Mentioning You Are Gay in a Job Interview
By Andy Heath
"Say only the right things!" career counselors scream at me as they beat my head with a copy of 101 Perfect Interview Questions or whatever similar title actually exists.
"But they need to know I'm gay," I might respond. "I need them to know I'm gay. They're going to find out eventually anyway."
And it's true. I'm one of those people that if I walked within 100 feet of a blind, retarded chimpanzee, he would probably know that I'm gay. Now, I don't think I'm flamboyantly gay, but I think it's safe to say that I'm quite obviously gay. Fair enough?
I have gone to a lot of job interviews in my life, being the infamous "job hopper" that HR professionals so often talk about with such great disgust. I suppose it's a bit of an irony that I do so well in job interview despite that. Employers that don't want to hire me tend to not want to do so because I do have such a history of job hopping. The other irony is that this job hopping has taught me so much and made me so much more qualified and skilled that when employers do choose to hire me for some administrative task, they are often pleasantly surprised at how efficient and knowledgeable I am with programs like Microsoft Word and Excel.
But the question before me today is: Is it a good idea or a bad idea to mention in a job interview that you're gay? I'm going to see what the best answer to that question is.
Earlier in this article I talked about the blind retarded chimpanzee that would know I was gay, so you can imagine that an interviewer is going to be so much more likely to know from the moment he or she meets me. From that perspective, I have found that it isn't necessary for me to mention it. Not only will my coworkers know that I'm gay when I am hired, but my interviewer will know the moment we meet. Believe it or not, I have actually found that their knowing I'm gay has helped me in the past. Sometimes gay men can have quite a powerful connection with people that are sympathetic to our pain. I have found straight women that are minorities or that have been cheated on by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives often have a very powerful connection with gay men. These women are a lot like us in that they want to be appreciated. Without playing to our stereotype too much, I think it's very true that we are at least three times more likely to notice their shoes and their hair than a straight man. That said, I think when interviewing with someone that you intuitively feel is going to be sympathetic to our pain, it is a good idea to let that interviewer know you're gay.
Like I said, it's obvious with me, but there are a lot of gay men that are neither flamboyantly gay nor obviously gay. In an interview where one of these gay men are interviewing, they might ask me how they can let the interviewer know that they're gay. First, let me discourage you from going to the interview, holding out your hand to shake the interviewer's hand, and saying, "Hi, my name is John Smith, and I'm gay." Such an introduction is just nonsense. In a perfect world (not that the world is not perfect, of course) the interviewer will mainly be interested in whether or not you can do the job, not an announcement that you are gay. Being gay is just a part of who you are, not everything.
So here is a technique I have used in the past that seemed to work. I simply make a statement that makes my homosexuality obvious without actually saying that I'm gay. For example, if I want to tell someone that the weather was sunny yesterday, I don't have to simply say, "The weather was sunny yesterday." Instead, I can say, "I really enjoyed riding my bicycle around my neighborhood yesterday because I love riding when it's bright."
Interviews are a lot less formal than they used to be, so you can throw out these "hints" (for lack of a better word) very easily. In recent years, I find that interviewers are just as likely to talk about a good movie they've seen recently as they are about the nature of the work of a position for which they are interviewing. Use these cues. If the interviewer says, "So you're new to the area? How do you like living in (insert city name here) so far?" You might respond, "I love it, and so does my partner. We really like the selection of restaurants you have here." Or you can say something else that is true for your situation.
Once you say that, whatever the interviewer chooses to say next, he or she will immediately know that you're gay. Straight people never refer to their partners as partners. Never. Gay people do.
On a lighter note, if the interview is going very well, you might say something is "fabulous." Fabulous is only a part of gay lexicon; straight men never use the word fabulous for anything. Ridiculous, you might say, and that is fine. But getting a job involves creativity and throwing the word fabulous out in a job interview is one way to get the interviewer to know that you're gay.
“Buy why?" you ask. "Why would I want to sabotage my chances of getting a job like that?" You're only sabotaging your chances of getting a job with a bigoted employers that do not deserve high quality employees such as yourself. What happens if you try to keep your homosexuality a secret? First of all, your employer will eventually find out, and either fire you or discriminate against you and make your life a living hell. And even if the employer does not find out if you're one of the "straight acting" gays in this world, you're just being inauthentic and one very important quality of a powerful, beautiful, and courageous person is authenticity. Don't be some worthless person. Grow a set (forgive the colloquialism) and live your life in a courageous and authentic fashion.
"But I need a job. Any job! Even if they don't like the fact that I'm gay. I just need money. " Oh, I've heard that before. You sell yourself short. There are employers of professionals of all levels that will hire and appreciate gay people. Work for them. Don't go work for some crappy, homophobic employer. We humans have the amazing ability to survive hard circumstances, though we also have a bit of melodrama inside us that often makes us think we can't. When you feel you are out of options for survival, you almost never are. Again, grow a set. You don't have to live in that great house. You CAN move to a smaller apartment. You CAN lower the quality of the food you eat for a while. Indeed, you CAN suffer for a while, and you might even be a stronger person for it. But if you're going to suffer a hard time anyway, do it because you're courageous, not because you're a coward.
So my advice is, yes, let the interviewer know you're gay, by whatever means you feel are appropriate in that situation. If they don't want to hire you because you're gay, then you really shouldn't want to work for them anyway.
