We Shouldn't Have To Say This, But Job Interviews Are Not Your Personal Dating App

This is remarkably simple. If you're in charge of hiring at your workplace, you do not schedule interviews and dangle job prospects in a bid to find dates.

And yet, somehow this still needs to be repeated in 2023.

These days, Christa Laser is a Cleveland State law professor, but she previously tried to get a job at ASS Law. That's when... well, let's allow her to describe the situation:

I will note that @ProfWrightGMU was hiring chair at @georgemasonlaw when I applied many years in a row, desperate to stay in the same city as my children. I received a meeting after I announced I was single. He asked me out after our meeting. He remained head of antitrust. pic.twitter.com/dDb4DoiOB9

-- Law Prof. Christa Laser (@ChristaLaser) August 8, 2023

"Just about to do a Fed Soc panel..." Swipe right, delete the app, drop the phone in a vat of acid.

The rank order of appropriate actions on the part of someone in charge of hiring are:

And that's the whole list. Maybe -- MAYBE -- ask someone out after giving them the job and allowing appropriate distance from the interview to develop a working relationship that isn't tainted by the hiring power dynamic. But it's still better to refer back to item number one.

As it happens, Professor Joshua Wright -- who is now back in the private sector -- did not offer Laser a job, but did use the interview as a springboard for this request. According to Laser's posts, she followed up with another professor at the school who indicated that there might never have been a job opening in the first place.

How does a school not have tighter oversight on its hiring process? One professor gets to go around granting interviews when there aren't any openings? That seems entirely too Mickey Mouse for a top quality law school. Or, as the case may be, George Mason.

Yes, in the annals of inappropriate behavior this is not the worst. And maybe this guy was just clueless about the ramifications of what he was doing. But that's kind of the point. This is the sort of impropriety that festers because folks think it resides in "too gray of an area."

And it is not, in fact, a particularly gray area. I refer the audience back to item number 1.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you're interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.