too old for our team

[IamAporcupine]

I am shortlisting candidates for a position advertised in my workplace and my boss has just mentioned that one of the candidates is '10 years older than her' and that 'we want the new team member to fit with the rest of the (young-ish) team'.

This is plain discrimination, isn't it?

their..

(not saying that's a good thing, BTW)

We have to ask for ID at interview such as passport to make sure they can legally work in UK so there's the DOB!

If organisations are serious about diversity and creating an unbiased level playing field, they give the processing of Ids and security checks to different people than those doing interviews so there is minimised negative influence.

They can also redact the candidate's name so the first sift of CVs focuses wholly on skills and experience.

The sooner employers can be encouraged towards these practices the quicker the OPs experience with the manager can be eliminated as outdated and pernicious.

Totally agree. It used to be HR that did all of that for us but after severe head count reduction is now the responsibility of the recruiting manager.

The public sector is run by people just the same as anywhere else

I agree, but the law should be selectively applied whoever the people are. My statement was too broad as I know the public sector is an unwheildy beast with a lot that goes under the radar.

I can only go on personal experience that they have been trying to clean up their act in terms of better processes, but it isn't perfect and there is a lot more work to be done. There are pockets of excellence but also depressing examples of outdated thinking. Checks and balances are needed to prevent individuals spoiling it for those who champion and promote diversity - I know more of the latter than the former.

the law should not be 'selectively' applied whoever the people are.

In my job (sort of public sector) we're terrified of FoI requests. The hassle of bad publicity from a FoI Request wouldn't be worth living if it even looked like we had done age-discrimination. Plus the regular little online training courses we have to do about any form of discrimination (updated every 3 yrs or so) burns into your brain eventually. The training is big on unconscious bias with info tests to pass at the end or retake the video training (I guess that's consequence, I haven't failed yet). (And health and safety & Data protection training).

DH works in private sector and never gets any of that training or FoI fears.

It's "the fear of...." that should be in place across the board lljkk, even though from the posts on here, seemingly people in recruiting positions either haven't been given the training and knowledge about how it should be done (because it's the right thing to do) or know it and choose to openly flout the law.

I was interviewing alongside my manager about 8 years ago.

My manager actually turned to me and said after interviewing a young Indian girl:
"We are not hiring any Asians, they are too unreliable and can't speak good enough English".

1. My manager was from Iran so I pointed this out to her.
2. I took it further up to HR because I was disgusted. My best friend is Indian.
3. She lost her job.

Any kind of discrimination, whether Age discrimination or Race is very wrong and has no place in the society that we live in. People can be so ignorant.

And just to add context my manager was registered with a professional body. She should have known better.