Removing or Retaining Applicant’s Personal Information Before Screen

Question: Identify the pros and cons of removing personal information, such as age, gender, ethnic origin, and family or marital circumstances, prior to the screening and shortlisting of applicants for employment. Take a position for either removing or retaining such information? Answer: Introduction The various Human Capital theories are based on identifying the skills, abilities or talents in the people, and how these competencies and experiences can be utilised towards the growth of the organisation and helping the organisation in gaining its competitive advantage (Armstrong, 2002). The recruitment process is not simple it is full of difficulties where the recruiters face the challenges of how to recruit and whom to recruit. Thus in this discussion we will be focusing on the pros and the cons of removing the personal information such as gender, age, marital status or ethnic origin before the process of screening and short listing the applicants for employment. Pros of removing personal information According to the various researchers and experiments conducted on gender biasness or equality in employment in various countries the results are there should be equality in the recruitment process. Discriminating the applicants on the basis of nationality (Firth, 1981; Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004), on basis of gender (Riach and Rich, 2007), family status (Petit, 2007), age and disability (Riach and Rich, 2007) will not ensure equality in the hiring process and recruiters will show biasness while selecting the applicants. By removing the personal information the applicants will be treated on equal grounds and the best applicants will be selected on the basis of their skills and competencies rather than on the basis of nationality, gender, age etc. Cons of removing personal information According to Duggan Croy, 2004, recruitment is not about how to select applicants but its all about whom to select. Which means that the applicant should be in proper physical health, mental and psychological status which is required for performing a particular job. For e.g. in mining industries men are most preferred in comparison to males. For the role of midwives women are best suited rather than men nurses. In Arab countries recruitments are based on culture and gender for e.g. At female lingerie shops of Saudi Arabia employment of sales-man is strictly banned (Neumark, 1996). Thus it is very important to know the personal details of the applicants to make the hiring process more effective and to select the right person for the right job. Conclusion According to me, the personal information of the applicants should be retained, so that recruiters can ensure right people are selected as per the job requirement to overcome the problems of incompetency, failure in meeting deadline etc. For instance during government job hiring it is very necessary that the applicants must have completed the age of 18, thus at this time of hiring process personal information of the applicants is required. Similarly The company Coca-Cola operating in Nigeria believed in retaining the personal information of the applicants because the company wanted to have best recruitments by following the Nigerian corporate laws. Thus removing the personal information of the applicants will bring negative impact on the recruitment process by means of discriminations. Through this removal process the recruiters will miss the chance of recruiting the right person for the job. References Armstrong, M. 2006. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 10th ed. Great Britain: Cambridge University.Available at https://oktato.econ.unideb.hu/kunandras/BAINMBA/SlidesHRM/Handbook.of.Human.Resource.Management.Practice_10th.pdf Arrijn, P., S. Feld and A. Nayer. 1998. Discrimination in Access to Employment on Grounds of Foreign Origin: the Case of Belgium, ILO International Migration Papers 23E, Geneva: International Labour Organisation. Available at https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---migrant/documents/publication/wcms_201429.pdf Bertrand, M. and S. Mullainathan, 2004. Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination, The American Economic Review, Vol. 94, No. 4, pp. 991-1013. Available at https://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/orazem/bertrand_emily.pdf Corell, S.J., S. Benard and I. Paik, 2007. Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 112, No. 5, pp.1297-1338. Duggan, B. Croy G., (2004). Should you outsource recruitment? Emerald Management Review, Supply Management (UK) Vol. 09, No.20. Pg 26-27. Firth, M., 1981. Racial Discrimination in the British Labor Market, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 265-272.Available at https://www.equality.ie/Files/Discrimination%20in%20Recruitment.pdf Neumark, D., R. Bank and K. Van Nort, 1996. Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: an Audit Study, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 111, pp. 915-941. Available at https://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/111/3/915.short Petit, P., 2007. The Effects of Age and Family Constraints on Gender Hiring Discrimination: A Field Experiment in the French Financial Sector, Labour Economics, Vol.14, Issue 3, pp. 371-391. Riach, P. and J. Rich, 2007. An Experimental Investigation of Age Discrimination in the English Labor Market. IZA Discussion Paper No. 3029. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor.Available at https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp3029.html