Tinted Windows and Job Seekers...
 

Besides personality and drug tests, companies are starting to observe their new job candidates when they come onto the company premises for an interview.

Tinted driver & front passengers windows are viewed as someone who knows the rules...but those rules don't apply to them, and thereby going to be potential problem employees.

I asked my friend working in HR...what if they take the bus??

This is what happens when HR wonks are given actual authority. How about evaluating prospects on their qualifications?

Naaaaaaah. That'd be too easy, right?

Ummm, what? Tinted windows are legal here, and are in most states. Do they whip out the reflectivity meter before or after the interview?

Tinted windows are damn near mandatory here. Many new car lots tint all the windows as soon as they get them!

Gotta be a California thing, if it's true.

California does not allow any aftermarket tints on the front side windows, regardless of the degree of tint, and factory tints must allow at least 70% visible light transmission. Obviously, fewer and fewer owners follow this law and the police generally ignore it unless they cannot clearly see the front seat passengers through the tint--or they want an excuse to pull you over. By this standard, that HR dept. will have few "qualified" applicants.

I've heard stories about HR looking for car seats in the cars of female candidates while they are interviewing, so this would not surprise me.

LOL, when I worked for Bank of New Zealand the best Sys Prog we ever had arrived dressed as a bikie. We never got him to wear a tie but he sure was a good systems programer.

No wonder our country is soo damn broken. Letting nerdy do nothing college graduates who have probably never done a real days work in their life, pre judge others performance by their car customization choices. Hell in a bucket I tell ya...

The paranoia and foolishness is thick in this thread. Ought to be in PARF with the other whacko threads.

Yeah, I took the bait.

Illegal as hell if they didn't hire based on that. But it happens...

IMO, you sometimes can tell a lot about someone by how they take care of their vehicle.

I hired a guy who turned out to be a complete slob. He could do the job(driving for us in a commercial truck) but I had to constantly remind him to clean up after himself.

One of my employees even took a pic of his vehicle and he had fast food wrappers, cigarette boxes, and trash that filled up the passenger side of his car.

My wife is an HR manager but looking at a car doesn't give her any useful info for hiring at her place.

I think it's the first impression kind of thing. When I apply for a job, I always make sure to not drive my truck, because it looks like a farm truck and I don't drive the 911 or Mercedes because it makes me look like a pretentious prick. I drive the boxster, it does just kind of blend into a parking lot

I just had a little heated debate with one of the guys who helps write the State inspection laws here in Pa. Currently, window tint is not a vehicle safety inspection issue, but you can still be ticketed for it.
He is pushing hard to add it back to the state inspection procedure, and it is pretty (it was at one time) , and make any aftermarket window tint, ANYWHERE on the vehicle illegal, and an instant fail .
You should see all the other " safety " items they are adding to the list of things to check for vehicles state inspection .
I asked him his reasoning behind it, and he told me that they are worried about the safety of the police officers that cannot see in cars they are stopping.
I should have kept my mouth shut, but I simply stated my opinion that they have no business looking in my vehicle, and we both know that this has nothing to do with making vehicles that travel our roads safer.
I guess window tint will be the next big evil our society will have to legislate our way out of
Sorry to hi jack the thread.

They interview for hair dresser jobs?

Sorry, I couldn't resist! Just kidding of course.

I prefer interior designer thank you very much,and no need to be sorry I like jokes, even ones directed at me. :D

Here in Va we can not reject for tint unless it is all bubbled and distorts the drivers view. The law falls on the officer on the street to determine if it is too dark. In court there has to be a number from the tint-o-meter for the charges to stick. It is kind of like the muffler thing. As long as the exhaust is properly mounted, doesn't leak, and properly exits the vehicle properly it passes state inspection. but state law requires a muffler. Go figure

For me the way I view a potential employee depends on the job I'm filling. For a position like sales, where making a good first impression is important to the job, I would watch them arrive and leave and every move they make in between.

