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Dear Manbassador,
I run a startup with 5 full-time and 4 part-time employees. We're expanding rapidly and I can't hire fast enough to fill our open positions.
After a round of interviews for one of these roles, the best candidate we found was a woman, whom I'll call Jane. Jane has the skills we need and seems like a hard worker. But she also appears to be pregnant. We're growing quickly, so having a new hire go on maternity leave for months would be a big blow.
Of course, I couldn't ask directly if she's planning to take a long maternity leave ... or could I? Tom, the runner-up candidate, is almost as good as Jane on paper and my co-founder is leaning towards hiring him.
How do I make the right choice between these candidates?
Sincerely,
Frazzled Founder
------------------------------------------------------Thank you, Frazzled, for being a part of our experiment! Here at Dear Manbassador, our mission is to answer the tough question: "What does it mean to be a Manbassador in work and life after business school?" So we're collecting real questions from students and readers and answering them with the help of experts. Frazzled, we get the quandary you're in. You're facing a ton of pressure as a founder, with investors, employees, and customers relying on you to make the right hiring choices so your company can scale. To answer your question, we asked Lena Goldberg, a distinguished lawyer and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School for her advice. (Thanks Lena!) There are two sides to your questions: legal and ethical. Legally, companies must abide by fair employment laws. When do those laws apply to a startup? As soon as you have 15 employees, you're bound by federal statutes. But some states are stricter -- in Massachusetts, the law covers companies with just 5 employees. So if anything in your hiring process suggests that you're treating Jane's pregnancy differently than you would a medical or physical disability, you are violating anti-discrimination laws and you could be sued.
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