Confessions of an Executive Restaurant Recruiter

…continuing my running commentary on the ItzBIG Blog series of articles on the Candidate Bill of Rights.

“Consideration” is the topic of today’s post.  I think it is euphemistically reworded, to eliminate the word discrimination.  Discrimination is an awful and ugly word.  Especially when you see it in practice.  We don’t allow that here.  We don’t work with clients that move in that direction.

Now it is a fact of life that in recruiting we are discriminating, on a daily basis, just not the illegal kind.  At least the good and ethical recruiters aren’t.  But we are all discriminating.  We are judging the value potential of prospective candidates.  We toss some.  We keep some in files.  We present some.  All are not ‘considered’ equal, for that is one of the things we get paid for.  Finding talent that rises above the rest, and bringing that to our client.

We must be careful, however, to only judge the differences that have something to do with the job and the successful completion of the tasks required in that job.  We must not see a company that is majority white (or black) and gravitate to sending only candidates that match that racial profile.  We must not look at graduation dates and say to ourselves “this guy/gal is too old, they’d never consider him/her.”  And when we here talk like that from our client companies, we have to be prepared.  We have a response ready to go.  It is three step.  One, we ask if the is an EEOC mandate in place.  If not, secondly, we tell the company that we do not discriminate against any protected categories and will present ALL qualified candidates.  If we see that a clear pattern of discrimination or the desire to discriminate is developing, we sever our relationship with that client.  What is your response?