When expat partner Saskia Coolen applied for a teaching job in the UK, she was intrigued to discover that the initial application would be completely anonymous.
No personal information
A secondary school teacher on a one-year career break, Saskia decided to apply for a part-time teaching job while living in Watchfield in the UK. “I thought it would be an interesting experience to work at an English school and there are plenty of vacancies in the area,” says Saskia. “I spent some time working on my CV, which I also had to translate into English. But in the end I didn’t need one! The application was all done online and you don’t enter your name. Obviously your race / ethnicity is not mentioned either.”
Anti-discrimination measures
Indeed, research has shown that recruiters do filter out candidates with foreign sounding names. An anonymous application process also ensures no-one’s application could initially be rejected on the basis of other discriminating factors: age, skin colour, sexuality, et cetera. “It was a little strange as in the next part of the process, you do reveal all your personal information – gender, age, skin colour, sexuality and religion. But that, I was told, was for the purposes of collecting data,” says Saskia.
Level playing field
“Overall, I am in favour of an anonymous application. In my home country, we still attach passport photos to our resumes, so there’s no escaping what you look like! When I return home, I will definitely mention this experience to my employers as I would like to encourage this approach to recruitment as it’s fair for all applicants,” says Saskia.
Applying for a work permit
At the time of writing, Saskia has only applied for one job in education so she isn’t sure how commonplace this practice is in the UK. “Perhaps if I apply for a job in a leisure centre, the process will be different. So, who knows, I might get a chance to use my CV!” says Saskia, who already has a visa that allows her to work in the UK. “I decided before relocating to get everything I needed. Other partners relocating to the UK might like to know that this was a time consuming process that required me to travel from my hometown to Amsterdam in person.”
This article was originally published for the thousands of expat partners that Global Connection supports around the globe. It is reproduced here in its original form.
