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How not to advertise for a job in London

programmingisterrible.com

41–50 of 76 posts

Re: How not to advertise for a job in London

#41

This is either really good satire or really depressing. It's like every HR buzzword has been shoved into a single requirements doc, and then some bizarre ones added for good measure (it's a bonus if you like to wear headphones apparently?) I'm going to print this out and stick it on my wall - no matter how bad my professional life gets, I will be reminded at least I don't work here.

This was discussed in slack and as far as we can tell, it's legit. His responses were to the similar effect, he did soften it saying he would give bonus points to the applicants who meets the 'preferences'(!). That was until his apology of course.

Re: How not to advertise for a job in London

#42
post #7

Under "common behaviours of our ideal candidate" in the HR doc posted: > 8. Just a nice dude It seems obvious to me that this is outright illegal gender discrimination, am I wrong?

You're not wrong at all. Furthermore: > 2. Under 30 years old Is obviously age discrimination as well. Unlike some people, I'm under no illusions that tech is non-discriminatory, but it's still surprising and disappointing to see it stated so plainly on a job description. These people are idiots for leaving this document online now that they've been caught. I don't know the specifics of UK labour laws, but in the US…

The youth obsession in tech is strange. I understand a culture fit but the best programmers I know are 40+, they just had the drive to stay up on trends and experience that goes back miles.

Re: How not to advertise for a job in London

#43

Whether it's illegal or not, I sort of wish more employers would just advertise like this anyway - just tell me you're really only interested in a 23 year old, so I can avoid wasting both our time. Theoretically, the market will reward them with ... whatever comes of having a bunch of 23 year olds running mission-critical aspects of your business. Might be massive success, might be failure, but let them get on with i…

True, it could be a cultural thing. His ad is more or less legal in China. Other preferences he could have added include height and weight requirement.

Re: How not to advertise for a job in London

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against employees, job seekers and trainees because of their age." [1] [1] http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1841

Wait, UK only adopted this in 2010? Sorry, I am surprised by that

The 2010 Act just merges the laws from the 1970s (equal pay, race relations, etc) into a single law. It was an exercise in tidying up the statute books.

Re: How not to advertise for a job in London

#45

Whether it's illegal or not, I sort of wish more employers would just advertise like this anyway - just tell me you're really only interested in a 23 year old, so I can avoid wasting both our time. Theoretically, the market will reward them with ... whatever comes of having a bunch of 23 year olds running mission-critical aspects of your business. Might be massive success, might be failure, but let them get on with i…

Yeah, I don't mind. But they're either asking for a freaking genius or a liar, and since they're asking for a bunch of stuff that isn't really pertinent I'm willing to bet they pay like crap too. They'll get the liar and they'll probably deserve it.

Re: How not to advertise for a job in London

#48
https://www.facebook.com/careerharbour

"We introduced our first professionally designed CV template. You may purchase it at john@careerharbour.co.uk You get a free preview."

(How do you purchase something at an e-mail address ?)

http://www.careerharbour.co.uk/ is down.

Profile on linkedin seems to have disappeared.

Facebook has been silent since the beginning of March (after an avalanche of posts since the beginning of the year).

Smells like a failed/failing startup...

Does someone know more ? Didn't really care much (I just wanted to know what kind of company they were) but now I'm curious.

Re: How not to advertise for a job in London

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against employees, job seekers and trainees because of their age." [1] [1] http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1841

Wait, UK only adopted this in 2010? Sorry, I am surprised by that

This is correct, age discrimination was the most recent addition to the anti-discrimination laws.

Re: How not to advertise for a job in London

#50
If you were as confused by the "Magic Pitch" requirement as I was, here is an explanation from the startup itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XqYXP1Azsk&t=1m18s

Essentially, they want candidates to pitch to employers using a short video.

The idea of candidate videos has been floated about since before YouTube. I remember discussing it with a large job board owner over 10 years ago, and several times since, and there's always been a consensus that no real company would touch it with a 10 foot pole, mainly because seeing the candidate means you know their age, race and gender, all protected employment categories. It's a complete non-starter, and the founder is being really naive for his failure to look around and realize that if no one is doing something so painfully obvious and easy to implement, the market has spoken.

For what it's worth, attaching a photo to your resume, while taboo in the English speaking world, is acceptable in some European countries (Italy, Germany, France) and even preferred in some Asian countries. Personally, I hope this practice dies out, because of all the discrimination it inevitably leads to. I recall a large study that showed that attractive women (surprise) and unattractive men received significantly fewer callbacks compared to unattractive women/attractive men and/or when their photo was added to their otherwise identical resume.

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