A company has come under fire for using, what some candidates have labelled as, “discriminatory” language in one of their recruitment campaigns.
The advertised role was for an Event Manager position, at event caterers Urban Caprice, and was promptly flagged up on Twitter for its use of the term “OCD”.
Twitter user Ellieq posted the advert on social media, calling out the recruiters for their use of mental health-related jargon.
Just stumbled upon a job advert with this paragraph in.
— 3 sausages (@ellieq) 18 March 2017
"With OCD tendencies"
Not enough space on tweet to express self pic.twitter.com/9fYlRNM9ll
The advert specifies: “The successful candidate will be an experienced, enthusiastic and charming Senior Event Manager, who possesses excellent English skills, an abundance of confidence and has an outstanding personable presentation.[sic]"
Other Twitter users claimed that the advert opened the company up to potential discrimination cases, whilst others accused them of trying to be “trendy” rather than inclusive, labelling the post “horrific”.
The issue of discrimination in recruitment is one which needs to be actively tackled by recruiters. Writing in Startups.co.uk, Charles Hipps, CEO at WCN, specialist technology software provider for recruiters, argued that blind recruitment is one way to combat unconscious biases.
“The Confederation of British Industry has described ‘name-blind’ recruitment as one way to remove ‘criteria that could unintentionally bias managers, and give under-represented groups confidence that their application will be fairly considered’,” says Hipps.
“In the eyes of some, current recruiting processes are imperfect, elitist and exclusionary. These concerns make it important that recruiters consider new ways to attract people from all backgrounds.
“Whatever the success of name-blind recruitment in the sifting of applications, there is still a need to eliminate bias at the interview stage.”
What do you think? Do you think this job advert is discriminatory? How would you coach your candidates to respond to this advert? Tell us in the comments...
Image credit - Wikipedia User - Dbenbenn
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