Ha, I worked for VW in the early 90's. The guy who ran the shop was a crusty mean old fart who ran his ship like it was the Marines .
I daily drove a 1976 Corvette back then, and was also long hair. The whole way through the interview when he hired me, he kept asking me how much weed I sold to buy that Corvette. I kept assuring him, two jobs since high school .
I agree you can tell a lot by a person's car, but window tint?

Wayne posted here a few times that, when he interviews people for jobs at Pelican, he either sends someone out or he goes out to take a look at the applicant's car. Having a total mess in your car can be considered an indicator of your work habits and certainly your work station.

Keeping the above in mind, when I went to an interview last week (just got the offer an hour ago), I drove my Hyundai Santa Fe, but had the inside spotless before leaving the house.

I knew a girl who worked at Geico and got fired when a security camera spotted her driving into the office garage without her seatbelt on. True story. Don't know if she had been warned or if that was written policy.

my cars are kept absolutely immaculate, right down to the even wear on my tire treads. let the morons in HR check, it's not like they know what the hell they are looking at anyhow.

I can't remotely imagine how this is legal during an interview.

On another note, my buddy drove around a beat up 78 Malibu, kept complaining the cops pulling him over guns drawn cuz he looked like a Meth head driving around in it.

rjp

Anyone in HR- I invite you to sneak out and not only check my interior, but check my tire pressure. See if you can find a flaw, anywhere.

Hah.
When I worked for a shipping company, all the bodyshop cars had dents and the mechanic's cars were always breaking down.

This story brought some ancient memories flooding back. In the early/mid '70s, when I was a young teenager, I worked summers at a parking garage in DT Minneapolis hand-washing cars. It was a decent job when busy, I got paid by the car instead of the hour. I still remember that it was $1.30 per car, inside and out, vacuumed and chamoised(?) dry. There were some massive cars in those days, like Eldorados and Buick wagons. :)

I wasn't even old enough to drive in those days but I had long hair and an attitude. My boss was a straight-up redneck named Ernie Peacock Jr., (I kid you not), he had a buzz cut like a Marine, (unusual in the '70s), and he was a beer drinking 35 y.o. to my pot smoking 15 y.o. He used to call me "hippie freak" all day long but I knew that he really liked me but would not admit it. One day, I came in with a pretty good shiner from a fight over the weekend and he was in heaven giving me crap about it. :)

Your boss asking how much weed you sold for the Corvette really reminded me of Ernie. He was a funny guy. I wound up doing some yard work for him at his large suburban place one weekend and drank a 12-pack with him, he liked my work ethic even though he wouldn't admit it and he bossed me around like a drill Sargent but with always some humor involved. I miss that guy and hope he's had a good life since. :cool:

PS i know the VP of HR for Chase- had nachos with her in PHX a few weeks ago- cute girl BUT...

YOU SHOULD SEE HER CAR. IT'S A DISASTER, Not only is it a mess, it's probably been crashed 1,000 times. I would NEVER, EVER, GIVE HER THE KEYS TO MY CAR, EVER- even if I lay dying and i had to go to the hospital I would hesitate giving her the wheel.

rjp

My HR friend explained the basis of this: If one knows having tinted windows is illegal(at least in CA for driver and front passenger windows), and your car has those windows tinted, then the mindset is your above the law, that the law doesn't apply to you.

So from the company perspective, what else are you capable of from an ethical standpoint knowing what is wrong, but then doing something that might compromise the very company you work for.

Just as many don't like "personality tests", but they usually can find deception in answers just by moving a few words around, asking that same question 2 pages later, and then they look for an inconsistency. For instance, anyone that answers "have you ever lied?" and says NO is absolutely full of shyte.

Life isn't fair, but a private company is pretty much free to hire and fire on their terms.

The problem is assuming such a trivial thing as indicative of a "mindset." I have purchased several used cars where the PO had tinted the front windows, never to the extreme of too dark to see the passengers, but tinted nevertheless. Does the fact that I don't think it's worth the time and money to disassemble the door window to remove a tint that is legal in 49 other states yet is illegal here simply because it's after market, make me think I'm above the law? Most of the time, I didn't even know the tint was applied.

