Age Discrimination - One Month On, November 2006

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

As the Head of Business Operations at IT Recruitment Specialists GCS, I can confirm that we have found that certain aspects of the Act have created issues for some of their clients. For example, whilst removing information from a CV that could indicate a candidate’s age (e.g. date of birth, dates of education, etc) is perfectly acceptable, some clients have asked for dates of previous employment history to be removed. This is nonsense. For example, showing the last five years of employment on a CV does not indicate whether a candidate is aged 21 or 51 (or any other age for that matter). The only exception is when too much employment history is shown, as this will indicate that the candidate is likely to be older and there might be a tendency to discriminate based on this information. This could potentially open up a claim based on ‘indirect’ Age Discrimination. Other employers are still finding their way when carefully, or not so carefully, choosing their words for the positions they are advertising. Whilst it is not illegal to advertise for “a young, dynamic individual to join a like-minded organisation”, it does not help an employer if an older, rejected applicant decides to use the information in the advertisement in support of their claim for ‘direct’ Age Discrimination. All advice to date, suggests not using such words in the first place. Therefore, we have found ourselves to be educating and steering our Clients through, what seems to them at this time, to be a quagmire of legislation. As the Regulations apply to Recruitment Companies in relation to their own job applicants/staff and to workers that they introduce and place with clients (i.e. Regulation 25 states that it is unlawful to knowingly aid another to discriminate), GCS have educated all their staff to treat Age Discrimination in the same way as with all Equal Opportunities Legislation – namely, “Don’t”. Kevin Logan Business Operations Manager

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