The researchers found that employers were far more likely to express interest in the applicant who had most recently worked in a corporate job.
Overall, the self-employed candidate received 63% fewer positive responses such as requests for salary expectations than the candidate with the corporate job. The disparity was particularly sharp for men, who were viewed more harshly than women if they came from a self-employed background, although the researchers are not yet sure why.
— blogs.wsj.com
13 Comments
Because it shows independence. They hate that kinda thing in corporate America. They don't want independent thinkers, they want obidient workers.
lessons from the Fox Street Journal:
be a corporate stooge and be a corporate bully.
awesome.
This is the new America, where entrepreneurship and self-will are looked down upon.
jla and sameold - i don't agree with that assessment at all. it's not about 'independence', it's about whether that person is so set in their ways that they aren't willing (or can't) to change enough to work within that setting. i've been burned that way once - someone who'd been on their own so long that they weren't interested in changing their ways to fit our (relatively lax) company standards. what's the employer supposed to do in that situation? just 'let them be' while being a drain on the company and setting an example that everyone can just do whatever they want in the name of 'independence'?
so, yeah, it's 100% dependent on the person involved, the company and what's being asked of them. smart companies will still (hopefully) hire smart people, regardless of their background. corporate drones probably just want more worker bees.
i believe HR just suspects that self-employed people become self-employed after they lose their jobs, in order to keep their resume alive. its not necessarily that they look condescendingly on self-employment—its that they look condescendingly on temporarily self-employed people who become so in order to alleviate their unemployment streak. to them, that means the applicant wasn't 'good' enough to have been hired instantly from job to job. i have no idea, but i would imagine they would look at a person who had been the owner of a thriving business or practice for many years MUCH differently than someone who has their latest job as 'self-employed' for the past 6 mo. to 1.5 years.
This more or less makes sense to me. Someone who is self-employed/reentering the corporate workforce is a very different animal than someone already in the corporate workforce. It's a huge cultural shift and often does not work out for either the employer or the employee. Truth is that to be self-employed (and I mean legitimately self-employed, not "between jobs self employed") takes a real entrepreneur, someone who takes risks, is independent, and also enjoys the benefits of self-employment, flexible schedule, total control, etc. - all traits that do not by nature lend themselves to being a team player in a corporate environment. I say this as someone who left the corporate workforce to start a business.
Self-employed people tend to be self-reliant and broadly competent.
These qualities are a threat to corporate structure.
^ what miles said!
As someone who essentially paid with 1099s, I have a ethical and legal obligation to put "contractor" or "self-employed" on my resumes.
The only way to get around this, of course, is to start an incorporated staffing company where I contract out myself to my jobs under the guise of being employed by said shell staffing company.
And then report my own employment at said staffing company to something like The Work Number (http://www.theworknumber.com/). Many major corporations report their employees' vitals (employment dates, salary, benefits) to agencies like this. Those get employed at much larger entities outside of boutique operations generally leave a massive data trail.
Where this becomes important for employment as the permeation and adoption of automated human resource software in all aspects of the market mean that the dataless — the self-employed, boutique workers, fellows who work off grants or stipends — face a much rougher time gaining employment.
I'm working on a pitching a program to try to alleviate the problem. Unfortunately, as one of the dataless, I don't have the money to pursue it.
" Self-employed people tend to be self-reliant and broadly competent.
These qualities are a threat to corporate structure."
rare cases..
in most cases, it shows the inability to work with people or groups, lack of social skills, self-centered people xD
I was self-employed for 8 years. Now I'm employed by a large institution. What shocks me on a daily basis is how often people in the place are willing to sabotage the good of the overall institution for their own department's (or their own personal) gain. Somehow my self-employment, together with working in small firms for years, made me a better team player than those entrenched in the world of large institutions.
So that's a counterpoint to the idea that self-employed people tend to not be team players. But obviously I'm learning new outlooks every day.
"i believe HR just suspects that self-employed people become self-employed after they lose their jobs, in order to keep their resume alive. its not necessarily that they look condescendingly on self-employment—its that they look condescendingly on temporarily self-employed people who become so in order to alleviate their unemployment streak. to them"
Many of us were forced into this mode because of the recession and I am still paying the price 5 years later with a low paying architecture job -
That is why self employed Architects are usually hired as consultants to the Corporate Firms. This way the get to do and say as they wish, get credit for the job and move on to the next one. Who needs to work Corporate when you can work the Corporate....mean bunch of buggers we independent self employed Architects are ruling the world in the background.
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