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I Got Catfished by a Candidate

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Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#631

Post by LloydPickering »

mrbill wrote: post #584
LloydPickering wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a British Freemason, but in my jurisdiction so long as you resigned in good standing (without any money owed), then you just need to open a dialog with a local lodge (in amity/recognition with your mother lodge's jurisdiction) and explain the situation to them. In England the secretary of your new lodge would either contact the secretary of your mother lodge to check you are in good standing, or ask you to contac…

As one of my mentors said, "It's not about you knowing the proficiency 100% when you pass, it's about knowing it 100% when you're teaching it to others." I wasn't 100% when I turned mine in, but they passed me anyway - after many hours of studying and working with others, they knew I KNEW it, but just froze up a bit during the official presentation. I'd had some extenuating circumstances (wife passing away, etc) and…

That's fascinating! In England we are a lot more easy going over the proficiency required to progress. Normally your proposer or a lodge mentor will chat with you and go through your questions and responses, but there isn't any certificates etc. When the candidate is asked the questions to prove proficiency he is accompanied by the relevant Deacon who will prompt him, and in some cases actually prompt the whole thing. That doesn't look very good, but it does happen (particularly when there are extenuating circumstances). The candidate is still passed/raised. Once you have completed your raising you are issued with a certificate from grand lodge to prove your status as a mason, but it is not graded in any way. It simple states in flowery language when you were raised to the degree of a Master Mason.

In England there are multiple rituals in common practice and there isn't a move to formally standardise, mainly from the fact there were lodges operating before Grand Lodge was formed. The most common in use is Emulation Ritual which was designed to emulate the majority of the work done by lodges at the time the two English Grand Lodges merged. You can buy copies of the ritual freely, but various parts are obscured in shorthand so as not to divulge too much.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#632

Post by LloydPickering »

sneak wrote: post #393
cookiecaper wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Freemason, so I'm probably talking out of turn here, but I've always admired Freemasonry and the Masons I know are pretty cool, so I'll give this a shot. Corrections welcome. Freemasonry is a collection of locally-run fraternities. There is no overarching masonic organization or top-down command structure, it's all done by the local lodge, which may or may not be affiliated with other lodges. They are all "…

Note well that the masons are a sexist organization, denying access to women, and historically an entirely segregated organization as well (see also: Prince Hall Masons).

Really? See https://www.owf.org.uk/ In the UK Lady masons have their own lodges and we are very supportive of their efforts often sharing masonic halls and facilities.

As for Prince Hall Masonry yes there was racial segregation in America, but nowadays most State Grand Lodges recognise each other with a few hold outs in the deep south.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#633

Post by magduf »

extra88 wrote: post #623
magduf wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you've gotten the the point of checking references doesn't mean the candidate is definitely going to accept your offer. If you called my manager and got me fired from my job in an interview process, I'd most likely hire a lawyer and sue you.

> I'd most likely hire a lawyer and sue you. This is America so anyone can sue for anyone for anything but what exactly do you think the grounds would be for a suit? I won't call without your consent, I have no intent to cause you harm, if the reference calls go well you'll even likely get a job offer.

>I won't call without your consent

The way you wrote it, it seemed you were going to just call the employee's current manager.

I would NEVER give you consent for that. I don't know what kind of screwed-up industry that would ever be the norm in. Doing this is grounds for a lawsuit because it will most likely result in termination of the employee from his current job.

>if the reference calls go well you'll even likely get a job offer.

That's a big "if". The reference call almost guarantees the person will lose his current job.

As for the grounds for the suit, getting someone fired from their job is pretty good grounds for a lawsuit. There's expectations of privacy that go with job-hunting, and willfully getting someone fired from their job will not sit well with a jury.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#634

Post by magduf »

phyller wrote: post #625
magduf wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So exactly how do you think your friend should have handled it? Tell his employer he was checking out a potential new job? How do you think that would have gone? You think someone of "integrity" needs to ruin their current employment every time they even think about finding a new job?

This is another problem with people who lie, it actually takes practice to be both truthful and tactful, and they don't even know how to do it. It's crazy to me that I have to say this, but as has already been stated in this thread, being truthful doesn't mean you have to constantly spew everything you are thinking, stream of consciousness style. You just don't mislead people. What he should have done was a) coordina…

>being truthful doesn't mean you have to constantly spew everything you are thinking, stream of consciousness style. You just don't mislead people.

