Gender aspects in staff recruitment

Staff recruitment is how companies and administrative organisations cover their staffing requirements. It is therefore of central importance, in order to make the “right” decision, that all potential candidates are reached. This is, however, by far not always the case because of one-sided recruitment strategies. Only a professional, i.e. objective and differentiated description of jobs and the publication of job advertisements guarantees that the best qualified people are recruited.


Legal bases
In principle, the same legal bases apply as for staff selection. Sec. 611 b of the German Civil Code [German link] moreover stipulates that jobs must be advertised internally as well as externally in a gender neutral way. For the federal government administration, Sec. 6 of the Federal Equal Treatment Act [German link] governs the placing of job advertisements. Here, it is stipulated that jobs may not be advertised one-sidedly as being only for men or only for women (prohibition on direct discrimination), and that all jobs must as a matter of principle be advertised with a part-time option, unless there are convincing operational reasons for not doing so. This also applies, explicitly, to top management jobs. Moreover, under Sec. 7 of the Federal Equal Treatment Act [German link], it is intended to reduce the under-representation of women by means of advertisements and invitation according to quotas to job interviews.

Methods of recruitment
The decision concerning methods of recruitment for staff recruitment is, as in staff selection, heavily dependent upon the specific requirements profile of the job being advertised. If relevant criteria are missing, then the procedure is often determined according to subjective factors. In principle, the internal, extended internal and external employment markets are available to organizations for recruitment. Research findings show that people have increasingly been recruited via the internal and extended internal employment markets in the past few years. New staff are increasingly less frequently recruited from the external employment market.

There are various possibilities for addressing people. The most frequent include approach by a superior or internal job vacancy advertisements. In the external market, people are recruited via job advertisements and the selection of initiative applications. Depending on how urgent it is, private employment agencies or, less frequently, the state Agency for Employment (Agentur für Arbeit) are used. Many companies are currently tending for cost reasons to use online application forms for external advertising of vacancies.

Irrespective of how recruitment is done, transparency is extremely important in terms of personnel management and gender equality policy. This includes the precise description of the qualification profile just as much as the naming of a contact person and the description of career opportunities.

The job advertisement
Research oriented to gender equality has shown that, in breach of legal requirements, job advertisements are often not gender neutral. The manner of wording and presentation of job advertisements addresses only certain groups of people. This is still frequently especially so of specialist and management positions. Furthermore, only certain media are considered for external job advertisements. A precise requirement profile as the basis for the wording of the job advertisement is crucial for an advertisement that is oriented to gender equality and therefore objective and that addresses potential applicants in various ways.

• The requirement profile must be based on a careful analysis of the position to be filled (job analysis) and the skills and experience needed for it (qualifications and skills). It must not be derived from the personality profile of the previous occupant of the position.
• Both the requirements and the content of the job advertisement derived from them must be gender-neutral and offer no room for interpretation in terms of content and wording. For example, gender stereotyping can be avoided using a balanced ratio of specialist, methodical, social and management skills.
• Job advertisements should be published as widely as possible, to keep the effect of different access to press and publications or certain media on application chances as slight as possible.
• Posting vacancies or spreading information about vacancies via informal networks exclusively internally is problematical if it is not ensured that quantitatively under-represented groups of persons also have access to the job advertisement.
• An active personal approach to the under-represented group or giving them a particular encouragement in writing in the advertisement can have a motivating effect.

The collection of annual figures for men and women applying for jobs etc. as provided for in Sec. 24 of the Federal Equal Treatment Act [German link] provides a picture of the gender equality situation with regard to recruitment in the past year. If it thereby emerges that certain groups are applying particularly frequently, thought can be given to job advertisements, methods of recruitment and staff selection in order to address a greater diversity of people.

• BMFSFJ: Betriebswirtschaftliche Aspekte familienfreundlicher Maßnahmen –Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse, 2006.
  
• ISO: Einstellungsverhalten und personalpolitische Strategien in saarländischen Unternehmen und Gebietskörperschaften, 2004.
  
• Kay, Rosemarie, Gewinnung und Auswahl von MitarbeiterInnen, in: Gertraude Krell (Hg.), S. 153-173.
• Krell, Gertraude (Hg.), Chancengleichheit durch Personalpolitik – Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern in Unternehmen und Verwaltungen. Wiesbaden: Betriebswirtschaftlicher Verlag Dr. Th. Gabler GmbH 1998.