TAMPA, Fla. — A staffing company is under fire after a job posting they created for a Tampa-based employer asked for applicants who were "preferably Caucasian."
- Job posting reads "Preferably Caucasian ..."
- Employees that created posting since fired
- Company hiring remains unnamed
- More Hillsborough County stories
In a job posting created by Cynet Systems for a Tampa-based pharmaceutical company, the description reads, in part, “Preferably Caucasian who has good technical background including knowledge of RPA.”
“Preferably Caucasian” are the words that prompted many people on Twitter to share their ire with the company, and it had recruiters such as Andrew Machota shaking their heads.
“No. 1, you don’t put things out there that are discriminatory.” Machota said. “So whether it's age, sex, religion, what’s the color of your skin, that’s ... the big glaring red flag right in front of your face.”
The job posting has since been revised to say, “preferably individual.”
Machota said that correction may be too little, too late.
“How do you backtrack now that it's gone viral and now it’s been seen by millions of people probably, and how to do you change the mind of what millions of people think about this one company?" he said. "I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but now, people are going to think this company is racist, that they’re only looking to hire white people,” he said.
In a statement, Cynet Systems denied those claims and said they fired the employees involved with the posting:
“First we would like to say simply that we truly regret the fact that individuals formerly employed by Cynet Systems went outside of company policy and included an inappropriate requirement in a job listing. We understand why some may have been upset seeing this listing, because we were too. It is a long-standing policy for our company to refuse any request to list jobs only seeking candidates of any specific ethnicity, gender, or other inappropriate restrictions, and we will turn clients down if they demand requirements of this type be included. Further, Cynet Systems itself is proud to be an immensely diverse company. Both of our owners are Indian-Americans, our workforce is over 60% minority, and we are certified as a diversity supplier by the National Minority Supplier Development Council.
The individuals involved in this case were terminated immediately for a significant violation of company policy, and we have already begun a review of all currently existing and upcoming ads to ensure no similar issues exist. We are also looking at measures that could help us catch offensive or outside-of-policy ads before they ever go live to ensure this can’t happen again.”
Machota said since this is a staffing agency, we will not learn the name of the Tampa company that was actually hiring or whether they made this request.