An Ethical Dilemma – Who Would You Hire? Part 2

The Scenario Part One

I posed a scenario to you a couple of days ago here at Interview Chatter. Click the link above to catch up on the story. My question: “Which person would you hire? Mary or Julie and Why?”

Let me weigh in and share how I see it. First, the ethical dilemma from my perspective comes in play the minute the hiring manager, Sally, considers hiring Julie instead of Mary. I see no problem with Sally meeting and interviewing Julie. I don’t believe Julie should be a candidate for the position that is now closed. Julie, in my opinion, is for future job openings. Once Sally offered the position to Mary and Mary accepts, the issue of hiring someone else, for better or for worse is not an option, or at least shouldn’t be.

Let me pose a slight twist. What if Mary accepts the job, but doesn’t show up on the first day or starts the position, but leaves after a week or two. At that point, Sally has already interviewed another candidate, Julie and now she has the option of bringing her in to fill the gap. I believe things like this happen quite often in organizations. People accept positions and for reasons unforseen or otherwise, they are gone within a few days or they don’t even show up on day one.

Here are some of the comments I received over the last few days. Keep in mind, I am only sharing a portion of their comments. I would love to hear what you think. Feel free to leave a comment below!

Chuck from “I Hate Your Job” was kind enough to leave his thoughts here at Interview Chatter. Here is Chuck’s comment:

“Once you tell someone they have the job, you are morally obligated to follow through on your word, in my opinion regardless of other candidates. In this scenario, agreeing to interview another person was a mistake.”

I also posed this question to LinkedIn Questions and Answer. There are lots of people out on LinkedIn who contributed their thoughts to my question.

Here are some of their comments:

Larry wrote: “It’s not a dilemma at all. If an offer of employment has been extended, and if that offer has been accepted, then that position has been filled. Period. End of discussion. You stop searching for and interviewing candidates at that point.”

Mason wrote: “…With regards to the hiring manager merely interviewing a candidate after the job has already been offered to someone else, I don’t see a problem with this. It’s possible the hiring manager may have yet another opening to fill, perhaps in the near future. It’s possible the person with the job offer may not show up on their first day, so it’s prudent to have a back up candidate. So, interviewing someone else, in my view, is fine. Making a second job offer after the first offer has been made would be squirrelly and establish a bad reputation.”

William wrote: “Clearly an ethical line would be crossed, were a hiring manager to make an offer to one candidate and then withdraw the offer. If verbally done(the offer) there is reduced liability (If I’m understanding correctly). If it is a written offer, there is great exposure liability-speaking.”

Rebecca wrote: “Could you look at opening another role and bringing both on board? I’m guessing the first candidate met the requirements of the role, otherwise why did you offer them the position? The fact you’ve got someone else who can go above and beyond is great, but you can’t back out of the original offer.”

Jay wrote: “Leaving aside the ethics, as a job candidate, I would be highly…irritated if a company did this. If I get a job offer, and I’ve already decided that this was the company I wanted to work for, I’ve likely terminated my job search. I may have turned down good offers from other companies – who, in turn, may have turned around and offered those jobs to other candidates. This underhanded maneuver could put me, the candidate, in a nasty predicament.”

Greg from Off the Hook Jobs had alot to say but here is my favorite part of his answer, “…So, what is my opinion? Take the “Grandma Test” That is, whatever your decision is, would your Grandma agree with it? It is amazing, as this test usually covers any issue, and 99+% of the time, covers the legal stuff as well.”

More to come on this topic tomorrow! Have a great day!