8 ms·

How not to advertise for a job in London

81 points by vonmoltke 12y ago

detaro 12y ago
...aaaannd there goes the "faith in humanity"-budget for the day. There can't be many people applying to such job offers, right? (Also, video-pitch for a job as a backend developer? What's the logic behind that except "let's see through how many hoops they'll jump")
- testtestq 12y ago
  I checked it out the other day, and his whole start-up was based on this 30-second video "magic-pitch" thing, which is why they had it for their own candidates, I guess.
  - detaro 12y ago
    So along the lines of "use our product for your application"? That would make some resemblance of sense...
- apkostka 12y ago
  If you require people to jump through hoops for a job, only people who have time to jump through them will apply.
ironrabbit 12y ago
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?
- Xophmeister 12y ago
  "Dude" doesn't necessarily imply male, but it is strongly slanted that way. I'm not sure if it would hold up as discrimination.
  - jeeva 12y ago
    Yeah, I always see this sort of comment and worry that I'm the only person using guys/dude/folks as a catch-all. Quickly Googling seems to indicate that it's not set in stone, at least.
    - codezero 12y ago
      It's something to be aware of and to try to avoid. It may be casually acceptable, but consider it from a female candidates point of view. Having been frequently confronted with exclusionary language the assumption is likely to be that this usage does imply male-only. I'm not saying you or anyone implies that, but it's good to be aware of so you can avoid unintended discrimination. It takes almost no effort to modify these word choices to be inclusive.
  - erroneousfunk 12y ago
    It typically applies only to males, and historically has only referred to males. If I were a female thinking about applying for this job, I would certainly be taken aback by it. While you might refer to a mixed-gendered group as "dudes" it seems odd to refer to a single female as a "dude"
    - vonmoltke 12y ago
      My wife and her female cousin-in-law do it to each other all the time. That said, I agree it's not appropriate for a job req and understand why it turns women off from applying.
  - s73v3r 12y ago
    While it might not hold up as being against the law, it likely would deter many females from applying.
    - glittershark 12y ago
      Referring to women as "females" probably won't help, either
- sebular 12y ago
  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 its mere existence would be grounds for a lawsuit.
  - detaro 12y ago
    They only need "Fast and accurate proficiency" in being under 30 years old ;) (so someone who just turned 30 is probably best, having the 30 years experience with being under 30)
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    "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 http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1841
    - vasilipupkin 12y ago
      Wait, UK only adopted this in 2010? Sorry, I am surprised by that
      - philh 12y ago
        Not necessarily. That Act might be an update to a previously-existing one that also forbade gender discrimination.
      - gaius 12y ago
        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.
      - celticninja 12y ago
- slgeorge 12y ago
  Yeah you can't ask that. When you read the rest of the document it's clear the 'job definition' has been done by someone whose not a HR professional. It's probably a tech or developer whose inexperienced. The only thing I'll say in defense of it is that this isn't as unusual as you might expect - even if they don't write it a lot of people probably use heuristics like this, unfortunately!
  - mercurial 12y ago
    > by someone whose not a HR professional No need to require HR skills when basic English proficiency is lacking. What does "work in a team of all current developers" even means? Don't get me started on "Conscientious and committed to a certain task where they decided to commit themselves", that's positively Shakespearian. Was this written by a real person using Google Translate, or by a bot? Oh, and what the hell is a "MagicPitch"?
- s73v3r 12y ago
  Dude can sometimes be used to refer to people of both genders. Although in a professional job posting, there are dozens of words that would be more explicitly gender-neutral and a better choice.
Dakuan 12y ago
twitter account is gone
brohee 12y ago
@xiangyu_wu deleted his twitter account and Topsy doesn't seem to have the incriminating tweets, any other archive?
- testtestq 12y ago
  I managed to see his tweets, where he apologised for his job-posting, by googling for his twittername and looking it up at google cache.
  - brohee 12y ago
    Thanks, so his last tweet before nuking his account was: "Apologies for my discriminative job advert. It was totally wrong. Going forwards, we’re adopting a more ethical hiring procedure."
    - testtestq 12y ago
