Attention all job seekers who also happened to be engaged: if you want the job you’re applying for, leave your giant Heart of the Ocean engagement ring at home because it’s apparently ruining your chances at gainful employment.
Via Refinery29, this advice was the subject of a blog post on LinkedIn, courtesy of one Burce Hurwitz, a recruiter who probably meant well but had no idea what he was actually saying. In the post published August 12, Hurwitz recalled an incident in which a woman who was interviewing for a job didn’t get said job because she was wearing the “Hope Diamond” on her finger.
When pressed by his colleagues as to why anyone should give a shit about the size of this woman’s engagement ring, he proffered the following:
“When a man sees that ring he immediately assumes you are high maintenance. When the woman at the office who has the largest diamond on her finger, sees that ring, she will realize that if you are hired she will fall to second place and will, therefore, not like you. Lose the ring!”
The woman in question got a job with no thanks to the company Hurwitz worked for. When asked what she did differently, I’m sure you already know the answer – she left that rock at home and that’s all they needed to see that she was a competent and subservient employee with the potential to be quiet, do her job and not make much fuss otherwise!
Naturally, Hurwitz got a lot of shit for this hogwash in the comments, so much so that he felt it necessary to follow up with another post two days later, doubling down on his previous argument while conceding that men should probably not wear Rolexes to job interviews either because if anyone shows up to a job interview wearing a $50,000 watch, it means they’re way too expensive to be hired. It’s curious how the difference here is clear: when a man walks in with an expensive accessory, it’s because his literal value is too high. When a woman does the same, it’s because she’s “high-maintenance” – someone who will have ask a lot of questions and demand a lot of things that maybe, just maybe, threaten the delicate ecosystem of the office’s chain of command.
It’s entirely possible to have and want a giant engagement ring, one so big that you can see it from space, and not be “high-maintenance.” It’s also very sexist to assume that this is the case. Saying that it’s 2016 and that we should be beyond this feels empty even though it’s true, but this is still classic and cool sexism at its finest.
Like a true troll, Hurwitz followed up with a third blog post, completing the the “trilogy” no one asked for. Written on August 22nd, it’s called “How To Write A Viral Article on LinkedIn.”