Computer People Recruitment Video

Computer People have posted their new recruitment video on YouTube.  It'll be up on their own website once they have finished a site redesign.

I know that recruitment video's are normally Stephen Fowler's domain so I almost feel a little guilty about mentioning this one.  However, it's really worth a look.

It has lots of panning in and cutting away (I may have made up those "technical" terms) and is a series of soundbites from Computer People employees. 

The individuals (real "top billers" I've been informed) are saying what it's like to work at Computer People.  There are three main themes; potential to make a lot of money and progress your career, the hard working and high pressure environment and the great social environment.  Together in three minutes these things are mentioned about 30 times.  Only one person mentioned the "satisfaction of helping people".   

I thought it had a 1990's recruitment consultant feel - overly confident consultants talking about how much money they earn and what a hedonistic lifestyle they have.  Someone even said the words "play hard, work hard". 

However, Jonathan Hughes at Computer People told me they are just saying it how it is.  Apparently as the candidates Computer People place earn so much money you don't need to feel you are helping someone.  Maybe we should applaud them for being so honest about what it's like to work there - nothing worse than being miss-sold a job by a recruitment consultant eh?!

There is another angle to this.  When I sent this to an 50+ year old associate of mine he commented that it seemed to be aimed at discouraging older people from applying.  So, I thought I'd run this by one of the Senior Lawyers at the REC; Charles Boyle.  Charles came back with the following:

There is nothing unlawful about it per se from an age regulations perspective, in that, showing the video, without more, would not give rise to a successful age claim. However, if someone had applied for a job with Computer People, and felt he had been turned down because of age (lets say he is 50), then a video like this would be very good evidence of ageism and would go some way to helping the disgruntled 50 year old win his claim. Anyone advising CP would no doubt suggest they make the video more age diverse, so that it doesn't amount to such cogent evidence of ageism, which it certainly is as it stands.

Also, if CP have any awareness of diversity and make any claim to adhere to it, they would certainly need to address the lack of age diversity in the video, for any such claim to be taken seriously.

Comments

[Stephen Fowler]

Hi Louise

You have no need to feel guilty with such an excellent review.