Pros
Recruitment process went well until corporate headquarters manager decided applicant was too old.
Cons
It’s hard to believe that such a large company would permit blatant employment discrimination, but it happened mere days ago. Applicant passed multiple interviews with glowing feedback only to be flown up to headquarters to be demeaned, humiliated and never receive the professional courtesy of ever hearing anything. Corporate interview featured thinly-veiled illegal age discrimination questioning posed in snide and unprofessional tones. “Are you sure you can handle the travel requirements at this stage in your career?” “I’ve done it for thirty years, ma’am. It’s actually one of my strengths that I have so much experience.” “Yeah, but it’s very rigorous for someone like you.” How does a corporation allow management to engage in this type of age discrimination? To add insult to injury, they went out of their way to further discriminate by changing their own hiring protocol. The manager who posed many of the illegal questions and inappropriate comments hijacked applicant’s reference check by forbidding the 84 Lumber recruiter from calling any references and producing the report as per protocol. Instead, the manager advised they would conduct the reference checks then proceeded to never call a single reference. A promised response turned into two weeks of refusal to respond to any calls or provide any follow up, just an unprofessional “they’ll get the message” attitude if we treat applicants like Tinder dates. That a multi-state corporation allows this is what’s shocking. Any corporation owes applicants a response two months into the hiring process, especially when an applicant is the corporate recruiter’s only recruit. It’s not like the job was offered another individual, but confirming you’re not hiring based on discriminatory managers hijacking the process with unprofessional and illegal bias is probably something HR and management don’t want put in writing. So, like the kind of corporation that permits this type of damaging behavior in the work force, they assume if they ghost an applicant months in, they’ll get away with it. This is shameful and violates employee legal protections. Yet, 84 Lumber doesn’t seem to train their hiring managers appropriately to avoid it. What’s worse is that they don’t seem to engage in common courtesy and act as though they’re not subject to the same rules as the rest of the business world. This type of behavior destroys communities and public trust. If qualified applicants can’t be hired or worse are fired based on illegal corporate practices, it leads to unemployment older populations left to depend on public assistance. The law is there to protect the public from such harmful practices. Let’s hope 84 Lumber gets the memo it applies to them and the young managers who engage in this learn that but for the grace of God go they as they will be older soon and would hardly appreciate the snide treatment they’ve engaged in, especially at Christmas when individuals, two months into the hiring process, are eagerly awaiting a response so that they can be assured to be able to feed their family. People are not expendable. Corporations run by young millionaires need to realize that lest there be no public to afford their products.