We're not talking about spewing all your private thoughts to people, we're talking about responding to questions. You take a day off from work to go on an interview, and your boss asks you if you're interviewing. What's your response? People like you apparently spill the truth, and get fired. People like me find some way of lying about it ("I wasn't feeling well", "my kid was sick", etc.) so we don't get terminated before we're actually ready to make a move.

>What he should have done was a) coordinate a time with me when he was off work anyway or b) ask for a day off. He doesn't need to explain why

Wrong. Maybe you wouldn't ask why, but another manager might. You cannot guarantee that all managers are like you. Unless you can guarantee that no boss anywhere on the planet will ask invasive questions in this scenario (following your own advice about asking for a day off, which is exactly what I've done when I went on interviews), then you have no right to expect anyone to be honest. People lie because other people have bad behavior, and those people have greater power. Lying is the proper response to protect yourself.

>If I need to take time off I take it. That didn't even occur to you?

That's exactly what I do too. What makes you think I don't? The problem is if your boss pries, and asks why. I'm not going to tell the truth here, and not I'm sorry if that offends your morality. Luckily, I've had good bosses in recent years who didn't ask, so I didn't have to resort to this, but I can certainly see how someone might have a crappy boss who is nosy and asks improper and invasive questions like this. For those people, lying is the proper response. The boss is obviously bad, which means they obviously need to find a better job, but they're also working on that, and it's unreasonable to demand that they quit their job (or risk being fired) while doing a job search. My most recent job search took about 3 months (though I didn't get really serious until the last ~1.5); it can take some time to find just the right opportunity that you want to jump ship for.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#635

Post by magduf »

ebbv wrote: post #627
magduf wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was applying to a sales position. Sales is fundamentally about lying to potential customers to sell them stuff.

It's very sad that you believe that. It doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be in my opinion. That's a tactic immoral people resort to and make excuses like "Everybody does it." for their behavior.

You don't think it has to be? Honestly, I don't know; I'm not in sales at all so this is my off-the-cuff opinion from outside, but it sure seems to me that the entire profession of sales is all about dishonesty. Whether it has to be or not, I don't know: how successful would honest salespeople be really? If the dishonest ones are more successful long-term, then that means that companies that use dishonest salespeople will outcompete companies that don't. I don't know if it's really like this (a scientific study would be difficult, plus it could vary a lot by industry; what works for Best Buy or used car salespeople might not be the case for enterprise software or medical device sales), but I do suspect that, thanks to human nature and short-sightedness, dishonesty in sales probably does correlate with long-term success. Maybe the internet with all the online reviews will change this, as it gives people more information in evaluating merchants ("John at this store totally lied to me when he sold me Widget X!! Don't shop here!").

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#636

Post by lovich »

nocman wrote: post #616
lovich wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking to people is not computer code. In this admittedly contrived situation, they are looking for you to say it's good. You give an answer _to a different question_. Either people realize and you've violated the social expectation or they don't realize and you've misdirected them. Avoiding the question in a way that's misleading people has the same result as a lie even if not technically the same thing If you refu…

"Talking to people is not computer code." irrelevant. I never said it was. Also, saying "thank you for making it" isn't answering a question at all , so it isn't "answering a different question". "The entire camp of people in this thread" with my viewpoint simply disagree with you. You attribute dishonesty to things we would say, when we know that saying those things would be honest. So you can keep reiterating the s…

You didn't say that talking to people was like computer code, you are describing talking to people like it's computer code so it is relevant.

>Also, saying "thank you for making it" isn't answering a question at all, so it isn't "answering a different question".

Saying that you're not lieing because you are haven't said something that is false out of context, but is still misleading _on purpose_ is the most pedantic thing I have heard all year.

And just don't reply if you are going to be done with a discussion, telling people you might not bother replying to them is condescending and uncivil for this board

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#637

Post by emodendroket »

M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #630
ControlledBurn wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, kind of. There's a no atheists allowed rule last I checked (A belief in a supreme being and scripture is a condition of membership), but they're not picky about what god(s) you might worship.

