Quick one from me this week as I’m off on me ‘olidays after today (as I’m sure many other recruiters with kids are also planning on doing too!) For the rest of you, enjoy the free flowing traffic for a couple of weeks and try not to get too frustrated at most of your recruitment deals grinding to a halt while your client’s decision-maker is away…
Talking of parents and parenting, this week’s loser has to be Dr Mark Robson, who is setting up a new vet clinic and advertised for a new Intern Medicine Specialist to join his team. The advert he posted seemed pretty normal until the end where he stated:
“Looking to the future, this is not a position who (sic) would suit someone who plans to take long periods of time off for parenting, due to the likelihood that the medicine team will always be small.”
Posts on this blog for the past couple of weeks have looked at racism in our industry, and many comments have highlighted the insidious implications of ads demanding that people “have local experience” or are a “good culture fit” and what those undertones can really mean. The inference from Dr Robson’s advert can be more easily drawn towards the suggestion that women planning on having children in the future wouldn’t be suitable.
Ouch. Pretty short-sighted if you ask me, and I’m sure the backlash has been intense. Perhaps this is one job ad that is definitely worth ad-chasing for any of you recruiters out there short on vacancies just now!
The winners this week are, of course, the Emirates Team New Zealand who delighted huge crowds in Auckland parading the America’s Cup yesterday, including our team here at Rice and vRPO. A triumph for leadership, planning, innovation and incredible team work that many recruitment firms could learn a lot of lessons from (and many other non-recruitment businesses too for that matter).
Sometimes I think that living and working in such a small place as New Zealand has distinct advantages in that it forces ambitious teams to innovate in order to get ahead. Otherwise it’s just too hard to make an impression on the global stage.
Well done ETNZ for showing us how it’s done.
