Post: #1

I've just moved back to Canada, and am looking for a place to live. Now in the past I've always just lived with friends or had company housing, so it never really came up, but now that I'm looking for my own place, I see that some places want references, similar to jobs.

This got me thinking though, what's the point? I mean unless the person knows your reference personally (ie your in a small tight industry, and it's a professional reference), the reference owes them exactly nothing, is far more likely loyal to me even if I am a scum bag, and there is really no proof he's even who I say he is. Hell I could give a phone number, and fake my voice and be my own reference.

One girl asked and I hesitated. I said I could give her the numbers of some people I lived with in Asia in company provided housing, or my buddy who now lives in Cali who I lived with 4 years ago. You're sitting there talking to the person, but you wont make a descision until some stranger 5000 miles away vouches for him? I mean I really just don't see the point. A reference doesn't really prove anything other than that you have friends.

Post: #2

Realistically, the only question that really matters for a job is "can you do the work for the amount we are offering to pay you?" much like for housing it's "can you make rent each month?". My personal hypothesis is that over-emphasis of credentials and outside verification is one of the effects of a feminized society and a culture that trends toward authoritarianism.

Corporate employment nowadays commonly involves multiple background checks, a credit check, multiple references, and a bulletproof history of the last 10 years of your life. Each requires verification through an authoritative third party. Keep in mind, we're not talking about a top secret skunkworks project to build a presidential bunker on Europa, or a similar project that would require deep verification of a person's personal life and employment history. We're talking about securing a normal cubicle job where you do some menial paper pushing in between browsing whatever inoffensive websites are offered to you through the corporate web proxy.

This contrasts deeply to 30 or 40 years ago. I personally know men that became highly successful engineers without anything even resembling a degree. They came into the job pretty green, but had good work ethic and were intelligent. And, for the most part, that's all most employers used to look for.

So what happened between then and now? The workplace became feminized.

Legal, political and cultural trends pushed women into the workforce. One of the biggest beneficiaries was the human resources department. The core functions of an HR department typically involve processing hiring, firing, payroll, and benefits. These are all clerical roles, and the perfect place to be a mindless paper-pusher who rarely has to make a hard decision. If you had to employ a woman it's pretty much the ideal place to employ her.

Over the last few decades, the HR department was granted an enormous amount of power through sexual harassment suits, government regulation, byzantine reporting requirements, obfuscated benefits packages, and so on. What was once a department of paper pushers became a great force, and the source of soft power in an organization. They are the gatekeepers to employment, and the arbitrators of continued employment. If you want to get fired, the easiest way to do so is to repeatedly piss off a C-level exec or flout HR's rules. And since HR exists as the de facto enforcement agency of the politically correct crowd, any thoughtcrimes or undesirable speech that goes against the sensibilities of academics and politicians will be punished severely.

So what does this mean? Almost all employment in our society is entirely at the discretion of women. And, if there is one thing that women truly understand, it is authority. If pressed to make a decision, women will typically look to an authority figure. If there is no authority figure available, then a substitute can be found by creating authoritative (and often very arbitrary) sets of rules that must be complied with and relying on authoritative stamps of approval such as certificates/degrees, squeaky clean background checks, and perfect credit scores. Whether or not those proxy authorities are indicators of a good employee is completely irrelevant, they exist because there is simply no other way for women to make a decision.

The exact same scenario exists when shopping around for apartments. I tend to move on a yearly basis just from boredom or trying to secure a place that is closer to work since I despise commuting in traffic. I can't tell you the last time my leasing approval was contingent on the decision of a male; almost all apartment management and leasing offices are run by women. Thus, the same arbitrary rules and background checks apply for housing. Do they really need the last 5 places I've lived? Or a credit check? A background check? What about multiple references? The only thing that should matter is whether or not I can pay for the term of the lease, which could easily be done simply by income verification or a bank statement.

Wherever you find women tasked to make a decision you will find an authority figure that she looks to for the answer. This authority figure can exist as a man, or it can exist as a set of arbitrary rules and conditions. But it will never be the woman herself that is making the decision.

Post: #3

I agree it's women who push for credentials. I think in a woman's mind, the thought of giving money to a man, in other words giving him status/wealth, even in exchange for labor, doesn't make sense. Can you imagine if she is poor at managing her money, and she gives the job to a man who intelligently saves and accumulates wealth? It's just not something a woman would consider to willingly give men the potential for being higher status than her. Therefore, she must disqualify herself from that circumstance. She needs a higher power to default to "oh, he has X credential which MUST mean he is just who we need." Or, "he has X number of friends, so i KNOW he is good at keeping friends, which means he must not point out people's faults often, which means he must usually defer opinions to the friend, which means he must usually take a lower status position all the time."

I would propose that you don't waste time with jumping through hoops, it's just like game. It's much better to put the woman in a defensive crouch, because when you leave, she will automatically think higher of you and will be much more inclined to put your name at the top of the list for 'making an impression.'

