How do I avoid discrimination?

Hi, today’s top tip from our 52 top tips cards is the queen of diamonds, and the queen of diamonds, as with all of the diamond suite, is all about recruitment.

The queen of diamonds specifically is about discrimination. And I know I can hear everyone whinging, and saying, oh, no, not discrimination again, but it’s a really, really big one for HR, for employers. And we actually have a client with three discrimination cases going through an employment tribunal at the moment. So, when you hear that word, discrimination, please, please please don’t use it as a turn off. It’s really important that you are aware of discrimination and the risk of discrimination in everything that you do. 

So, today’s tip is the queen of diamonds. It is about discrimination:

Extreme care must be taken not to discriminate against a candidate. It’s not only an employee who can take you to an employment tribunal. If a candidate feels that they were the strongest, or best suited candidate, but they were not shortlisted, or selected, based on age, gender, disability, or perhaps their race, for example, they may bring a case against you. Be objective. Recruit to your job description, and make sure that you keep notes.

And really we advise that people keep their notes for each interview up to a year because somebody could come back afterwards and throw all sorts of accusations at you. If you’ve got your notes, from all of the candidates, if you’ve used a structured interview, asked the same questions to all of the candidates, then they’re going to have a much harder job proving that they were discriminated against because you’ve got the evidence that says this is why they were weaker. This is why I chose candidate A over candidate B.