Not to make light of discrimination, but…
This item may not help you in getting your next job, but we feel compelled to share it nonetheless.
Most job seekers at one time or another will venture into the area known as the jobs board. Some may even cross over into the shadowy realm of a government-sponsored jobs board. Recently, we saw a report from the BBC (and others) of the following incident and thought it might inject a smile into the seriousness of your job search.
Apparently a woman from a “recruitment agency” seeking to hire cleaning personnel for a nearby hospital submitted a request with a local government job “centre” for “reliable and hard-working” individuals. Her posting was denied. In explaining the denial, a representative from the job “centre” told her that “she could not request ‘reliable and hard-working’ applicants” in her posting because that sort of language could be deemed "offensive" to unreliable people.
To be fair, the woman from the job centre agreed that it was “ridiculous” but that she was only following policy. That’s a familiar defense.
In the interest of sanity, the BBC report continues to say that the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission responded that the job posting was in "no way" a breach of any discrimination law. Phew!
From age to race to gender etc., isn’t there enough discrimination out there in our everyday lives without having to deal with this kind of lunacy?