Use Brain to Mouth Filter When Communicating With Prospective Employees
While it is unlawful for employers to discriminate against prospective employees during the hiring process, such discrimination does occur. Questions may be posed during the interview process that reveal potential bias based on enumerated grounds such as race, gender or marital status. These questions may be innocent and may arise simply because the interviewer strays "off script" from the pre-planned interview questions. As one interviewer once confessed, "The interviewee and I had a lot in common. I was enjoying the conversation with the interviewee so much that I accidently asked a follow up question on a prohibited ground. As soon as I realized it, I backtracked and took the interview to a safer topic."
Additionally, innocent questions relating to availability for work may cause an interviewee to reveal religious practices. If the interviewee fails to secure the position, s/he may perceive the question as evidence of discrimination.
While prospective employees may believe that they have been discriminated against during the hiring process, it is difficult to successfully prove discrimination. As you can guess, too many situations come down to a "he said" she said" decision. However, every so often an employer fails to engage his/her brain when notifying the prospective employee about the job.
In Bouraoui v Ottawa Valley Cleaning and Restoration, a brief phone interview was conducted. At the end of the interview the prospective employee was asked where he was from and whether he was black or white. The interviewer then advised that the prospective employee would be notified about the job by text. When the text arrived it stated:
Try learning English you will have better luck I don’t hire foreners [sic] I keep the white man working.
Not surprisingly, the Human Rights Tribunal accepted this text as evidence of discrimination based on race and place of origin. The prospective employee was awarded $8,000.00 for the loss of dignity.
The Lesson: Think before you speak and think twice before you type. Filtering this text message through a brain would have likely resulted in significant savings for the employer.
Bouraoui v Ottawa Valley Cleaning and Restoration, 2014 HRTO 1303 https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onhrt/doc/2014/2014hrto1303/2014hrto1303.pdf
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