I am fairly heavily involved with recruitment where I work, being the author of the technical test and phone screen questions we use for evaluating candidates, and conducting face-to-face interviews with many of the hopefuls that get over these early hurdles.
Naturally, in order to gain these responsibilities I have gone through a number of required HR ass-covering exercises in which it was drilled into me that I am legally forbidden from asking questions about sexuality, marital status, family-planning, and anything else which might lead me into rejecting a candidate on grounds our beloved government considers discriminatory.
Never mind that I have never shown the least inclination to discriminate against someone because they might want to possibly think about maybe taking some [mp]aternity leave in the next 30 years, or (gasp) prefer the company of their own gender, or whatever; I have to go through all this training so that the company can throw me to the wolves if a candidate claims to have been discriminated against. “Not our fault, guvnor; we explained the rules”.
Still, fair enough I suppose; we live in litigious times, and not being a bigot I have no particular fears of transgressing.
But what if the rules are changed? And what if they’re changed in horribly unexpected ways? A recent article on the BBC News site contained, quite without fanfare, some shocking intelligence.
Previously standard questions about age, length of experience and religious views are now illegal, [Which?] points out.
Wait, what? Length of experience is now a forbidden topic? So if I’m recruiting a senior developer or team lead, I now have to waste valuable time interviewing fresh-out-of-college tyros who haven’t written a single line of commercial code or spent a single day working in a professional team?
I can kind of see what is trying to be achieved here, but it is an unavoidable fact that experience is a vital attribute for many senior roles, and needs to be taken into consideration when trying to fill those roles. It’s not just me either - a quick trawl through the endless agency emails I seem to get every day (despite telling them I’m not on the market) reveals that most tech jobs are still specifying n years of experience; this seems somewhat pointless now that candidates can’t be asked about it. I wonder if they know?
Even more interesting is the fact that many contract positions are still paid at ‘rates negotiable on experience’. Hah, how does that work when experience is a forbidden subject? If I were graduating from university this year I’d be whoring myself around the City applying for £500-per-day contracting gigs and suing any bank that dared ask me to justify my rate.
Rob Grant’s novel Incompetence just became slightly less hysterical.
Article 13199 of the Pan-European Constitution: “No person shall be prejudiced from employment in any capacity, at any level, by reason of age, race, creed or incompitence (sic).