Earlier today, I read and “liked” an article on LinkedIn which
expressed outrage at the fact that a prospective employer (abroad) had the
temerity to ask for proof of an interviewee’s last drawn salary. And this led
me to dwell, not for the first time, on the intrusive interview practices which
are prevalent at the Indian workplace, and which are accepted as routine by the
bulk of the working population.
Examples abound, and some of them are positively horrifying.
Sexism, racism, political incorrectness, rudeness – they’re all there. A single
lady is invariably asked when she’s planning to get married; a married one is
asked when she’s planning to start a family! Someone who can’t speak English
well is asked whether they can write it better; someone who’s changed many jobs
is asked to describe the reason behind the change of each job, frequently going
back a decade or more. And of course, every interviewee is asked to describe
each component of his / her last pay drawn, and every salary at every job prior
to that, and every grade at each major examination taken, and eventually to
provide documentary evidence of everything.
After all this, the “optional extras” that are covered may
include a leisurely understanding of the interviewee’s family and the
profession, trade or calling of each individual member of that family; a
discussion on the candidate’s hobbies, and so on.
The accent, it would seem, is on exposing the inadequacies
of the interviewee, and on ensuring that he / she becomes radically self-aware
in that behalf, if not already thus. Patent and latent weaknesses are dwelt
upon in nauseating detail, whereas the need is clearly to identify strengths
and discuss how those strengths can be leveraged to the benefit of the
interviewer. All this, of course, is
done in the name of identifying the “cultural fit” – when the truth is that the
interviewing company may not actually have any corporate culture to speak of in
the first place.
This is not to say that every Indian organisation recruits
people this way – but a large majority are doing it. Do you agree? What’s your
experience?
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