Pros and Cons of removing applicants' personal information prior to shortlisting and recruitment

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

Published: 22nd of March 2014

Introduction

Human capital theories have identified people and their collective skills, experienced and abilities as well as their competence in displaying such for the growth of the employing organization as being vital towards the success of organization and also helping the organization to successfully gain competitive advantage (Armstrong & Baron 2002; Armstrong, 2006). However, recruitment process is still filled with numerous difficulties that the recruiter will have to overcome in terms of whom to recruit and how to go about such recruitment. Thus, the question raised in this research is geared towards understanding the pros and cons of removing personal information of applicants’ prior screening and shortlisting these applicants for employment.

Pros and cons of removing personal information prior to the screening and shortlisting of applicants for employment

Pros

Even without conducting any research, reduced or possibly eliminated discrimination rings as the main reason why removing personal information is very important to prior to shortlisting and recruitment. Numerous field experiments have been conducted in different country in order to text discrimination based on the grounds of interest to equality in authority, nationality/ethnicity (Firth, 1981; Riach and Rich 1991; Fix and Struyk, 1993; Arrijn et al., 1998; Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Carlsson and Rooth, 2007); gender of applicants (Neumark et al., 1996; Riach and Rich, 1987, 2006; Weichselbaumer, 2004); family status (Petit, 2007; Corell et al., 2007); age (Bendick et al., 1999; Riach and Rich, 2007) and disability (Riach and Rich, 2002). All these research point to the same finding that removing personal information prior to shortlisting and recruitment will ensure equality in the recruitment process, which means that all applicants will be treated on fair ground and the best taking the job irrespective of social status, ethnicity, or other factors that would have originally caused stereotyping in the recruitment process. Thus, the pro of removing personal information prior to recruitment is that it will ensure equality in the recruitment process for all applicants.

Cons

A number of researchers (such as Duggan and Croy 2004; Armstrong, 2006) have pointed out that it is not about how applicants are recruited but it’s all about who is being recruited. The idea being communicated here is that it is important to ensure that applicants are in the right physical, mental and psychological state for the job that they have applied for. For instance, certain jobs are more for men while others are for men. Women will make better midwives than men because they know what it means to be in labor, while men are more positioned towards tasks that require huge physical power such as driving trucks, drilling, and military. Additionally, culture also influences the job done by people as well as how they are done. For instance, men are not allowed to sale female lingerie in Saudi Arabia. Thus, removing personal information of applicants prior to shortlisting and recruitment can lead to effectively hiring the wrong person. It is important to know where the applicant is from, gender of the application, physical conditions and other factors necessary towards understanding whether or not the applicant can do the job perfectly but removing their personal information will not allow the recruiter to determine all these, which makes it a con.

Take a position for either removing or retaining such information

Based on the above discussion, I am of the position that applicants’ personal information should be retained prior to shortlisting and recruitment. Riach and Rich (2002) made known that care should be taken in the nature of job in order to ensure that the right people are recruitment. This should be the basic focus of any employer as recruiting the wrong applicant can have effects such as incompetence at duty, lack of delivery or potential to meet targeted production, and potential losses made in the form of expenses incurred in the course of such delivery.

From a personal experience, only applicants that have successfully completed their National Youth Service Corporation (NYSC) are legally allowed to work in government ministries and top positions in private offices; and there is also an age limit of 18 years for employment and 55 years for retirement. Thus, is Coca-Cola Nigeria decides to remove the personal information of applicants, the company might end up recruiting the wrong people while omitting the rightful applicants and also violating the corporate laws in Nigeria.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it is concluded that while removing personal information of applicants does have negative effects on the recruitment process in terms of discrimination, it should be noted that such action will eliminate the recruiter’s chances of employing the right people.

References

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