I came across a post this week regarding a recruitment firm that made a spectacular blunder with a job post for a position with a well known investment firm in America.

In this instance the job poster had mistakenly kept an internal directive that was intended only to instruct the recruitment agent internally, but presumably glanced over it and posted to the public by mistake. This contained the pearler line “Only Born US Citizens [White] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX. [Don’t share with candidates]”

After being posted to Reddit, this lit a spark which turned into a veritable shitstorm. From a small community /r/workreform it spread to Facebook, Twitter etc gathering more fuel and then on to mainstream news outlets who reported on this rather telling blunder.

Addressing the gaffe itself, there is legislation and protections that explicitly prohibit employment selection based on race, creed, nationality, religion and other things. This is administered by the EEOC Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And it’s not just a slap on the wrist either. The EEOC  has the power to “investigate charges of discrimination against employers who are covered by the law” Not only did Arthur Grand suffer a horrendous drop in their reputation and standing, which in and of itself could have potential long term ramifications; they have unwittingly exposed themselves to legal repercussions and possible lawsuits due to their position (albeit accidental) becoming public.

Putting aside the repulsiveness and possible illegality of their secret job criteria, what happened next is a textbook version of how not to handle a PR firestorm.

Rather than cop it on the chin, they tried the ol’ scapegoat the junior employee trick. According to a LinkedIn post by Arthur Grand, a junior employee posted this ad without the knowledge of management. This erstwhile junior employee was said to be terminated and measures were placed to make sure this type of incident never happens again. Or more to the point, that these internal memos don’t leak again.

Those following the story were not impressed with the company’s slap dash response and followed up with even greater scrutineering. Why would a junior employee write such comments? What was to gain for them?

The most obvious (and by Ockham’s razor, probably most correct) hypothesis is that this small “directive” was left in the by mistake. Given that the passage was sandwiched between seemingly legitimate copy – it was either mistakenly overlooked or at worst left in as an act of “malicious compliance”.

A not unheard of set of events. I’ve noticed myself that instructions are sometimes buried in a job posting intended for the recruiter’s eyes only. For example, this one below:

Integration roles: We need strong Java developers with good experience developing REST services preferably using JAX-RS and Spring Boot. Also good experience with Tomcat or similar application server required. Kafka is a plus, but not as essential as prior skills, also it can be some other messaging tool e.g. JMS based (MQ or similar). Kubernetes and AWS experience is another bonus, but not required. Please do not filter out people on Kafka, Kubernetes or AWS. What the team really wants and needs is a steady flow of options. They are happy to filter out the candidates who are not suitable from their own review and are comfortable that you stick to top–level filtering.

In all likelihood, someone and we don’t know who, requested to Arthur Grand to initiate these off-record secret criteria.

Next the company website was completely pulled offline. Arthur Grand told via a post on LinkedIn, that it had not in fact been a junior employee, but now a former employee who posted the advertisement with their own account. The article implored people to “Request everyone to support and cooperate” and

“We are very clear on this update and to avoid further chaos we request not to raise any of the assumption comments or questions further. Thanks for your understanding.”

The story gets even more preposterous. The “employee” is now supposedly an “ex-employee” who somehow did this on their own volition. If this were the case then perhaps you have a security issue on your hands? Are ex-employees routinely allowed to keep their credentials post employment? Would an ex-employee realistically post an ad for a job that they no longer have any connection with? It doesn’t pass the sniff test.

The simplest explanation is that you got caught. In your haste you decided to concoct a half assed story and in the fog of war your cover story fell apart since you began with a faulty premise that was hard to build upon. Then came the last stand – a sobering plead for folks to look the other way – all while the LinkedIn comments for the post had been disabled to prevent any further commentary. Because yes, that will stop it!

We can almost thank Arthur Grand, for in their ineptitude we get a glimpse of how things operate behind closed doors. With all the posturing, and claims of being “minority owned” and “inclusive”, at the end of the day systemic racism (particularly in America) never went away. It’s just HR-managed with diversity slogans and pithy “values” statements. It’s nothing new, but at least now, we can see some of the varnish wear off.