      He seem to have nuked his linkedin account and similar such accounts as well.
      - polynomial 12y ago
        This doesn't make a lot of sense, assuming Xiangyu Wu is his actual name. Moreover while I can understand deleting a Twitter account after a Tweetstorm, deleting your professional Linked In profile seems pointless at best, unless I am missing something.
    - pyre 12y ago
      I can't find the original anywhere. Must have deleted it before Google Cached.
markbnj 12y ago
>> Enters into a state of Flow, where when the candidate is coding a long time they are wired in and cannot easily get distracted Haha, TBH almost every programmer I know under 30 years old is distracted every 90 seconds by a) a tweet, b) a text, c) a notification, or d) an email. Wait, actually that's all of us, under 30 or not.
- elcct 12y ago
  But you have control over when you are responding to said distraction, so it won't necessarily get you out of the zone.
  - markbnj 12y ago
    I suppose, to an extent, but I think all the notifications and events are more successful than not in pulling people's attention away from what they are doing. At least that is my observation.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    Depends on how you are wired. I can't not react to external stimuli, and being in an environment with a lot of stimuli I can't control raises my stress level pretty quickly.
    - bengali3 12y ago
      i allow myself to be impacted by this too much, but I would still say we do have control, as we choose to allow ourselves to be exposed to the stimuli, right? the provided examples above a-d can all be controlled by not having your phone in front of you, and closing non-coding applications. desk drive-bys and kitchen cake on the other hand, are much less likely for me to resist
DanBC 12y ago
There are a bunch of things about this document that are not legal in England. Age, sex, and long working hours are all things theycan be done for.
mgkimsal 12y ago
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 it.
- collyw 12y ago
  Yes the amount of people that want to interview me is high in Barcelona. The amount of people that want to pay for my level of experience is low (and the wages aren't especially high here). Save us both the time and tell me in advance what you are willing to pay.
  - erroneousfunk 12y ago
    Setting experience requirements (high and low) is legal. Flat out stating an age isn't, in both the US and the UK.
    - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
      Setting a maximum experience requirement isn't legal in the US because it has a disparate impact on older applicants.
- tiptup 12y ago
  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.
- ownagefool 12y ago
  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.
ratsbane 12y ago
Surely that can't be for real. I saw it a few days ago and immediately thought it was a parody... but...
EliRivers 12y ago
The ideal candidate displays and implements "pushing forward motions". They... wave their hands in the air? This is a wind up, surely!
- polynomial 12y ago
  Fav part: "b. come to the office every time a line of code is written." Not sure how you would get anything done at all, if you had to run to the office every single time you hit the return key.
- mauricemir 12y ago
  no of course one proposes or moves a "motion" :-)
vkjv 12y ago
Out of curiosity, are these discrimination laws hard and fast in in the UK? At least, in the U.S., most of these laws explicitly only affect a company above a certain number of employees.
- noir_lord 12y ago
  They apply whether you have 1 employee or 50,000.
  - mauricemir 12y ago
    Individual ones do collective ones consultation of redundancy and so on do have a minimum size. Though some elements of the Tory party and Ukip want to do away with all those laws
lmorris84 12y ago
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.
- tiptup 12y ago
  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.
tiptup 12y ago
Context: This ad first appeared in a slack channel and straightaway people called him out and why it's wrong. Someone decided to call him out on twitter instead. Twitterstorm.
nnd 12y ago
Long Term Goals: 1. Self-actualisation 2. Starting their own company 3. Change the world
jnbiche 12y ago
It's not clear to me, was this ad placed through Career Harbour or by Career Harbour? Their site is down at the moment, but they appear to be an HR-type of company. Either way, it's bad news, since they either placed a blatantly discriminatory ad themselves or they failed to warn a client that such ads are illegal in the UK (pretty big failure for a career services company).
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I would not be shocked if the ad is some internal document they use as an illustration of what not to put in job ads. Then they can have a discussion around it. This item is illegal. This item is going to put off many candidates. This item is unclear. And so on. edit: From other comments about people from the company nuking their online presence, maybe it was real. Huh.
