I feel confident that I know talent and brains when I see them, I know I am also quite flexible and accepting of people's backgrounds, working styles, communication styles, radical politics, accessibility needs, etc etc... but I know (or worry) that these more corporate environments will not embrace those traits.
I want to increase diversity, and I REALLY don't want to tone-police or only choose "respectable" people.... but I guess I also feel that my own position in these spaces is a bit precarious ,so if I bring in someone who's "not-respectable", it will reflect badly on them and me, if things go any less than perfectly. But at the same time I think these people are great, so I keep WANTING to recommend them and overthinking it all the time.
Right now, when I have these doubts, I usually obsess about it for a bit and then ultimately I don't recommend the person. I worry that by being so concerned about "fit", I'm closing the gate and not inviting in as much diversity as I could.
BUT it's also actually true that not all spaces are ready for great diversity. Spaces that AREN'T ready can cause catastrophic blowups when they're pushed outside their norms, and also harm the newcomers. I'm not wrong to try to inch organizations ahead in baby steps, and I'm being a good employee if I take my employers' politics seriously and work with them, rather than always trying to push the envelope further and further.
But at the same time, and most tenderly, I sometimes feel like I'm betraying "my kind" by not flinging open the narrow doors I've managed to enter. I don't want to be the one tone-policing or excluding others like me, even though it's totally valid for me to be selective and cautious and only bet on pretty good odds of successful matches.
My complex mixture of radical politics and respectability indoctrination makes these decisions exhausting. I really just need an easier set of rules to follow that I feel aligned with so I can reduce my decision fatigue.
For this question, feedback from people from historically-excluded groups like BIPOCs, disabled people, and LGBTQ+ people is extra-relevant here. People who are often the "First and Only" when they enter a new room in their careers. So I welcome self-identification if anyone wants to share, and I also invite those who do NOT experience these identity+politics+loyalty+respectability pressures to consider that their lack of experience in this area is important, and maybe choose not to weigh in too strongly.
All that said - Can anyone help me make sense of all this?
In short: what is an easy way for me to assess whether or not I should recommend someone for a job?
Thank you!
Response by poster: ^^ I definitely agree with this metric. But the population of people I happily and successfully work with on my own projects still includes people who (I worry) might not be the right fit in some more conservative & exclusionary environments. It’s hard work to identify where the line is in each specific case, and I want to be able to make that call faster and with less angst.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 5:44 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by nouvelle-personne at 5:44 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
"Would this person be successful in this role if they were evaluated based on their work and their impact on the company, not based on their personal beliefs or presentation?"
Of your examples, the weird-cover-letter person and the radical-politics person seem appropriate to recommend. Having anarchist politics or writing a strange cover letter probably isn't relevant to the job. However, I would not recommend the doesn't-reply-to-emails-guy -- responding to emails in a reasonable timeframe typically *is* an actual job requirement; not responding to emails promptly hurts your success at most jobs, no matter how good of an artist you are.
(Sometimes there is a little bit of a grey area when it comes to these things...like if someone e.g. strongly + repeatedly advocates on Twitter for employers respecting work-life balance, that view might indicate that they could be a bad fit doing a gig for a company that has very tight deadlines and expects rapid turnaround times. But that is a totally separate issue from whether they are "respectable" or not.)
posted by phoenixy at 6:07 PM on April 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
Of your examples, the weird-cover-letter person and the radical-politics person seem appropriate to recommend. Having anarchist politics or writing a strange cover letter probably isn't relevant to the job. However, I would not recommend the doesn't-reply-to-emails-guy -- responding to emails in a reasonable timeframe typically *is* an actual job requirement; not responding to emails promptly hurts your success at most jobs, no matter how good of an artist you are.
(Sometimes there is a little bit of a grey area when it comes to these things...like if someone e.g. strongly + repeatedly advocates on Twitter for employers respecting work-life balance, that view might indicate that they could be a bad fit doing a gig for a company that has very tight deadlines and expects rapid turnaround times. But that is a totally separate issue from whether they are "respectable" or not.)
posted by phoenixy at 6:07 PM on April 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
It’s not your job to decide whether they fit in as far as socially... that’s the job of the people hiring. If you can say, honestly, that they can do the assignment... then give them your rec wholeheartedly
The deciders are going to decide based on their own metrics that you have no control over. But make a recommendation from you be a meaningful and sincere thing that may benefit others and means something in your business circle
posted by one4themoment at 6:09 PM on April 18, 2022
The deciders are going to decide based on their own metrics that you have no control over. But make a recommendation from you be a meaningful and sincere thing that may benefit others and means something in your business circle
posted by one4themoment at 6:09 PM on April 18, 2022
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posted by one4themoment at 4:58 PM on April 18, 2022 [3 favorites]