Corporate recruiting? Total incompetence, or downright discrimination?

Hire Strategiesí continuing on-line recruitment research has found evidence to suggest that discrimination is still prevalent in e-recruitment.

Hire Strategies researched a number of major employers, by applying to them as four different candidates - for the same job - with virtually the same high level of experience. All jobs were Retail Management-type positions. All other factors were kept as constant as possible.

The candidates varied from the ìbase candidateî of a 30-something male, to a similar candidate but female, similar candidate but with an Indian-Asian type name and a candidate over 60 years old.

Outright rejections for the îbase candidateî were 3 out of 14. The female and over-60 candidates had 5 rejections and the Indian-Asian type name, 6 rejections.

Hire Strategies recognises that whilst the research is not entirely conclusive as the sample size of applications may not be sufficiently large enough to ensure that the results are representative, it does however suggest that employers still have some work to do and should delve deeper to ensure they are not leaving themselves open for claims from people who have never even worked for them.

Peter Gold ñ Hire Strategies Managing Director and e-recruitment guru says, ìThis type of research does have a practical use in the industry as itís an independent and external method for companies to show due-diligence in the application process. These days the threat of litigation for discrimination and even the possibility of the ìcareer litigantsî on this issue are becoming more of an issue. For instance, our independent research showed that Marks & Spencerís responses and treatment of all candidates was identical.î

Hire Strategies qualitative e-recruitment research has a range of benefits apart from the above, including checking timeliness and quality of responses, efficiency of web-based systems, overall image of the organization and ability to encourage quality potential to apply.

A FREE report, with the headline title above can be viewed at www.hirestrategies.co.uk/reports and Peter Gold is keen to talk to people who would like to use Hire Strategiesí research arm to improve their e-recruitment process.