Joseph P. Goodwin

Career Center, Ball State University

 Abstract

    Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgendered, and queer (GLBTQ) job seekers face special challenges when conducting their job searches. This essay offers practical recommendations for helping GLBTQ clients address these issues. The suggestions are drawn from the author's experience as advisor to a university GLBTQ student organization and from his research and discussions with GLBTQ students and employees at universities around the country. By learning how to deal with these unique job-search concerns, GLBTQ people can regain a sense of control over the process. Career educators can help these clients develop these skills.

Working Out: Career Issues of Gays and Lesbians(1)

In recent years, increasing numbers of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgendered, and queer2 (GLBTQ) students have been "coming out of the closet"-revealing their nonheterosexual status to other people. When they begin conducting job searches, many GLBTQ people face special challenges and unique situations with which they must deal. In this essay, I present several recommendations for helping such job seekers deal with these issues. Although offered with university career center staff members in mind, these suggestions are also relevant for other counselors and job-search trainers who may be called upon to work with GLBTQ clients.

The recommendations I make are drawn from my experience as advisor to a campus GLBTQ student organization and from discussions of career concerns of GLBTQ people with approximately 75 students and employees at public universities in the East, the Midwest, and the West. One campus was situated in a large metropolitan area; the others were in small to medium-sized cities. One university had an enrollment of about 6,000; the others ranged from 18,500 to 25,000. The people with whom I met were primarily Caucasian, ranging in age from 18 to 65; about 90% were under 30. Females and males were evenly represented.

Much has been published in the last five years on employment concerns of GLBTQ people. The Career Development Quarterly (1995) and the Journal of Vocational Behavior (1996) have devoted special issues to this topic. Richard Bolles even added a section entitled "Job-Hunting and Gays and Lesbians" to the 1997 edition of What Color Is Your Parachute? (1996).3 Most of this material focuses on counseling, particularly within a framework of identity formation and coming-out models. This approach unfortunately (and one would hope inadvertently) presents GLBTQ orientations as problems to be dealt with, when in fact homophobia and discrimination are the actual problems. The perception of any non-heterosexual orientation as problematic is ultimately rooted in stereotypes of homosexuality as sickness, which in turn were reinforced by much of the early literature on homosexuality.4 Early researchers chose their subjects from mental institutions, counseling clients, and prison populations. Of course such an atypical group yielded a skewed picture of homosexuality as illness.

Many GLBTQ job seekers are comfortable with who they are, having more or less fully integrated their sexual orientations into their identities. They are just as well adjusted as most people in the general population; they are not interested in theories and models but rather in practical suggestions for resolving immediate concerns. These candidates' primary concern is not identity formation but rather integrating occupational realities into an established positive GLBTQ identity. Career center staff members can help these people learn how to make informed decisions about career issues, particularly the potential they face for discrimination based upon their sexuality. In this way they can regain some sense of control over what are essentially external influences.

Three Common Misperceptions

During my research for this project, the people with whom I met raised a few issues consistently.

My personal life is separate from my work life and therefore irrelevant. The work place is not a social environment.

Career educators can help job seekers who mention this point realize that work is a social setting. They can expect to interact with co-workers in many ways, building relationships of trust and often interdependence. The personal and the professional are inseparable. Employees who do not engage in office small talk--which often centers on weekend activities, vacation plans, family matters, and other aspects of people's "personal" lives--may find themselves alienated from their colleagues. This distance in turn makes it difficult to rely on co-workers for assistance.

Similarly, the traditional concealment strategy of changing pronouns and names to suit the "appropriate" gender of a partner or date when discussing social activities requires a stressful juggling act and a good memory. People who pride themselves on being honest find themselves lying about relationships to remain in the closet.

Heterosexuality is affirmed on the job day in and day out. Many people put photographs of their children and their (opposite sex) partners on their desks. They describe in minute detail their social activities, their marital problems, pregnancies, and so on. By contrast, when GLBTQ people talk about such concerns, they are often accused of flaunting their homosexuality.

