While I have seen many instances of benign age discrimination, I have rarely seen race, gender or sexual orientation used as qualifiers.
There have been exceptions. I can think of a search where a company was looking to differentiate its onshore outsourcing offering, from similar offshore offerings. In this case, the client did not want to hire Indian or Chinese salespeople because the whole the firm competed specifically with companies based in those countries.
I was a bit hesitant about taking the search. I had a conversation with one of my Indian partners, and beat around the bush a bit, in the same way the client did with me. My new partner said, ”Ok, so you don't want an Indian, you are looking for an American, right?” Despite my discomfort, he seemed completely unphased by the conversation.
I have had clients tell me it would be great to have a woman or a minority as a new employee. From what I can tell, though, I have never had a client use race or gender as a deciding factor to hire, or not to hire a candidate.
As far as sexual orientation goes, I can only think of two times where candidates made me aware that they were gay. They shared this with the client. One got the job, one didn’t. Again, I do not believe sexual orientation was a deciding factor in either case.
I hear so much about division in our country, but I just haven’t seen it, have you?
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