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| Re: Age Discrimination |
| Author: | CREC |
| Date: | Tuesday, 6th May 2008 15:09 |
| Views: | 75 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | Standards and Reputation | | URL: | http://web.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum/Forum/read.php?i=90884 |
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You are no longer allowed to specify a length of experience in a job description or advert. Exceptions can be made in some business areas, but they are very hard to justify.
The use of "senior" in a job title is a contentious one, my advice would be to find another if you can but I would be very suprised if someone pulled you up on it.
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| Reply To This Thread |
| Re: Age Discrimination |
| Author: | Flash |
| Date: | Tuesday, 6th May 2008 15:21 |
| Views: | 71 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | Standards and Reputation | | URL: | http://web.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum/Forum/read.php?i=90884 |
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Thats precisely what I thought, obviously if you specify, 1 years experience, you are discriminating against all those who couldn't legally work due to their age in order to gain 1 years experience.
Thanks for the clarification |
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| Reply To This Thread |
| Re: Age Discrimination |
| Author: | Nicola |
| Date: | Wednesday, 7th May 2008 09:45 |
| Views: | 83 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | Standards and Reputation | | URL: | http://web.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum/Forum/read.php?i=90884 |
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The law doesn't actually specify what you are/aren't allowed to say, just that you can't be discriminatory.
I'm from a jobsboard and the advice we give to our clients is to detail the skills that should have been obtained rather than using a specific number of years' experience.
There are, as ever, a number of people out there combing recruitment adverts for anything that may be construed as being discriminatory so you do need to be careful. |
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| Reply To This Thread |
| Re: Age Discrimination |
| Author: | R |
| Date: | Wednesday, 7th May 2008 12:42 |
| Views: | 64 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | Standards and Reputation | | URL: | http://web.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum/Forum/read.php?i=90884 |
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Legally it is perfectly acceptable to put "at least 2 years experience" (only where it can be demonstrated/explained how and why you need someone with that level of expertise), so this is not an issue.
Clearly a toilet cleaner advert would be harder to justify rather than a head of sales role, but common sense will prevail. This means that there is no need to wing it nor do you need to get moral - it is clear and clean.
What you are not allowed to say is "no more than 2 years experience" as in effect somone with 25 years experience who is likely to be older is unable to apply even if they have the skills (in effect if they are prepared to accept the terms of the job i.e. salary benefits etc then they are able to get the job) |
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| Reply To This Thread |
| Re: Age Discrimination |
| Author: | Dan |
| Date: | Friday, 9th May 2008 12:22 |
| Views: | 68 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | Standards and Reputation | | URL: | http://web.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum/Forum/read.php?i=90884 |
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R, I think you've demonstrated that you haven't really understood the legislation.
The legislation is designed to protect the younger jobseekers as much as the older ones you talk about. Saying that someone needs to have "at least two year's experience" is effectively saying that you're not interested in people below the age of 20 (school leaver plus two years). If you go further and ask for a "Graduate with at least two years' experience" then you are effectively saying that you want people aged 23 or over.
Whether you intend to discriminate or not is irrelevant. It's all down to whether somebody feels that they have been unfairly discriminated against. It's far from the clear and clean as you suggest.
I think the wider point to consider is the use of "years' experience" in job postings at all. To me it just seems like a very lazy way of advertising vacancies. If you say that someone needs to have two years' experience, and a stellar candidate walks in to your office with 23 months' experience, you're not going to refuse them. Equally, if the candidate has eighteen month's experience but could easily do the job you're recruiting for then it's very likely that you'll consider them as well.
So in effect, the limit of years is irrelevant, because it's all down to the individual candidates.
This is why you should focus on the skills required and the tasks to be completed in a job and not just come up with arbitrary estimations of experience.
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| Reply To This Thread |
| Re: Age Discrimination |
| Author: | Flash |
| Date: | Friday, 9th May 2008 14:05 |
| Views: | 69 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | Standards and Reputation | | URL: | http://web.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum/Forum/read.php?i=90884 |
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Dan
You make some very valid points, and to be honest I agree with you to a huge extent. However, I do struggle to ascertain exactly how a recruiter who runs their own desk would be able to be so thorough without the help of a team of resourcers.
Let's be honest, when we get a CV in from someone, who has little or no experience quoted related to the position you are recruiting for, it's unlikely that we will call them to find out why they applied for the role. Putting aside everything about age discrimination, in general experience, the more years someone has spent doing a job, the more likely they will be able to do it better than someone who has experience over a shorter amount of time.
Henceforth, you are more likely to pay closer attention to CV's of people who have been doing the job longer.
This isn't necessarily age discrimination, it is prioritising your time calling people who are likely to be more skilled at doing this position than others are. At the end of the day, we all want the job wrapped up and to get started on the next bit of business in the shortest amount of time, don't we? |
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| Reply To This Thread |
| Re: Age Discrimination |
| Author: | Dan |
| Date: | Friday, 9th May 2008 14:33 |
| Views: | 68 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | Standards and Reputation | | URL: | http://web.ukrecruiter.co.uk/forum/Forum/read.php?i=90884 |
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Flash, I agree with you and I appreciate that modern recruiters have a huge amount of legislation to contend with when they attempt to do their jobs.
The point I'm making relates purely to the advertising of the jobs in question and the potential risks that they can pose to your business. I guess it's looking at risk vs reward. It's unlikely that you'll be pulled up if you stipulate number of years' experience in your job ads. The number of actual cases cited earlier in the thread illustrates that point. However, it could happen.
The other thing to consider is that a unique and detailed job description can often boost application levels when compared to the more generic ads. So there is some value in taking more time here.
Once you have your applicants, how you appraise and rate their suitability is up to you. It would be much harder for someone to claim that they had been discriminated against unlawfully at this stage of the process.
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