Recruiting: a Politically Neutral Profession?
That’s because every kind of economy and political regime has jobs that need to get filled and people who need them (although not always adequately compensated jobs, despite however “fair” the pay may seem by market, employer or commissar standards).
A Little Like Little Switzerland
That ostensible neutrality as regards the political and economic ideologies of an economy makes the recruiting industry seem a bit like always-neutral Switzerland. But recruiting is not entirely like neutral Switzerland, because recruiters, wittingly or not, are both ideological and political facilitators and mediators within an economy and among its ideologies.
True, a recruiter can serve and function within just about every political-economic system that exists or has ever been proposed, for example,
- a democratic, regulated free-market economy
- a (un)democratic socialist economy
- a libertarian minimalist government and maximally free market
- a crony capitalist or nepotistic economy (the latter utilizing family connections and favors for the best jobs)
- a totally totalitarian State-controlled centralized command or collusive economy (e.g., Communist on the left, fascist plutocratic on the right)
- some other kind of mixed command-capitalist economy
- a (un)constitutional monarchy
- an anarchist community (if that’s not an oxymoron)
- a New World Order corporate-controlled global government and economy.
That’s the way it is with most jobs—like a physician, a recruiter can be politically neutral (up to a point, as the WW II experience of doctors in Germany demonstrated, when neutrality was virtually impossible if a physician wanted to practice medicine there).
Recruiter Political-EconomicLeanings, Constraints and Practices
However, it can be argued that what a recruiter does always has political implications and consequences, even if it or (s)he is not politically or ideologically motivated. The most glaring example is the Wall Street recruiter-lobbyist who attempts to groom politicians for ultra-lucrative private practice after their terms expire and money-men-friendly legislation has been passed, as an instance of crony capitalism.
Less dramatically and less ethically problematic is the case of helping a corporation than needs better cultural, gender, etc., balance in alignment with affirmative-action or other anti-discrimination legislation. At least this is not only not illegal, but from some ideological perspectives it is also right (although not from all ideological viewpoints)—the point here being that political and economic ideology can seep into the recruiting process on both the employer and worker-demand side, and on the recruiter talent-supply side, e.g., if the recruiter favors “progressive” ideas.
On the other hand, a recruiter with a more conservative bent might be inclined to honor the employer’s request for a balancing hire, yet still, however, subtly, at least include, if not push, a candidate who is without question the best, irrespective of any implications for hiring balance–or even contrary to it.
It is also very likely that any such inclusion—or exclusion—would be motivated by the recruiter’s ethical (rather than political-economic) considerations based on a whatever standard of fairness (s)he embraces.
At any rate, and such manifestations of recruiter ideological leanings aside, the fact remains that
- Recruiting, viewed in the entirety of the vetting and hiring process, does not automatically represent any single political or economic ideology.
- While recruiting allows individual recruiters some de facto latitude in allowing political-economic ideology to seep into their practices (especially those in alignment with the recruiter’s ethics), such positioning on any such spectrum(s) is not a defining, inescapable part of recruiting.
Free-Market Democratic Recruiter-Bias Aside
Recruiter facilitation of political agendas (and their attendant economic systems) can take other forms—again, ranging from the outrageous to the perfectly acceptable (however potent the intervention).
For example, because resumes in many countries are solicited in an “open job market”, without being plunked on a recruiter’s desk by some commissar, it would not be surprising for recruiters in these regions, when pressed to identify their position on the political-economic spectrum(s), to say “democratic, free-market”.
However, impartially solicited resumes do not always translate into impartial hiring—especially when apparatchiks, rank-and-file party members, relatives, etc., are given preferential treatment by those having the last word or when the jobs to be filled are government jobs in some party-dominated, centralized command system.
Having to choose between one’s ethics (personal and/or professional) and the political-economic (and corporate) matrix in which the hiring is being conducted can put recruiters into a real quandary: “Uh-oh. This clueless guy is the nephew of the Duke of Whatzits…” So, does (expected) loyalty to the monarchy trump loyalty to fairness? Does political pressure trump moral pressure?
Similarly, if a recruiter is suspicious of the economic and political implications of an unregulated derivatives market, less than robust enthusiasm in vetting “quants” (brilliant mathematicians who can earn more designing investment algorithms and schemes than by doing something that creates more than money) may be forgivable.
A takeaway lesson in all of this is that when it comes to politics and economic policies and systems, some, if not many, recruiters regularly vote twice.
Once in each political election and again daily—in both instances, for candidates and (when they can get away with it) for their own closet or out-in-the-open political and economic ideologies.