I wouldn't work for an organization where I had to hide my orientation or where I wasn't welcome.

Candidates who feel this way need to know how to conduct research on employers so that they can learn about corporate cultures, nondiscrimination policies, domestic partner benefits, the existence of support and social groups for GLBTQ employees, and similar issues. Counselors can help these candidates learn research strategies to identify compatible organizations in which they can expect to be accepted and feel comfortable. These students need to network and conduct informational interviews. They can begin making contacts through the campus GLBTQ student group and, if one exists, the university's GLBTQ alumni organization. They can also contact local GLBTQ business owners and seek other leads on the World Wide Web and in Gayellow Pages (an annual national directory of GLBTQ businesses and organizations), as well as in local GLBTQ newspapers and directories (see appendix for selected titles). In addition, candidates can call organizations' human resources offices to ask for information on policies, domestic partner benefits, and employee groups. Making such calls has the advantage of offering anonymity for job seekers who are not yet ready to come out to their potential employers.

It isn't "safe" to go to the career center.

GLBTQ students are often cynical about university administration because they perceive a lack of support or even animosity from the institution's officials. This perception can seem especially justified to students on campuses that do not include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies. Even at institutions that support and encourage diversity, students may be fearful of dealing with administrators, especially if the political climate or the governing boards are taking active stances against services for GLBTQ students. In such cases, the career center should establish a strong liaison relationship with the campus GLBTQ organization, working closely with its leaders to assure the students that the center's staff are sensitive to their needs, willing to work with them, and determined to maintain confidentiality.

The career center should also attempt to be visible to GLBTQ students in other ways, perhaps by cosponsoring an alumni panel on employment issues during Coming Out Week or participating in other activities sponsored by the student organization. In addition, the center should have resources on GLBTQ employment issues available for students to use. Sailer, Korschgen, and Lokken (1994) offer additional suggestions for making the career center a welcoming place for GLBTQ candidates, as do Hall and Peevey (1997).

Other Issues

Concerns for Teacher Candidates

Openly GLBTQ candidates seeking jobs as public school teachers are particularly at risk of denial of employment because they are burdened with stereotypes that gays "recruit" young people and molest children, thus posing a threat to students whom they might teach. In most school districts, being out will be a major disadvantage that may be impossible to overcome, regardless of job seekers' ability and experience. Counselors can help teacher candidates understand the need to be especially careful in deciding how open to be both during the job search and on the job. In addition to networking to learn about the attitudes of school districts and administrators toward GLBTQ people, candidates can contact the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (http://www.glsen.org) for resources and information about coming out.

Harassment on the Job

Whether overtly malicious or supposedly joking, harassment is a significant problem for workers who are (or are perceived to be) GLBTQ. Career educators can help employees facing such situations identify such possilbe strategies as confronting those causing the problem; ignoring the harassment; resigning; and addressing the issue with the supervisor or a representative from human resources. This last approach may be the most advantageous, especially if the organization includes sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policy. In discussing these issues with the supervisor or human resources officer, one could explain how harassment lowers morale and productivity and then encourage diversity and sensitivity training for all employees. Although such programs are unlikely to change deeply held beliefs and attitudes, outlining expectations for the treatment of co-workers, modeling appropriate behaviors, and pointing out the consequences of violating organizational standards can lead to a less hostile work environment. One might also suggest appropriate resources for the supervisor or human resources staff to review, such as Blumenfeld (1992), McNaught (1993a, 1993b), and Zuckerman and Simons (1994).

Appearance

Through their personal styles, some women present themselves in a way that to outsiders may appear androgynous or even masculine; similarly, some men may seem effeminate to many people. Transsexual and transgendered people may wear clothing (and makeup and jewelry) that others would consider "gender inappropriate." Career center staff members can advise these candidates to research the cultures of the organizations where they are interested in working to determine whether they would need to compromise their presentation of self to accept employment. Networking contacts, supplemented by calls to human resources offices, informational interviews, and site visits can help candidates gather this information.

