Are we going to be seeing political correctness going to start taking over the recruitment industry? Well watch this space because an article I read today, might just be the start!
The article was about a new radical proposal by "Lynne Featherstone MP - the Liberal Democrat spokeswoman for equality" - (surely if she should be the spokesperson for equality...it is equality after all!!).
The proposal is to ban names from job applications to prevent discrimination - and worryingly it has been backed by both the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) and REC (Recruitment and Employment Confederation).
This "equality MP person" proposed an amendment (view full proposal here) to the Equality Bill at its second reading last week, which said job candidates should avoid putting their names on written applications to prevent employers gleaning any information about sex, race or age prior to interview.
What are we coming to that we have to all become faceless autobots in the workplace? If you take this approach of taking the name off, then don't stop there. Your address, school and even the subjects you choose at exams could then be classed as clues to give a candidates culture away. And don't also forget the company that they first started work for either - typically, most first jobs are close to home - that will need to be removed. We already have the situation where older job seekers are cutting off half of their CV's for fear of age discrimination, so will that then happen for every job seeker?
A CV is supposed to be a good representation of a candidate applying for a specific job, but soon there will be so much information missing or deliberately omitted, that they will become useless as a selection tool!!
This does not get to the bottom of any of the discrimination that occurs in the workplace. All the time there are people involved in the recruitment place then discrimination will always occur - and before you draw breath to launch a tirade at me for that, let me explain what I mean.
There are the obvious forms of discrimination that are all governed by laws - age, sex, race etc etc but what I am referring to is personal choice discrimination that happens every single day by recruiters everywhere. Discrimination is probably too harsh a word - experience and choice based on previous successes and failures are a better explanation.
Recruiters (corporate recruiters or agency recruiters alike) are always looking to find the best candidate they can for any role, and they use their knowledge and experience to make informed decisions about the suitability of candidates for a role. They make choices. They are making the selection decisions. People like Lynne Featherstone MP, would probably say that they then discriminating against the candidates that fail to get an interview!!
The fact of the matter is that employing companies want the best candidate for their job, irrespective of what they look like, where they come from or how old they are.
Do we really have to go down the route of 'cleansing' every job application? Have things got that bad?
Isn't it really a case of these 'people with good ideas' - MP's - getting out from behind their big fat desks and actually stepping into the real world? When was the last time Lynne Featherstone MP was actually involved in recruitment? When did she last get involved in short listing, selecting and interviewing candidates? .......I don't know for sure, but I can have a very good guess!!!
If they did that for once in a while, then the world of political correctness wouldn't be quite so bad!!