My point is this, maybe your HR friend needs to ask a few questions. Maybe the car is borrowed. Maybe they don't know it's illegal because they know of no one who's been stopped. Maybe they're from another state where it's legal. Maybe your HRfriend does ask questions. Jumping to a conclusion that one feels above the law based solely on his window tint is ridiculous--especially when you extrapolate that they may be unethical from that single fact.

A job interview goes both ways. As a potential employee, I am looking for a company culture that I am compatible with. If window tinting or some other new age thing about me puts off the HR person, then perhaps I wouldn't fit into that company's culture.

As a long time employer and the one who did the hiring let me tell you that "attitude" is more important than certifications and qualifications. Your car can emit something about your attitude. I see this as a valid element of the evaluation.

Complete load of crap, jumping to all kinds of potentially wrong conclusions. As ossiblue mentions, there can be lots of extenuating or legitimizing circumstances. I know in my state one can apply for and obtain a waiver from tinting restrictions due to a sensitivity to light (I looked into it a while ago but then determined it really wasn't necessary to get an inspection sticker even with my tinted windows). If a company didn't hire someone on this basis, they'd be setting themselves up for a lawsuit bigtime ("so you didn't hire my client because of his medical condition? Tell me more...") Of course as with most things, good luck ever getting them to admit it - most companies will never state a reason that a particular candidate was hired and another one was not. They'll just give a safe, evasive, corporate non-answer like "we found the other candidate to be more qualified for the position" so in practice they can do pretty much whatever they want without repercussions.

Also, as has been stated, why would you work for a company that has a policy like this? I've turned down job offers before and I very likely wouldn't consider working for a company like this one if I found out their policy ahead of time doing my homework. The only reason companies get away with stupidity like this is because good, qualified people let them, roll over and compromise their principles just to collect a paycheck. Stop doing it and watch them change their tune. When all the best candidates start going to the competition and they start getting their butts kicked as a result, perhaps they'll reconsider - if they're able to figure out why it's happening before they go under.

I have tinted windows on my Mercedes which are / were legal in CA and MA but not in NH where I'm currently domiciled. Then again I spend 80% of my time down in MA and live very close to the border so I don't see the need to remove the tinting (that I paid good money for and which protects my interior and looks good) just to comply with a dumb NH law. I've even discussed it with a cop and he agreed with me that the tint law has nothing whatsoever to do with officer safety - it's just an excuse to pull over cars that exhibit a characteristic that a lot of low-lifes happen to incorporate into their rides. I said if pulled over I roll down the windows anyway and put my hands in plain view, so what's the issue. He said "absolutely none - you'll definitely get treated better and with less suspicion than someone who leaves the window up and / or has their hands out of sight, whether the windows are tinted or not. If we're really concerned we'll order the driver to lower the window over the loudspeaker before we even approach the car".

Also keep in mind that it is the duty of the citizenry to challenge and even disobey stupid or unjust laws. It's not a "mindset" it's a responsibility. If our forefathers had followed all the laws we'd still be singing "God save the Queen" and paying tribute to London (although our taxes might actually be less than the tribute we pay to Washington, but that's another discussion! ;)

If my "mindset" about mindless conformity is a problem then fine - don't hire me. I don't want to work for you anyway. I'm sure your corporate leaders follow all the rules now, don't they? Your loss, not mine.

Amen brother! Be true to thy self. If you have to be someone that you're not to get a job, it very likely will not be a good fit. Be yourself, be honest, look for a culture where the real you fits.

As someone who has done hiring, I find it to be totally irrelevant. I've known incredible engineers that drive beater cars and keep a messy desk. If they are technical superstars willing to go above and beyond, I could give a rat's ass.

Of course, I also find most of the standard HR interview questions to be a joke that anyone halfway prepared can BS their way through. HR tries to standardize the interview process so they keep the power, because at the core they rarely even understand the job that they are hiring for. To me a conversation about past experiences, pros/cons of past jobs, desires for the next job, and general chit-chat can be much more revealing.

Profiles...all about the stats. Can't fight the averages unfortunately but when exceptions exist they rock conventional thought.