HR types - is it true you can't put these things in a job description any more???

[CountessDracula]

Am recruiting someone and have had an email saying

We CANNOT use terms like X years experience as these are now legally discriminatory.

You can say they need [a particular system] experience but not quantify years. Similarly you cannot use words like ?dynamic? since these imply young and hence discriminate

Errr, why can you not be old and dynamic? Surely that is a quality that you have or don't, not related to age.

Also how can it be discriminatory to specify a number of years' experience? I mean you wouldn't want a spotty junior doctor doing your brain surgery would you, you would want someone who had 10 years experience of being a brain surgeon! Surely there are junior and senior roles in any organisation. Lawyers for eg always advertise for people base on the no of years PQE - is this now discriminatory?

i think you can be explicit about the experience you need but cannot assume that it relates to years - which has some basis I guess because eg I could have 5 years relevant employment but if I had spent the equivalent of 3 of them surfing the internet then I may not be as experienced as you require.

agree it's all a bit silly though

So can lawyers not specify PQE then?
cos they all do!

Also you are hardly going to put on your cv

2002 - 2007 Worked as an admin clerk but only count 3 years for experience as I spent the rest of the time on Facebook

but that's why you have to specify experience requirements in terms other than years

I'm not an expert but I think that because of CPD requirements PQE can have an interpretation other than elapsed time

The reason that you're being told that you shouldn't use years is because it's potentially indirectly discriminatory on age grounds.

A 25 year old going for a job which requires a degree will never be able to have 6 years' experience (becuase you'll be at least 21 by the time you graduate), but might be just as good and have a really valuable 4 years' experience.

Most people now do still refer to years, but use qualifying language like "the successful candidate is likely to have at least 2 years' experience of X, but applications will be welcomed from all suitable candidates". (This is what most lawyers do now, by the way)

Actually, using that language gets harder when you are talking about long periods of time. It is easy to see why someone might need 2 years' experience, or to be 'highly experienced', but if put on the stand in court, could you really justify why you needed 10 years' experience and not 8 or 9?

I agree that at face value it sounds daft, but it's all about making people think about what they REALLY need from a position, not just the shorthand we're all used to using. Like others have said, your candidate could have 5 years' experience but spent it all on Facebook.

Agree with Ribenaberry on the indirect discrimination of years experience. If you do want to provide some weight to the area you need to use descriptions like, substantive, demonstrable etc.

Basically with the new Age Legislation you can be found to directly or indirectly discriminate on the grounds of age.

Using years experience is a bit lazy and is used as a shorthand in a lot of areas (like finance and legal), but over time this will phase out. What you need to do is describe what you actually mean when you say need x years experience.

For what it is worth I agree on the dynamic bit this is a descriptive word it is other people's interpretation that it means young.

I have already seen cv's for applicants changing where they leave off half their roles in a chronology so that you don't add up the number of years.

I think we will have a better idea of what the legislation means in practice as we get more claims going through Employment Tribunals.

Think back to when Race and Sex discrimination legislation came in and what people thought was fine to say!

Whilst you HR bods are here can you help with a related query? I've been advertising recently for a pre-school manager. Ofsted regulations state that a suitable person to be a manager has to have an NVQIII and 2 years childcare experience. How does this gte past the age discrimination legislation? The newspaper we were advertising in refused to print the 2 yeras experience requirement, and fortunately it wasn't an issue with any of the applicants we had, but would I have been legal to not accept somebody on these experinece grounds?

& OFSTED says that I can't open the nursery without 3 yrs experience of early years education

I work in a in-house legal department and we don't specify PQE and have been told by the recruitment firms that we use that we can't specify it.

I now see cvs without dates on and it is quite difficult working out how old someone is (which I suppose is the point )

prufrock - if you are simply complying with another law or industry body, you should be ok. It's like pilots are allowed to have a retirement age of 60 (normally now you can't make people retire before 65) because it's a legal requirement in a lot of the countries they fly over.

If you have problems with adverts, specifically say in your wording "ofsted requirements state..."

Sorry to hijack thread, but (lawlerly / HR types only), how does PQE work when you've taken maternity leave? i.e. if you take a year off do you still add that year to your PQE? - i.e. x years since you qualified?

(that should be 'lawyerly')

I was told at an HR seminar that they're waiting for a test case, I raised the same point about 'dynamic' - i.e. I think it's discrimanory to assume the word applies to younger people only.

Naturopath- I've always assumed that you count it. I've only ever seen people discount where they've taken a sabbatical (eg. gone travelling).

Oh good, thanks.