Selection

Recruitment | Selection | Promotion | Training and Development | Redundancy | Retirement

Focus on skills, not on stereotypes. For example, a manager can potentially be a younger or older person.

Make sure you’re not making assumptions about the capability or medical fitness of someone based purely on their age.

If the staff responsible for selecting and interviewing candidates are not trained in equal opportunities, they may be discriminating unwittingly and leave you open for prosecution.

Interviewing

Use people of different ages on the interview panel, to reduce the possibility of bias towards one age group.

Ask job-related questions and be careful not to base decisions on prejudice and stereotypes.

Use selection criteria to mark candidates against. This can help with decision-making and record the fairness of the process.

Monitoring

Check the number of candidates of different age groups who applied, were short-listed, were interviewed and were appointed.

Indicators of good practice

• Your organisation has an age positive written procedure for selecting employees.
• All selectors have received training in equal opportunities selection techniques.
• You monitor statistics to be sure that candidates of all age groups are short-listed, interviewed, and appointed.
• There are no complaints about age discrimination.

Go to top of page

Go back to Good practice home page