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When crafting a job advert, it is important that recruiters focus on the skillsets and experience requirements of a candidate. And more importantly, when posting the job advert it is important to ensure that it is posted in places that will attract a diverse range of candidates.
However, reports have recently emerged that Facebook will pay £3.8million ($5million) to civil rights groups following accusations that social media behemoth of allowed job adverts to block ethnic minority groups – The Telegraph reports.
The supposed block came to light after jobseekers, consumers as well as international bodies like The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), the American Civil Liberties Union and the Communications Workers of America, accused Facebook’s advertising tools of allowing employers to vet showing adverts to users based on sex, race, family status and disabilities.
NHFA President Lisa Rice told The Telegraph: “This is a historic settlement, but we are still billing this as a first step because there are all kinds of ways that algorithmically-based formulas can perpetuate discrimination in our marketplaces.
“The one area where this segregation is really entrenched is where people live. Our communities are hyper-segregated and this fuels all kinds of inequalities which get picked up in data and that data gets used by algorithmic systems which perpetuate, manifest and reflect discrimination and bias that is complicit within our society.”
However, the ethnic monitory block didn’t just apply to jobseekers; it became apparent that it applied to housing and access to finance, too. The network has vowed to make urgent changes to its targeted advertising process to filter out discrimination after settling five landmark lawsuits that were filed between November 2016 and September 2018.
Additionally, Facebook has unveiled plans to block anyone posting job adverts - or housing and credit adverts, for that matter – from discriminating against Facebook users and consumers based on race, gender, sexual orientated and religion, the behemoth’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg said yesterday.
While this should be a clear lesson to recruiters when crafting job adverts or selecting candidates to come for an interview, it sadly isn’t the only instance that candidates have been ruled out of recruitment process because of discrimination.
Last month, IBM came under fire for asking applicants to choose from a selection of racially incentive labels when describing their ethnicity.
Recruitment Grapevine reported that part of the online applications for vacancies that the tech behemoth compromised of a drop-down menu where applicants were asked if they identified as Caucasian, Black, Indigenous, ‘Yellow’ or ‘Mulatto’.
The Telegraph explained that the latter two are offensive terms used to refer to people of east and southeastern Asian origin and those with one white and one black parent.