Finding Amenable Places to Live and Work

Some communities are well known for having large and visible GLBTQ populations. Others are known to be quite conservative. Candidates who want to work in an open, liberal setting can be advised to conduct research on communities that interest them. Local and national GLBTQ publications and networking contacts are among the best sources of this information.

Résumés

Employers are consistent in stating that in addition to experience and good grades, job candidates should also show evidence of involvement in student and professional organizations. This expectation can be a problem for students whose primary campus involvement has been with the GLBTQ association. These candidates face the dilemma of choosing whether to include their involvement, thereby "outing" themselves on their résumés and perhaps eliminating themselves from further consideration; hedging, which is likely to cause an employer to question them for more details in the interview; or omitting their involvement, thus denying themselves credit for valuable experience and weakening their applications. Counselors might recommend that candidates consider using a functional résumé format, in which accomplishments do not have to be linked to particular organizations. In any case, GLBTQ job seekers should weigh both the advantages and the risks before deciding whether to make their sexual orientation evident through what they list on their résumés.

Interviews

In an interview, hedging becomes even more difficult than on a résumé since the employer can continue to probe for more details. Advisors can help candidates prepare to answer employers' questions: regardless of whether an employer uses a behavior-based interviewing approach, candidates should be prepared to give examples of problems that they have faced, the actions that they took to address the problems, and the results of those actions.

All responses should describe accomplishments as they relate to doing the job for which the candidate is being interviewed. Thus, if an employer asks for an example of how one has gotten a diverse group of people to work together on a project, the candidate might respond, "I was extremely involved in student activities while I was in college. Because the student organizations have small budgets if they receive funding at all, raising money for projects is always a problem. As special events chair during my junior and senior years, I coordinated a group of twenty students who raised more than $10,000 each year to bring speakers to campus. We solicited contributions in person and by phone from campus departments, local businesses, alumni, and faculty and staff. We also held rummage sales and raffles." Openly GLBTQ students could specify the student organization's name in such a response. Others should plan how to respond in case the employer asks which organization they were referring to.

Decision Making

Faced with issues such as those mentioned above, GLBTQ candidates must decide how important being out on the job search and at work is to them. They must weigh their values against the costs of being out and the risks to their job searches. Career center staff members can direct GLBTQ students into formal decision-making workshops or offer a simple model that stresses the following points:

1. Stating the issue(s) to be decided.

2. Weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

3. Considering carefully the short- and long-term implications of each option. (For example, being out may not eliminate one from consideration for a job, but it might hinder advancement and result in lower pay increases.)

4. Choosing the option that seems most appropriate and most comfortable for the individual.

This exercise is important because it enables candidates to make informed decisions and to be aware of the risks they may be taking. Although job seekers have no control over employers' attitudes, making informed decisions returns a sense of control to candidates by enabling them to avoid the consequences of discrimination by remaining in the closet or to eliminate the anxiety over fear of being discovered by being out from the outset.

According to Friskopp and Silverstein (1995), people who are out at work report reduced stress and increased satisfaction and productivity.  In an ideal world, hiring decisions would be based on candidates' abilities. In the meantime, GLBTQ job seekers need strategies for dealing with less-than-ideal situations. As career educators, we have a responsibility to help these candidates with their special needs.

References

For a much more extensive bibliography than that presented here, visit the following World-Wide Web page:

http://www.bsu.edu/careers/publications/glbiblio

Blumenfeld, W. J. (1992). Homophobia: How we all pay the price. Boston: Beacon Press.

Bolles, R. N. (1996). The 1997 what color is your parachute? A practical manual for job-hunters and career-changers. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press.

Croteau, J. M., & Bieschke, K. J. (Eds.). (1996). Vocational issues of lesbian women and gay men [Special issue]. Journal of Vocational Behavior 48(2).