Here is a situation similar to this. I went to buy a desk from a lady on Craigslist, and ended up not making a deal because it had a few cheaply made features/materials I assumed would cause trouble. When I pointed this out to her 'why I'm not interested anymore', it was revelatory to watch. She immediately defended the desk, "well, it made me happy!" Yet despite that, you could see in her mind that *she* began to devalue the desk for the very flaws I pointed out.

This is the only way i have found success in negotiating with women: you need to portray status via making her devalue the object in her own mind. The illogic is that she will not see the object as lower value, but she will see you as having higher status for influencing her.

My advice is to make a HR woman think of a stereotypically low class job in a respectable light, and then you can remind her that she seems to value low class jobs more than the offered position. This is a chain reaction if you pull it off, because in her mind, she cannot reconcile thinking good things about low class work, but bad things about herself ( her career, her position, the mission of the company, etc).

Feel free to use a heartfelt shitlib story, like 'those poor little children, they work in Nike factories all day, don't you feel so heartfelt? Now I wonder, you seem to value those child laborers much higher than this company's own jobs."

Post: #4

I don't get the hamsterized posts.... Seadog asked what's the purpose of employment verification and references..... Not a dissertation on women in HR and its feminization

Post: #5

I'm a landlord, and everyone must fill out a rental application. It's a filtering mechanism of sorts. If they leave big gaps in the application like no contact name and number for current landlord or no personal references or don't give me a copy of their drivers license, etc. they don't get the apt.

The reason being, if a prospective tenant feels like they don't need to provide the information and do what's asked in the application process in a timely manner then it may be a red flag they won't do what's required in the lease/contract.

That said, I don't usually check the references or credit. I use my gut, along with the shit test of the application process.

Edit: If one wants to break it down to Masculine/Feminine approaches. To base a decision purely on the worth of what's written on the application would be masculine. It's akin to the "letter of the law". The opposite of that would be to base it in on intuition, your gut (a.k.a feelings). That's the realm of the feminine. I try to use a hybrid, because truth occurs at the juxtaposition of the two.

I just had some potential prospects that "felt" good enough to rent to, but they failed miserably in the application process. Next.

Post: #6

Also, they ask because they look at your stability and ability to pay.

Yesterday I had someone who worked 12 gigs in 13 years... Now, why would I hire that person if he will only last a year. Even more, I wouldn't rent to someone who is can't really hold a job.

Post: #7

"My advice is to make a HR woman think of a stereotypically low class job in a respectable light, and then you can remind her that she seems to value low class jobs more than the offered position. This is a chain reaction if you pull it off, because in her mind, she cannot reconcile thinking good things about low class work, but bad things about herself ( her career, her position, the mission of the company, etc).

Feel free to use a heartfelt shitlib story, like 'those poor little children, they work in Nike factories all day, don't you feel so heartfelt? Now I wonder, you seem to value those child laborers much higher than this company's own jobs."

Can you give another example how you'd work this into an interview without it being a jump in topics?

Post: #8

Ha. I can dig dog's diatribe - good points.

Anyway, like others have said it's basically a screening process/shit-test. If you really want the service then maintain frame, fill out the app and move on. If not, keep looking for greener pastures.

For better or worse, I've found the best screening tool is a credit check (on the real estate side)...it's 9 times out of 10 the best indicator of a tenants future "performance". It probably extends to the 9 to 5 arena to some degree.

Not necessarily an endorsement.

Post: #9

(05-10-2014 02:29 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  I don't get the hamsterized posts.... Seadog asked what's the purpose of employment verification and references..... Not a dissertation on women in HR and its feminization

Seadog pointed out that the verification/reference system is flawed and easily gamed. The subtext of his question is, "if the system is flawed, why does it still exist?"

People take comfort in not having to judge another person, indeed women hold it as a credo. So while women become more and more itegrated in everything, the ability to skillfully judge a person is going away. I hate that men go along with wanting to shirk judgement by relying on scores and preselection.

This is a generation of risk-adversity bordering on risk-blindness. I see value in pointing out that this kind of system doesn't deserve words like 'enterprise' and 'trust'

Post: #10

Very interesting theory as to why the system exists. I follow your logic. Frankly though that's not how I like doing business. I prefer to meet people, trust them, seal deals on a handshake. Bottom line is you need to trust someone sooner or later. So as an applicant, I'm using that as a bit of a shit test for you too. If you're the person demanding 5 references, 10 yr rental history, credit, background and criminal checks, well that just raises all sorts of red flags to me. It says you're the kind of person who can't judge character on your own, lacks decsision making ability, and are the kind of person to always revert to rules, ignoring context. You're a robot, and likely someone I don't want to be around. If it's this many hassles just to apply, what sort of pissant rules are you going to throw at me when I'm there?

The way is see it, is that references and checks are another cost, similar to money. The more hassles/costs (or higher rent) you ask for, ironically the worse people you get. Who pays 60% monthly interest for payday loans? Same thing here. Who is going to jump through all these hoops? The people who have no other options.