Sadly no surprises; Recruiter’s are asked to discriminate

Absolutely yonks ago I wrote a blog about a conversation I’d had where the recruiter had blatantly asked me to discriminate on the basis of gender. From there I ran a survey on discrimination in recruitment. Finally I’m getting around to following this up and blimey is it depressing!The first question I asked was “ In the past 12 months have you been directly asked to select/discount a candidate on the basis of: age, sex, race, religion or disability“Now bear in mind that I’d imagine more people responded to this questionnaire if they HAD been asked to discriminate. Nevertheless the results are not good.

66% had been asked to DIRECTLY discriminate on the basis of age, 41% on the basis of sex, 25% on race, 16% on religion and nearly 10% on a disability.

So then I asked “In the past 12 months have you been in-directly asked to select/discount a candidate on the basis of: age, sex, race, religion or disability”

This is what you said; 81% had been asked, albeit indirectly to discriminate on the basis of age, 56% on the basis of sex, 40% on race, 19% on religion and nearly 13% on a disability.

So, only 20% of recruiters who responded had never been asked to take a candidates age into consideration and less than half had never been asked to rule out men or women.

I got some comments too which are really worth sharing:

* Clients frequently indirectly want candidates that are either mature or young. Candidates assume, and get quite jaded about it, that employers only want young employers. I see more discrimination against young people. As one client told me once ‘I don’t want some young thing coming in every day with a hangover!’
* Generally the reasons used are more “team fit” but it is still discrimination.
* I had to sack my top producer for discriminating on gender grounds. He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong despite our equality training.
* In the past 20 years working in HR and recruitment, I am still finding a shocking vein of ageism running through all recruitment processes, and industry-wide. I am also still coming across gender discrimination – most usually with a preference for male employees, but occasionally it is intimated that a woman would be better at a job. Usually on the basis that she would make a better business development/salesperson because of her ‘feminine charms’.
* As my client is always HR itself I am shocked by how often I am asked to discriminate. Usually this is to balance sex of a team out directly (often due to losing team members on maternity)

As I’ve been writing this blog post I’ve been talking with non recruitment friends and a high percentage seem to think that it’s be perfectly normal to:

a) want to employ a chap if the office is nearly all women to balance things out

b) not employ women of child bearing age so you don’t have to pay maternity leave

c) “avoid fat people as they are lazy” (a 100% true quote from a close friend of mine!)

d) not recruit women as too many together are bitchy

e) discount people with an “expensive” disability (whatever that is).So, discrimination happens a lot. I find it depressing and abhorrent. But maybe our job as recruiters is to accept that people hold these beliefs but help the client find the right person for the job whilst educating when those discriminatory beliefs are wrong?Comments and thoughts on any of this please.