Friskopp, A., & Silverstein, S. (1995). Straight jobs, gay lives: Gay and lesbian professionals, the Harvard Business School, and the American workplace. New York: Scribner.

Gelberg, S., & Chojnacki, J. T. (1996). Career and life planning with gay, lesbian, & bisexual persons. Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.

Hall, J. W., & Peevey, J. C. (1997). Career centers and employers: creating gay, lesbian, and bisexual affirmative environments. Journal of Career Planning and Employment 57(4), 34-37.

Harbeck, K. M., (Ed.). (1991). Coming out of the classroom closet: Gay and lesbian students, teachers, and curricula. New York: Harrington Park Press [an imprint of Haworth Press, Inc.; originally published as Journal of Homosexuality 22(3/4), John DeCecco (Ed.)].

Johansson, W. (1990). Medical theories of homosexuality. In W. Dynes, W. Johansson, W. Percy, & S. Donaldson, Eds., Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (Vol. 2, pp. 789-794). New York: Garland Publishing.

Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., & Martin, C. E. (1948). Sexual behavior in the human male. Philadelphia: Saunders.

Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., Martin, C. E., & Gebhard, Paul H. (1953). Sexual behavior in the human female. Philadelphia: Saunders.

McNaught, B. (1993a). Gay issues in the workplace. New York: St. Martin's Press.

McNaught, B. (1993b). Gay issues in the workplace: Gay, lesbian, and bisexual employees speak for themselves, Boston: TRB Productions.

Pope, M. (Ed.). (1995). Gay and lesbian career development [Special section]. Career Development Quarterly 44(2), 146-203.

Rasi, R. A., & Nogues, L. R. (Eds). (1995). Out in the workplace: The pleasures and perils of coming out on the job. Los Angeles: Alyson Publications.

Ringer, R. J. (Ed.). (1994). Queer words, queer images: Communication and the construction of homosexuality. New York: New York University Press. [Includes several essays on GLBs in education.]

Sailer, D. D., Korschgen, A. J., & Lokken, J. M. (1994). Responding to the career needs of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. Journal of Career Planning and Employment 54(3), 39-42.

Stern, J. M., & Langerud, S. V. (n.d., ca. 1993). Sexual orientation and career decision making: A practical guide for lesbian, gay, and bisexual students. Grinnell, IA: Grinnell College Career Development Office.

Winfield, L., & Spielman, S. (1995). Straight talk about gays in the workplace: Creating an inclusive, productive environment for everyone in your organization. New York: AMACOM (American Management Association).

Woods, J., & Lucas, J. (1993). The corporate closet: The professional lives of gay men in America, New York: Free Press.

Zuckerman, A., & Simons, G. F. (1994). Sexual orientation in the workplace. Santa Cruz, CA: International Partners Press.

Appendix

Advocate (National)

P.O. Box 4371

Los Angeles, CA 90078

http://www.advocate.com/

Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco)

395 9th St.

San Francisco CA 94103

415-861-5019

http://www.ebar.com

Bay Windows (Boston)

631 Tremont St.

Boston, MA 02118

617-266-6670

http://www.baywindows.com/contact.asp

Echo (Phoenix and the Southwest)

P.O. Box 16630

Phoenix, AZ 85011-6630

888-324-6624 (ECHOMAG)

http://www.echomag.com

Etcetera Online (Atlanta)

151 Renaissance Pkwy.

Atlanta, GA 30308

404-888-0063

http://www.etcmag.com

Frontiers (Los Angeles, San Francisco)

Frontiers News Magazine

7985 Santa Monica Blvd., #109

West Hollywood, CA, 90046

800-769-3877

http://www.frontiersweb.com

IMPACT News (New Orleans and the Gulf Coast)

http://www.impactnews.com/impactnews/index.html

Lavender Magazine (Minneapolis and the Midwest)

2344 Nicollet Ave. S., Ste. 300

Minneapolis, MN 55404

800-484-3901, code 9020

http://www.lavendermagazine.com/

Lesbian News (National)

http://www.lesbiannews.com/

LGNY-Lesbian & Gay New York

Gay Press Alliance, Inc.

