Discriminatory questions rampant in recruitment

Over 98 percent of job application forms from public institutions and private enterprises contain problematic questions that may lead to discrimination in employment, a South Korean human rights group said Monday.

According to a report released by the National Human Rights Commission, 98.5 percent of the 3,567 curriculum vitae forms analyzed for the study ask the age of job seekers, requiring them to fill in information such as their identity number, date of birth or dates of school entrance. 

“Job providers should verify the correlation between the work and age, or it would be discrimination against the applicants to ask for their ages,” the research team said.

On average, the job application forms contained four items that could be used as biased factors. In 93.9 percent of cases, job applicants were asked to specify physical conditions or appearance, or include a picture with the form.

One company’s form asked for more than 10 discriminatory details, including applicant’s age, occupations of family members, past salaries and reasons for changing jobs.

By Jo He-rim (herim@heraldcorp.com)