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'Nameless CV' proposal comes back to haunt HR


Just as you thought you'd heard the last of the 'nameless CV' proposal, it is rearing its ugly head again. Angry HR professionals opposing the idea wrote to us back in May slamming the proposal for job applications to be anonymous before the amendment was withdrawn from the Equality Bill.

Yet Personnel Today has now uncovered it's far from dead and gone, with Liberal Democrat equality spokeswoman Lynne Featherstone putting up a fight to put the clause back at the Bill's report stage. And with good reason perhaps, following a bogus CV exercise that has exposed 'significant evidence' that employers are indeed discriminating against candidates by name at the selection stage.

The exercise by the Department for Work and Pensions saw about 3,000 bogus job applications sent out to employers to test whether employers discriminated against candidates with foreign-sounding names over British-sounding names.

It seems discrimination is firmly back in the red tape hot seat this week with further proposed amendments under the Equality Bill. As well as plans to reinstate the nameless CV proposal, employers can look forward to grappling with the new concept of 'dual discrimination' which, if the lawyers are to be believed, is set to result in even higher payouts for those caught out by the new law than discrimination claims currently fetch.

Luckily, the Bill is only at committee stage in the House of Commons so nothing is set in stone, but don't say we didn't warn you.
Dawn Spalding |

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