When Anonymous Asks About — Telling the Truth

A long time ago, I started an anonymous mailbox for Albert’s List. As my community grew, the intention was to provide a channel where job seekers — afraid of their managers or colleagues seeing their questions — could seek advice for common workplace issues. 460 of these questions later and I’ve compiled quite a library of questions.

(I hope to share them in their anonymity here from time to time)

From time to time, I will receive anonymous ask requests that really make me wonder about the state of our working world. Take the one I got a few weeks ago for example, where an individual submitted a question about a recent HireVue video interview process — where they were asked to talk about a time where they told a lie — and wanted to give the employer feedback about the question. Understandably, not only was this question strange to the individual, but it triggered negative feelings they had due to the fact that they had to lie about their sexual orientation.

I get that we live in a time where the job market is heavily employer-focused. With so much talent on the market, it almost gives hiring managers a blank check to ask for whatever they want, from doing homework to asking inane interview questions. And to some degree, it’s absolutely in their right. In the spirit of the job search, any job seeker faces a number of challenges and discriminations that they must overcome, from wearing the rights clothing to answering questions the right way, to submitting a resume in the right font.

Our parents — you know, baby boomers and Generation X’ers — Call this building character. Job hunting, after all, is a full-time job that is meant to help employers discover the best candidate available and for job seekers to hopefully offer their best services to those hiring. But why take things this far? As friends have told me, people are literally wanting to prove themselves and I agree — this isn’t it.

So hiring managers, wherever you are, take note. You can ask funny questions, but we’ll definitely give you funny looks. But hey, you really do want to know what my strengths and weaknesses are, right?