Some folks had a lot of adversity in their lives and are OK with talking about how they delt with it. Some people pay others to listen to this and call it therapy.
There are other ways to ask these sorts of questions: did you ever have a job that you dont want to go back to but would not give up the experience of? (Do you know how shitty a job can be, were you an amazon driver or a pickle shoveler)
When they dont have that much experience you want to know that they can be mentored.
> Some folks had a lot of adversity in their lives and are OK with talking about how they delt with it. Some people pay others to listen to this and call it therapy.
Sure. But is "willing to talk about dealing with trauma" really a valid filter to sort potential employees by?
Ability to function during emotionally-difficult circumstances can be a job requirement. (Likely not software engineering, hence the scorn on this forum!) It's unlikely the interviewers are curious about the interviewee's story, but if a question about a traumatic experience makes someone freeze up then they may not be able to perform certain roles.
Off the top of my head, working in an emergency department of any major hospital is guaranteed to be filled with emotionally-difficult circumstances. Yet we don't ask doctors, nurses and technicians personally invasive questions to determine their ability to do their job.
For someone starting a job in an emergency department, having prior personal experiences with life or death situations is a very poor indicator of ability to handle that type of pressure in professional life. So why is that relevant to office jobs?
right, but for someones first job i would also not expect any experience how to handle work situations at all. regardless of how i would be able to find out it seems a bit much to ask.
that's exactly the point I am trying to make? it's ok to ask about past professional experiences, it's not ok to ask personal questions about the past.
> if a question about a traumatic experience makes someone freeze up then they may not be able to perform certain roles
What certain roles are needed to plunge into reliving the time they were raped or assaulted? When they were a war refugee? And while reliving being assaulted to navigate a professional space??
- HR professionals deal with a ton of shit, including assaults.
- First responders, obviously.
- Message board moderators?
- Customer service of any kind. (The Karen memes are irritating, and really, really mean, but I swear I recognize every one those interactions from my years in those kinds of jobs.)
- I was trauma-dumped plenty of times during my teaching career, as well as been loudly - even potentially violently - blamed (by students) for all of the problems they're having in class (or maybe even life, lol).
Maintaining professional aplomb in emotionally volatile situations is a critical part of jobs which deal primarily with people, rather than things - and is more relevant to engineering sorts of roles than many engineers realize.
Look, I'm not defending those particular questions - and far less the particular people asking them. I'm offering an alternate point of view about why they're being asked. It'd be great to see posters on this forum suggest some better ways to evaluate the traits at which they're aimed.
All of those things are made far worse if you’re actively having traumatic flashbacks, and do not benefit at all from having a traumatized childhood. The actual best things for the above is appropriate training and crisis intervention strategies.
Exactly. Which is the rationale for asking about past trauma in an interview. If the interviewee locks up in a traumatic flashback then they're clearly not prepared to do the job.
Again: I'm not defending the practice. It's a really gross metric, and a really gross (in the other sense) method. I just haven't seen this thread demonstrate much understanding of what's actually going on.
You're 100% correct about crisis intervention training. I had a few sessions - of dubious worth - while I was a teacher. I worked in a group home for troubled kids for a bit, and that one included learning physical restraints - which I did end up needing. My best mentor, however, was a grizzled old waitress who took a drag on a Camel (cigarette), shrugged, and said "you just gotta let them have their say". She was a wizard at de-escalation.
People are ok with talking about their trauma in an interview? Next time someone asks me “name a time you faced adversity” should I bring up navigating an eating disorder in a workplace where eating is done in view of your peers and it’s socially acceptable to comment on food, socially unacceptable to refrain from a catered lunch?
therapy vs sharing my experiences are very different things. when i am willing to talk to a therapist then it is because the therapist is not allowed to share that with others.
Some folks had a lot of adversity in their lives and are OK with talking about how they delt with it. Some people pay others to listen to this and call it therapy.
There are other ways to ask these sorts of questions: did you ever have a job that you dont want to go back to but would not give up the experience of? (Do you know how shitty a job can be, were you an amazon driver or a pickle shoveler)
When they dont have that much experience you want to know that they can be mentored.