How Recruitment and Human Resources Define "Discrimination."

[paft.livejournal.com]

Advice on how to handle applications from deaf jobseekers, from people working in recruitment and human resources. You can’t ‘discriminate’ -- instead:

I just probably would have let her fill it out. You write a note on the back of it that said ‘not a fit.’

Just accept it and don’t call. You can’t tell her that. Handicapped people, they have more rights than anyone in the world. You just have to accept her application and then just don’t call.

You have to be very careful. In today’s world, they’ll cut your hands off.

Thanks to Daily Kos

ABC News did its own version of Candid Camera, recently. Several actors enacted a scene in a coffee house – two deaf job applicants applying for a kitchen position, and a manager telling them not to bother. I’m happy to relate that many customers reacted with disgust to what they were hearing. A few even confronted the manager and one coffee-drinker demonstrated the bracing merits of making a scene by doing it from across the room. But…

Three people, all of them in either recruitment or human resources, scurried up to the manager afterwards to advise, in discreetly lowered voices, on the “correct” way to handle it. The correct response, they explained, is to just accept the application and then not call the applicant.

I doubt most black or Hispanic viewers, most disabled viewers, or many female viewers, are shocked by this revelation. Those comments about the influence of the deaf as a group (“they have more rights than anyone in the world, ” “They’ll cut your hands off”) are especially familiar. When I worked in corporate America, I frequently heard wildly exaggerated anecdotes painting women, blacks, the disabled, etc. as powerful forces before which employers must cower. Why this amazing clout has still not translated into equitable income and employment levels is a mystery.

There are two points I’d like to make. First, this is why Affirmative Action is necessary. Employers and recruiters are quite capable of writing “don’t bother” on applications and, when asked about the dearth of minorities, women, etc., batting their eyes innocently and insisting that they just couldn’t find anyone in those groups who were qualified. AA acknowledges that reality. Without it, laws against racial and sexual discrimination would barely be worth the paper they’re printed on.

And second, anyone looking for a job, including white males with no physical disability, should be concerned about this. More and more employers are screening out the jobless or those with credit problems. “Not a fit” can end up being written on your application too, not because of your qualifications or your ability, but because you are unemployed and/or in debt.

Crossposted from ThoughtcrimesThoughtcrimes

Comments

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Social engineering often has that effect.
Recently, the owner of a small company in Mississauga, Ontario that gets federal money to assist immigrant women had a Human Rights Tribunal fine her and order her house seized. She had fired someone who was visually impaired, among other things. Fortunately, the case was overturned by the Ontario’s Superior Court, who called the tribunal’s decision “fatally flawed.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/the-case-of-the-smelly-lunch/article1892245

I will bet that she will tread very carefully in future when making hiring decisions.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

Funny, I would have thought the proper response to the possibility of fact-impaired lawsuits was to have a system in place that would allow them to be thrown out--for instance, a system like the one that got this ruling overturned. Choosing not to hire anyone with a disability because they might later turn out to be an unprincipled fraudster seems like a rather, well, insane approach to hiring. You'd be as likely to avoid such a thing by not hiring (and then firing) any applicant with brown shoes.

I'm also not sure why you mentioned the federal funding and the function of the company, since they have nothing to do with the case.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Your assumption that disability has no bearing on the success rate of lawsuits for discrimination based on disability is far fetched.

[bikinisquad3000.livejournal.com]

That's not what I'm assuming. I'm assuming that the disabled are no more likely to file fraudulent lawsuits than anyone else.