jrgnsd 12y ago
When I initially saw the ad, I thought it was satire. Didn't think it could be real.
agounaris 12y ago
Once a recruiter asked me if I had 10 years of experience in a specific technology which is there for less than 5 years...I hung up the phone...
- redeleven 12y ago
  I had a recruiter turn me down for a job interview as I didn't have experience with 'Marcos' on my CV. I think he meant Macros, but I was too busy laughing to find out.
Kurtz79 12y ago
https://www.facebook.com/careerharbour 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/ 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.
rada 12y ago
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 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.
- deeviant 12y ago
  Is that really the reason why? I'm pretty sure you would get somebody's age, race and gender just by reading their resume/CV, which most job boards allow potential hiring companies to peruse.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    The difference is how easy it will be for a candidate to make the claim that you must have known about what protected classes they belong to when you discarded them as a candidate. If all you have is the CV, possibly anonymised, you can feign ignorance or genuinely be ignorant of the candidates age, race and gender in a way that will be absolutely impossible to pull off if you've seen them on video.
binxbolling 12y ago
Setting aside its illegality, what strikes me here is how unintentionally hilarious this job posting is. I'm laughing just thinking about someone earnestly creating this, and maybe even someone else approving it for publication.
snoopy121 12y ago
Yo I actually know the dude from school...feel like I owe him a bit of a defense after his minute of twitter infamy :) I'd understand the anger if this were, like, a Goldman Sachs-calibre company practicing age-based discrimination, but in this case there's no they, there's literally just a guy plus some coder friends of his, getting a bit excited about startup plans. The dude's 23 (plus or minus) himself, and decidedly not versed in HR laws - I could imagine the words "discrimination" (...or "political correctness"...or maybe "self-awareness") didn't even enter his mind while he typed away at his dream candidate wish list. Sure it's hilarious, but maybe cut him some slack re: sinister intentions. I don't think it's too pleasant waking up and getting a hundred angry retweets for something like this.
- frobozz 12y ago
  I agree that Hanlon's Razor should be applied here, and yes, this twitterstorm should know its limits (see http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw... and http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled...) However, I'd like to take you up on two points: > I'd understand the anger if this were, like, a Goldman Sachs-calibre company practicing age-based discrimination Are you claiming that small companies should be free to discriminate against protected characteristics with impunity, and that only large companies should be held to account for bad behaviour? Where do you draw the line? > decidedly not versed in HR laws As far as I can see, Career Harbour claims to be a revolutionary recruitment company, xiangyu_wu claims to be its founder and CEO. In order to make those claims, one must have at least a cursory knowledge of the law and customs pertaining to recruitment. "Know the rules well so that you can break them effectively" Although I can't back this up with quotes now, as the site has disappeared, I think I read that they wanted to "disrupt" recruitment and were targeting the milkround market, by allowing applicants to apply to all the big names with just one form. They may not be a Big Company themselves, but they are pitching themselves as the gateway to them. Were I to apply to PWC or KPMG or whoever through them (with a "magicpitch" video), I wouldn't be surprised to find that they'd not even sent it on, due to the shortage and greyness of my hair and colour of my skin. Also, (again, I can't back it up, because his own tweets have vanished) it looks like some of the ire comes not just from the awful ad itself, but from his attempt to defend it (e.g. https://twitter.com/digitalmaverick/status/576067223162347520 https://twitter.com/digitalmaverick/status/57606722316234752...). That said, in his defence, he has "had a change of heart", which may mean that he is repentant. Anyway, if, as he wishes his employees to be, he is a "nice dude" who "celebrates failure" and can "accept difficult challenges as opportunity for growth" and "deal with setbacks and failure on a continuous basis", this event will be bread-and-butter for him.
deeviant 12y ago
They forget to add: "Well qualified candidates will have a brilliant, well-defined business plan for a start-up idea that does not suck, which you will sign over to us in order to have the privilege of interviewing for this junior position."

