I found my colleague Rebecca's last post about age discrimination at work and during the recruitment process fascinating. The topic is something we at Personnel Today magazine have been writing about for some time now, and all the anecdotal evidence points to the fact it is still a real problem.
A major factor is, I believe, that we are all prejudiced; we just simply need to admit it. We all have instinctive views about individuals when we first meet them - for example, at a job interview, and thus make judgements on what sort of person they are.
This is what diversity expert Binna Kandola calls "unconscious bias" in a recent interview on the Personnel Today website. He thinks people (and by extension recruiters) need to change their default position from "I am fair" to "I am biased".
It's often said that managers recruit in their own image and feel less threatened by people perceived to be "more like them". And bias undoubtedly comes into play during the interview process. For example: Too scruffy for sales job, too short to be a manager, too 'stupid' because of West Country accent, too aggressive because of shaved head.
If we turn it around, then what are your biases when you are greeted by the receptionist on the way to a job interview, or when you are sat across the table from your potential new boss? So if you are being influenced by your bias - unconscious or not - then so is your interviewer.
Things are getting better; all manner of competency based assessments, selection centres, pyschometric tests, task-based interviews are designed to find the best person for the job, regardless of gender, race, age, disability, belief and sexual preference. But how people overcome their own biases will, I think, take much longer to tackle.
A major factor is, I believe, that we are all prejudiced; we just simply need to admit it. We all have instinctive views about individuals when we first meet them - for example, at a job interview, and thus make judgements on what sort of person they are.
This is what diversity expert Binna Kandola calls "unconscious bias" in a recent interview on the Personnel Today website. He thinks people (and by extension recruiters) need to change their default position from "I am fair" to "I am biased".
It's often said that managers recruit in their own image and feel less threatened by people perceived to be "more like them". And bias undoubtedly comes into play during the interview process. For example: Too scruffy for sales job, too short to be a manager, too 'stupid' because of West Country accent, too aggressive because of shaved head.
If we turn it around, then what are your biases when you are greeted by the receptionist on the way to a job interview, or when you are sat across the table from your potential new boss? So if you are being influenced by your bias - unconscious or not - then so is your interviewer.
Things are getting better; all manner of competency based assessments, selection centres, pyschometric tests, task-based interviews are designed to find the best person for the job, regardless of gender, race, age, disability, belief and sexual preference. But how people overcome their own biases will, I think, take much longer to tackle.
I'll admit I'm incredibly biased ... about biased people. Really despise them.
I wish the voters see what sort of monster they have got placed within the Bright Residence.
Yes, and fixed apart the joblessness pace, along with the enormous credit debt and deficit, the lagging financial state, our downward standing inside the eyes on the globe, the shredding of our Constitution, the insidious and treacherous takeover of our authorities, the developing course warfare and racism, and all with the other damaging issues that are fitted with been continuing to take place, non-stop, given that the Hussein Plan needed through
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