Discrimination in hiring is not as subtle as you think: an observation

“RECENT COLLEGE GRADS WANTED!”

“Entry Level Sales for Recent College Grad $40,000-$80,000 + Paid Train”

 

I have seen a lot of titles like this in the last few years, and I thought I would look into a little deeper. Especially since $80K is an excellent start for an “entry level” position.

 

The average age of a college graduate when I got my first degree was around 22 years old, todays grads are around 24, but still we are probably looking at college grads as between the ages of 22 to 24. The age of youth in the business world, the magic numbers!

 

I often wondered what would happen if I applied for some of these positions, after all I have the experience and qualifications. It was quite an interesting experiment.

 

What I found was that the places I did hear from, did not want anyone older than 30, and in one case a person told me outright that I was “too old”! Since when has mid to late forties been considered old? I should probably go back and tell them that they are breaking the law, but the trouble is they do not care, and it is quite common.

 

Who you know still matters highly, and age is not valued like it should be because THEY DO NOT WANT TO PAY YOU YOUR WORTH! Yes, this is true. We have not even gotten to how skin color or perceived ethnicity might factor in here, but if your staff all look like they are from the same family, you might want to look at your diversity practices.

 

The economy still has not really recovered the way we hoped, people are still willing to take less than they are actually worth, so there are a lot of applicants out there. A lot of these applicants have actually given up looking. The flipside is that there are a lot of qualified applicants out there, and they are not being given a chance.

 

So companies, as you place help wanted ads and job descriptions, please make sure you are being honest. There are many occasions when you have no intention of actually interviewing anyone, but you make professionals use their valuable time and submit paperwork that will never get looked at. There are times when someone is immediately dismissed because of their age or how they look. These practices were supposed to have disappeared from the workforce.

 

When are we going to rise above all this?

 

Dr Flavius A B Akerele III

The ETeam