81 points by vonmoltke 12y ago

...aaaannd there goes the "faith in humanity"-budget for the day. There can't be many people applying to such job offers, right? (Also, video-pitch for a job as a backend developer? What's the logic behind that except "let's see through how many hoops they'll jump")

testtestq 12y ago
I checked it out the other day, and his whole start-up was based on this 30-second video "magic-pitch" thing, which is why they had it for their own candidates, I guess.
- detaro 12y ago
  So along the lines of "use our product for your application"? That would make some resemblance of sense...
apkostka 12y ago
If you require people to jump through hoops for a job, only people who have time to jump through them will apply.

ironrabbit 12y ago

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?

Xophmeister 12y ago
"Dude" doesn't necessarily imply male, but it is strongly slanted that way. I'm not sure if it would hold up as discrimination.
- jeeva 12y ago
  Yeah, I always see this sort of comment and worry that I'm the only person using guys/dude/folks as a catch-all. Quickly Googling seems to indicate that it's not set in stone, at least.
  - codezero 12y ago
    It's something to be aware of and to try to avoid. It may be casually acceptable, but consider it from a female candidates point of view. Having been frequently confronted with exclusionary language the assumption is likely to be that this usage does imply male-only. I'm not saying you or anyone implies that, but it's good to be aware of so you can avoid unintended discrimination. It takes almost no effort to modify these word choices to be inclusive.
- erroneousfunk 12y ago
  It typically applies only to males, and historically has only referred to males. If I were a female thinking about applying for this job, I would certainly be taken aback by it. While you might refer to a mixed-gendered group as "dudes" it seems odd to refer to a single female as a "dude"
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    My wife and her female cousin-in-law do it to each other all the time. That said, I agree it's not appropriate for a job req and understand why it turns women off from applying.
- s73v3r 12y ago
  While it might not hold up as being against the law, it likely would deter many females from applying.
  - glittershark 12y ago
    Referring to women as "females" probably won't help, either
sebular 12y ago
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 its mere existence would be grounds for a lawsuit.
- detaro 12y ago
  They only need "Fast and accurate proficiency" in being under 30 years old ;) (so someone who just turned 30 is probably best, having the 30 years experience with being under 30)
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  "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 http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1841
  - vasilipupkin 12y ago
    Wait, UK only adopted this in 2010? Sorry, I am surprised by that
    - philh 12y ago
      Not necessarily. That Act might be an update to a previously-existing one that also forbade gender discrimination.
    - gaius 12y ago
      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.
    - celticninja 12y ago
slgeorge 12y ago
Yeah you can't ask that. When you read the rest of the document it's clear the 'job definition' has been done by someone whose not a HR professional. It's probably a tech or developer whose inexperienced. The only thing I'll say in defense of it is that this isn't as unusual as you might expect - even if they don't write it a lot of people probably use heuristics like this, unfortunately!
- mercurial 12y ago
  > by someone whose not a HR professional No need to require HR skills when basic English proficiency is lacking. What does "work in a team of all current developers" even means? Don't get me started on "Conscientious and committed to a certain task where they decided to commit themselves", that's positively Shakespearian. Was this written by a real person using Google Translate, or by a bot? Oh, and what the hell is a "MagicPitch"?
s73v3r 12y ago
Dude can sometimes be used to refer to people of both genders. Although in a professional job posting, there are dozens of words that would be more explicitly gender-neutral and a better choice.

