Is recruitment set to go all cloak-and-dagger?

Posted in 'Credit Reports' by Richard Catlin

12 July 2010

A recent study has lead to calls for job applicants’ identities to be kept anonymous on CVs to reduce instances of discrimination based on sex or race.

There are calls for CVs to have all references to ethnicity, gender and age removed prior to inviting applicants for interview, in an attempt to further promote equality.

A study commissioned by the Governments Ethnic Minority Taskforce this year has seen 2000 ‘fake’ CVs sent along with applications for real jobs in an effort to determine whether or not discrimination exists on a big enough scale to warrant further investigation or even legislation. The constructed applicants had very similar qualifications and experience, but were deliberately given names with obvious ethnicity.

In France, a number of high profile organisations have already implemented anonymous CVs, and in the UK, BP has been removing personal identifiers from applications to its graduate recruitment programme since 2007.

Publication of the study’s findings is due shortly. Whether or not they make any recommendations, or lead to any change in employer legislation, remains to be seen.

Applying for credit, rather than a job, is much more clear-cut when it comes to equality. Factors such as gender and race were removed from credit scoring in 1987, following Equal Opportunities legislation. Up to that point, gender had been used as a significant indicator of creditworthiness, with women found to be better payers than their male counterparts.

Ironically, when gender was removed from credit scorecards, more women found that they were turned down for credit, due in part to losing the ‘positive weighting’ that gender carried.

Whether employers are forced to take steps to remove gender from their decision making completely remains to be seen. The use of credit checking in recruitment is becoming more widely used though and indeed is a legal requirement for some positions involving the handling of money.

An increasing number of employers are choosing to make credit checking a standard part of their recruitment policies. Although they only use a sub-set of your full credit file (the version lenders use to assess applications for credit), in many professions, adverse information could see a job offer retracted.

You can easily compare the information that prospective lenders and employers can see by ordering your credit report based on all three UK credit reference agencies on checkmyfile. The credit report based on Experian data is a public credit file, and that is what employers are entitled to see. The credit report based on Equifax data is what lenders see, and the one based on Callcredit data provides even more than lenders are able to view.

The Triple Agency Report is only available from checkmyfile, and can either be purchased as a one-off report, or as part of our Unlimited Access service.