That's the root of the problem of freemasonry. It means that a freemason have to hold contradictory positions as true. One might be an atheist by one cannot reject the so-called supreme being, one might belong to an Abrahamic religion but one cannot reject the Hindu pantheon. And within the Abrahamic religions it's more contentious than anything. It's an expression of the Orwellian "2 + 2 = 5", and it's a very danger…

I don't think I follow. From what I've read here, the question is "do you believe in any higher power at all?" which everyone except a committed atheist could answer "yes" truthfully (and even then, an atheist could presumably accept some sort of "life-force" that isn't a god).

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#638

Post by hodgesrm »

adamzk wrote: post #621
hodgesrm wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying it's good to hire people who lie to get through the interview? What would they lie about on the job? This kind of thing can end badly. I worked with a guy who was kicked out of two companies (first for fiddling expenses and second for faking his CV on a grand scale) and ended up sentenced to 64 months in prison for fraud. [0] He fooled a lot of very smart people along the way. I still don't fully under…

Yeah but he did it to get the job not to defraud anyone. That's dedication not deceit. He wasn't pretending to be anybody else. He was probably rejected from a million jobs before this one despite presumably being extremely well prepared and qualified. So other options are there? Fudge the references, perform well and ask for forgiveness later. I say hire him. Not everybody has the luxury of a fancy education and the…

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. For me honesty ranks way higher up the scale for hiring than technical credentials. You can teach people technical skills. Good character not so much.

p.s. I don't have a CS degree and finished my BA/History going to extension school part-time while serving in the US military.

p.p.s, If you have a less-than-honorable discharge you'll also have a tough time getting through the interview process with me.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#639

Post by mrbill »

emodendroket wrote: post #637
M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the root of the problem of freemasonry. It means that a freemason have to hold contradictory positions as true. One might be an atheist by one cannot reject the so-called supreme being, one might belong to an Abrahamic religion but one cannot reject the Hindu pantheon. And within the Abrahamic religions it's more contentious than anything. It's an expression of the Orwellian "2 + 2 = 5", and it's a very danger…

I don't think I follow. From what I've read here, the question is "do you believe in any higher power at all?" which everyone except a committed atheist could answer "yes" truthfully (and even then, an atheist could presumably accept some sort of "life-force" that isn't a god).

Correct. The question is "do you believe in a higher power y/n?" not "give us details on what you think of said higher power".

In ceremony/ritual we refer generally to "The Grand Architect of the Universe", instead of any specific diety.

BTW, Freemasonry is NOT intended to be a religion nor a replacement for one, and we don't want to be. We just use symbols and allegory that relate to the story of the building of King Solomon's Temple.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#640

Post by mrbill »

LloydPickering wrote: post #631
mrbill wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one of my mentors said, "It's not about you knowing the proficiency 100% when you pass, it's about knowing it 100% when you're teaching it to others." I wasn't 100% when I turned mine in, but they passed me anyway - after many hours of studying and working with others, they knew I KNEW it, but just froze up a bit during the official presentation. I'd had some extenuating circumstances (wife passing away, etc) and…

That's fascinating! In England we are a lot more easy going over the proficiency required to progress. Normally your proposer or a lodge mentor will chat with you and go through your questions and responses, but there isn't any certificates etc. When the candidate is asked the questions to prove proficiency he is accompanied by the relevant Deacon who will prompt him, and in some cases actually prompt the whole thing…

That's pretty much how it's done here - if you freeze up during the "official" presentation you'll get helped and prompted and so forth.

The Certificates I refer to are completely separate from proficiency - they're "add-on" exams / certifications from Grand Lodge that show you've learned the work 100% backwards and forwards. I think GLoTX now requires an A certificate for anyone moving up to WM.

I do have to say I love the formality of dress/uniform from the Scottish and English brethren that have visited my Lodge. Makes me feel way underdressed. :) One of the things I was told when first inquiring about joining was that "We care more about the man inside than their exterior, we're not going to reject or kick anyone out simply because they don't have a suit and tie or a tux. Wear the best clothes you've got, we'd rather you be here, period."

There's sometimes that I have to go straight to Lodge from work and I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt - I get the feeling that would be scandalous in an English lodge (I do wear slacks and a polo shirt when possible).

We do now require jacket and tie for anyone participating in a part in a degree ceremony, though.

I love being the Secretary in an EA - we have a certain bit that's specific to Texas and Louisiana that I started adding a little flourish to, that's become tradition at my Lodge :D

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