Hi

Xmas is around the corner!!

Another month has flown by and everybody appears to be clued up about Christmas and what they will be individually doing. I am not even thinking about Xmas right now since I have an important wedding coming up next week and I have been scouring the internet for wedding troll dolls (difficult wee beasties to source).

Personally I cannot bear the sound of jingle bell tunes in November!! However, I do have an enforced recession busting Xmas lunch on Friday to attend.

I suppose I should count myself lucky that I have a Xmas function to attend this year at all. There are so many people out there who have waved goodbye to all of that during this nail biting recession. Truman was right when he said “It’s a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.”

Bad Recruitment Practices

I think now about people that I know that have been applying for jobs for months and have not even received a courteous reply to say that they have been unsuccessful. This brings to mind an article that has been repeated several times this week in HR and Business journals. It confirms that racial discrimination still occurs in the recruitment process. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) research study informs us that 2,961 fake job applications were created for 987 real jobs with private, public and voluntary sector employers of varying sizes. The upshot is that whilst names like Andrew Clarke and Alison Taylor got through to the first stage one in nine cases, Asian or African fake applicants were only successful one in sixteen times. I was rather relieved to hear that the public sector fared better than private and voluntary sector in this study. It seems that its policies are being adhered to.

Reasons for racial exclusionary practices in UK

So what is happening here after so many years of race equality policy implementation? The theory that I have is linked to the hot potato of global labour mobility that Pritchett, L. (2006) presents. He cites that there is a national and deep seated culture of distrust of people from countries that are different. When he talks about it, he is describing labour mobility aversion. In the case of recruitment the aversion would appear to be towards differences in ethnicity and culture. Or, is it indeed, ignorance and a lack of connectivity?

The Connectivity theory

Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, has spent years studying The general issue of connectivity. I believe this also has major relevance to the racial bias in job application processes where thousands of people consider themselves either naturally lucky or unlucky in life. He cites that people born in the summer months tend to be slightly luckier and also more sensation seeking, preferring to meet new people and try out new things. However, the relevance of this to the issue about racial discrimination is that Wiseman conducted primary studies on how well connected people are. His hypothesis is that lucky people live in a much better connected world. I certainly believe that this luck can be extended to employment prospects too since connectivity may bring more economic opportunities.

I am reminded of the work that goes on daily in support of community cohesion at both the national and local authority level. I give this work my full thumbs up although some areas need to be more practical and less strategic in nature.

In the case of racial discrimination evidenced by the study, however, policy makers need to explore the concept of a mandatory approach for all companies (private or third sector) to roll out standardised job application forms, just like the public sector does. However, this will not stop racial discrimination going on in the next stage of the interview process if policies are lapse!!. Here are also superior examples of the standard that all companies should be looking to work towards, even though they are designed for schools in most cases.

The majority of people that I know are very suspicious of equality monitoring forms. They seem to think that they kick start exclusionary practices however they are designed to eradicate them – see attached positive example and explanation.

As it so happens, I genuinely do know a highly skilled ‘Clarke’ that has been out of work for over a year.

Then again, he was born in the winter months……………………….

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Gains from Exchange

Just a reminder that No Nonsense is running its Gains from Exchange event on Saturday 5th December to bring partners from the BME third sector together to collaborate. This event does not promise to overcome any of your personal recruitment challenges but it is the start of advanced connectivity (linking and bridging). It will celebrate skills that exist in the BME community of Northampton.

I hope that such a partnership has the prospect to create jobs in the third sector one day soon, where I will do my best to ensure that fair and equitable recruitment practices are in place throughout each stage of the process. Please contact me if you require any support with the necessary recruitment processes.