Anti-discrimination legislation seems good and logical
Thanks to anti-discrimination laws in the US and Australia, asking about an applicant’s country of origin is now off-limits for corporate recruiters. Gender and religion are also taboo. This is to prevent discriminatory selection based on origin, sex, and religion.
That there is discrimination based on that data is beyond dispute. And that measures must be taken against it as far as we are concerned. It is therefore more than understandable that discrimination in recruitment and selection must be tackled. However, not being allowed to ask about the country of origin does create an assessment problem.
Best practice: assessment in your native language
It is best practice in the assessment industry to have candidates take tests in their native language. Certainly, timed and language-sensitive ability/ability tests, such as verbal reasoning tests, yield lower scores when administered in a non-native language.
You can feel it coming. If the native language is not allowed to be known, as an assessment specialist, you also don’t know what language to offer these tests in.
Legalization of assessments
We have discussed with some of our corporate clients whether to offer the candidate a language choice option. He or she could then choose the ability tests in the native language. Legal departments are reluctant to do this. From a legal perspective, they see the risk that the candidate’s mother tongue could be indirectly identified in this way.
This could then open up the possibility of being able to make discriminatory selection decisions based on origin, gender, or religion. That’s a lot of “could be that” reasoning in a row, but fair is fair; you could use this information to discriminate.
Where is anti-discrimination legislation a problem?
For now, this seems to be a problem only in the US and Australia in recruitment issues where ability tests are used as initial screening.
Of course, if a candidate is already spoken or employed, the native language is already known anyway. Offering this type of test in the native language, then, is no longer a problem.
Unintended effect in assessment-based screening
As a result, in the US and Australia, it is legally the safest option to offer ability tests at screening in English because otherwise the native language could become known, and discriminatory selection decisions could be made on that basis.
This unintentionally disadvantages candidates who did not grow up English-speaking.