Dakuan 12y ago

twitter account is gone

brohee 12y ago

@xiangyu_wu deleted his twitter account and Topsy doesn't seem to have the incriminating tweets, any other archive?

testtestq 12y ago
I managed to see his tweets, where he apologised for his job-posting, by googling for his twittername and looking it up at google cache.
- brohee 12y ago
  Thanks, so his last tweet before nuking his account was: "Apologies for my discriminative job advert. It was totally wrong. Going forwards, we’re adopting a more ethical hiring procedure."
  - testtestq 12y ago
    He seem to have nuked his linkedin account and similar such accounts as well.
    - polynomial 12y ago
      This doesn't make a lot of sense, assuming Xiangyu Wu is his actual name. Moreover while I can understand deleting a Twitter account after a Tweetstorm, deleting your professional Linked In profile seems pointless at best, unless I am missing something.
  - pyre 12y ago
    I can't find the original anywhere. Must have deleted it before Google Cached.

markbnj 12y ago

>> Enters into a state of Flow, where when the candidate is coding a long time they are wired in and cannot easily get distracted Haha, TBH almost every programmer I know under 30 years old is distracted every 90 seconds by a) a tweet, b) a text, c) a notification, or d) an email. Wait, actually that's all of us, under 30 or not.

elcct 12y ago
But you have control over when you are responding to said distraction, so it won't necessarily get you out of the zone.
- markbnj 12y ago
  I suppose, to an extent, but I think all the notifications and events are more successful than not in pulling people's attention away from what they are doing. At least that is my observation.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  Depends on how you are wired. I can't not react to external stimuli, and being in an environment with a lot of stimuli I can't control raises my stress level pretty quickly.
  - bengali3 12y ago
    i allow myself to be impacted by this too much, but I would still say we do have control, as we choose to allow ourselves to be exposed to the stimuli, right? the provided examples above a-d can all be controlled by not having your phone in front of you, and closing non-coding applications. desk drive-bys and kitchen cake on the other hand, are much less likely for me to resist

DanBC 12y ago

There are a bunch of things about this document that are not legal in England. Age, sex, and long working hours are all things theycan be done for.

mgkimsal 12y ago

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 it.

collyw 12y ago
Yes the amount of people that want to interview me is high in Barcelona. The amount of people that want to pay for my level of experience is low (and the wages aren't especially high here). Save us both the time and tell me in advance what you are willing to pay.
- erroneousfunk 12y ago
  Setting experience requirements (high and low) is legal. Flat out stating an age isn't, in both the US and the UK.
  - TheCoelacanth 12y ago
    Setting a maximum experience requirement isn't legal in the US because it has a disparate impact on older applicants.
tiptup 12y ago
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.
ownagefool 12y ago
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.

ratsbane 12y ago

Surely that can't be for real. I saw it a few days ago and immediately thought it was a parody... but...

EliRivers 12y ago

The ideal candidate displays and implements "pushing forward motions". They... wave their hands in the air? This is a wind up, surely!

polynomial 12y ago
Fav part: "b. come to the office every time a line of code is written." Not sure how you would get anything done at all, if you had to run to the office every single time you hit the return key.
mauricemir 12y ago
no of course one proposes or moves a "motion" :-)

vkjv 12y ago

Out of curiosity, are these discrimination laws hard and fast in in the UK? At least, in the U.S., most of these laws explicitly only affect a company above a certain number of employees.

noir_lord 12y ago
They apply whether you have 1 employee or 50,000.
- mauricemir 12y ago
  Individual ones do collective ones consultation of redundancy and so on do have a minimum size. Though some elements of the Tory party and Ukip want to do away with all those laws

lmorris84 12y ago

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.

tiptup 12y ago
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.

tiptup 12y ago

Context: This ad first appeared in a slack channel and straightaway people called him out and why it's wrong. Someone decided to call him out on twitter instead. Twitterstorm.

nnd 12y ago

Long Term Goals: 1. Self-actualisation 2. Starting their own company 3. Change the world

jnbiche 12y ago

It's not clear to me, was this ad placed through Career Harbour or by Career Harbour? Their site is down at the moment, but they appear to be an HR-type of company. Either way, it's bad news, since they either placed a blatantly discriminatory ad themselves or they failed to warn a client that such ads are illegal in the UK (pretty big failure for a career services company).

maxerickson 12y ago
I would not be shocked if the ad is some internal document they use as an illustration of what not to put in job ads. Then they can have a discussion around it. This item is illegal. This item is going to put off many candidates. This item is unclear. And so on. edit: From other comments about people from the company nuking their online presence, maybe it was real. Huh.

jrgnsd 12y ago

When I initially saw the ad, I thought it was satire. Didn't think it could be real.

agounaris 12y ago

Once a recruiter asked me if I had 10 years of experience in a specific technology which is there for less than 5 years...I hung up the phone...

redeleven 12y ago
I had a recruiter turn me down for a job interview as I didn't have experience with 'Marcos' on my CV. I think he meant Macros, but I was too busy laughing to find out.

