Applying for jobs in the UK - terrible experience so far

I'm from Europe and completed a BSc and MSc in London. Since I graduated I applied for a number of high skilled jobs

(edited 4 years ago)

I'm from Europe and completed a BSc and MSc in London. Since I graduated I applied for a number of high skilled jobs in the UK without any success. It often goes like this:

I get through every stage of the application process, complete psychometric tests, various company surveys etc. and basically get to the final stage. The employer sends emails which say that they are very much interested in working with me. Then, a hiring manager sends an equal opportunities survey (or similar) asking me what gender I am, what is my ethnicity, belief, race, etc. I then say that I am white, European straight male. As soon as I send these responses over, there is an automatic message which says something like: "sorry but we are looking for someone slightly different'.

I have to say that I am disappointed to say the least. Do you guys think that this is fair or in fact normal as a practice?

All sounds very odd, The final stage is normally an interview.
Equality monitoring is normally anonymous and done at application stage.
How many times has this happened to you?
You should consider contacting the equalities commission.

You should keep your automatic messages as well.
Contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS)

The contact details for the service are:

Phone: 0808 800 0082

Post:
FREEPOST
EASS HELPLINE
FPN6521

Opening hours:

9am to 7pm Monday to Friday
10am to 2pm Saturday
closed on Sundays and Bank Holidays

Reply 2

threeportdrift

Careers Forum Helper

Original post by Lyuboslav

............

You are making connections that don't actually exist. If you are trying to impute some bias in hiring that is working against you as a white, European straight male, then the last thing a company wanting to do that would do is what you propose is happening above. There are far easier, more discrete ways earlier in the process.

A company the size of one that is able to afford to hire through psychometric tests etc also has an E&D process you clearly don't understand. The form you fill in to give details of your gender, ethnicity etc is never seen by the hiring team, it is separated within the company to a different department and never comes into contact with your application.

Rather than make up excuses that do not exist, you would be better off asking for feedback and looking more critically at what it is that really made employers prefer other candidates over you. If you are regularly getting to interview, that suggests that it is not technical qualifications, but soft skills. So maybe you need to review how you conduct yourself at interview, how you answer questions, your style and tone etc.

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