150 Fifth Ave., Ste. 600

New York City, NY 10011

212-691-1100, ext. 21

http://www.lgny.com/

Outlines (Chicago)

http://www.outlineschicago.com/

Outlines (Indianapolis)

133 W. Market St., Ste. 105

Indianapolis, IN 46204

317-923-8550

http://www.indygaynews.com

Philadelphia Gay News

505 South 4th St.

Philadlephia, PA 19147

215-625-8501

http://www.epgn.com

Q San Francisco

QSanFrancisco

P.O. Box 18902

Anaheim, CA 92817-8902

http://www.qsanfrancisco.com/qsf/cover.html

Seattle Gay News

206-324-4297

http://www.sgn.org

Texas Triangle (Statewide)

http://www.txtriangle.com/

Washington Blade

http://www.washblade.com/

Word (Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio)

501 Madison Ave., Ste. 307

Indianapolis, IN 46225

317-725-8840

http://www.indword.com

Author Note

Joseph P. Goodwin, assistant director of the Career Center at Ball State University, earned his Ph.D. in folklore at Indiana University. He is author of More Man Than You'll Ever Be: Gay Folklore and Acculturation in Middle America, as well as numerous journal articles and encyclopedia entries on gay and lesbian culture. He has served as president of the Indiana chapter of the National Association for Job Search Training (NAJST) and on the executive boards of NAJST and the American Folklore Society. In recent years, he has sought to integrate his ethnographic skills with his work in career development. Contact him at the Career Center, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306; telephone: 765-285-2430; fax: 765-285-3757.

Footnotes

1. Ball State University and its Student Affairs division and Career Center supported this research project by granting me special assigned leave with pay. The Student Affairs Research Committee supported the project with a grant to help cover expenses. I would like to express my appreciation to the students, career services professionals, and GLBTQ student support services staff members who took the time to discuss these issues with me.

2. In recent years, increasing numbers of people, especially young men and women, have begun identifying themselves as queer. Although still offensive to many (and jarring to many heterosexuals), the term is useful in that it is inclusive, encompassing gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and transgendered people, as well as others who do not consider themselves to be conforming to traditional gender roles. Co-opting and inverting terms of oppression is common among oppressed groups. By adopting derogatory terms and turning them into symbols of pride, GLBTQ people take the sting out of insults, explode stereotypes, and assert their presence in the world. Queer is also confrontational. It emphasizes one's position as outsider, stressing affirmation of difference rather than assimilation. Finally, queer is a cultural rather than a sexual descriptor

3. "Job-Hunting and Gays and Lesbians" is one of several sections Bolles removed when he substantially shortened the book for the 1999 and subsequent editions.

4. According to Johansson (1990), authors of early works on homosexuality built upon the theories of two mid-nineteenth-century promoters of equal rights for homosexual people: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (Forschungen über das Rätsel der mann-männerlichen Liebe, 1864-79 [The riddle of love between men]) and Károly Mária Kertbeny (143 der Preussischen Strafgesetzbuchs und seine Aufsuchterhaltung als 152 des Entwurfs eines Strafgesetzbuchs für den Nordeutschen Bund [Paragraph 143 of the Prussian penal code and its maintenance as paragraph 152 of the draft of a penal code for the northern German confederation] (1869). Ulrichs considered homosexual people to be a sort of third sex, a soul of one sex trapped in the body of the opposite sex. Kertbeny actually introduced the terms homosexual and homosexuality (homosexualität). Drawing upon these writers' nonjudgmental ideas, Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing deviated to present homosexuality as a pathological condition, which he termed "sexual inversion," in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886).

Until the mid-twentieth century, scholars continued to use Kraftt-Ebing's ideas as a foundation for the study of homosexuality, bolstering their studies with psychoanalytic arguments based upon the work of Sigmund Freud (Dynes, 1990). This approach began to give way to more objective research only with the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953).