Kurtz79 12y ago

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

rada 12y ago

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 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.

deeviant 12y ago
Is that really the reason why? I'm pretty sure you would get somebody's age, race and gender just by reading their resume/CV, which most job boards allow potential hiring companies to peruse.
- vidarh 12y ago
  The difference is how easy it will be for a candidate to make the claim that you must have known about what protected classes they belong to when you discarded them as a candidate. If all you have is the CV, possibly anonymised, you can feign ignorance or genuinely be ignorant of the candidates age, race and gender in a way that will be absolutely impossible to pull off if you've seen them on video.

binxbolling 12y ago

Setting aside its illegality, what strikes me here is how unintentionally hilarious this job posting is. I'm laughing just thinking about someone earnestly creating this, and maybe even someone else approving it for publication.

snoopy121 12y ago

Yo I actually know the dude from school...feel like I owe him a bit of a defense after his minute of twitter infamy :) I'd understand the anger if this were, like, a Goldman Sachs-calibre company practicing age-based discrimination, but in this case there's no they, there's literally just a guy plus some coder friends of his, getting a bit excited about startup plans. The dude's 23 (plus or minus) himself, and decidedly not versed in HR laws - I could imagine the words "discrimination" (...or "political correctness"...or maybe "self-awareness") didn't even enter his mind while he typed away at his dream candidate wish list. Sure it's hilarious, but maybe cut him some slack re: sinister intentions. I don't think it's too pleasant waking up and getting a hundred angry retweets for something like this.

frobozz 12y ago
I agree that Hanlon's Razor should be applied here, and yes, this twitterstorm should know its limits (see http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tw... and http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled...) However, I'd like to take you up on two points: > I'd understand the anger if this were, like, a Goldman Sachs-calibre company practicing age-based discrimination Are you claiming that small companies should be free to discriminate against protected characteristics with impunity, and that only large companies should be held to account for bad behaviour? Where do you draw the line? > decidedly not versed in HR laws As far as I can see, Career Harbour claims to be a revolutionary recruitment company, xiangyu_wu claims to be its founder and CEO. In order to make those claims, one must have at least a cursory knowledge of the law and customs pertaining to recruitment. "Know the rules well so that you can break them effectively" Although I can't back this up with quotes now, as the site has disappeared, I think I read that they wanted to "disrupt" recruitment and were targeting the milkround market, by allowing applicants to apply to all the big names with just one form. They may not be a Big Company themselves, but they are pitching themselves as the gateway to them. Were I to apply to PWC or KPMG or whoever through them (with a "magicpitch" video), I wouldn't be surprised to find that they'd not even sent it on, due to the shortage and greyness of my hair and colour of my skin. Also, (again, I can't back it up, because his own tweets have vanished) it looks like some of the ire comes not just from the awful ad itself, but from his attempt to defend it (e.g. https://twitter.com/digitalmaverick/status/576067223162347520 https://twitter.com/digitalmaverick/status/57606722316234752...). That said, in his defence, he has "had a change of heart", which may mean that he is repentant. Anyway, if, as he wishes his employees to be, he is a "nice dude" who "celebrates failure" and can "accept difficult challenges as opportunity for growth" and "deal with setbacks and failure on a continuous basis", this event will be bread-and-butter for him.

deeviant 12y ago

They forget to add: "Well qualified candidates will have a brilliant, well-defined business plan for a start-up idea that does not suck, which you will sign over to us in order to have the privilege of interviewing for this junior position."