Not true in the US. They could ban anyone born in the entire month of April, or anyone who "looks like a pot smoker" if they wanted to.
Applicants, employees and former employees are ONLY protected from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age (40 or older), disability and genetic information (including family medical history).
I wonder if an argument could be made that birthdate is a component of your genetic information including family medical history? It is also potentially age discrimination?
It wouldn't get anywhere in the US. Age is the closest protected class, but only applies to over 40 in the US. Discrimination based on month and day of birth isn't actually illegal.
I honestly think there's a gray area here and it's worth talking to a lawyer if anything. There are certainly some protections for peoples under 40. Being denied a promotion because you're "too young" is certainly a protection. The catch is you have to prove it.
This case is easy to prove though if there are any laws over this.
Edit: but now that I think about it, this is only really a protection if you're already hired at the place. If you just slam the door on people before they can get in, discrimination seems to be legal.
Birthday on LinkedIn is a bit outlandish as age discrimination laws are fairly standard. I think it is more likely that they called it their birthday on some immature post, which may mean that the applicant is a poor cultural fit.
What always ticks me off beyond reason in mails like these is the "we genuinely appreciate your time and effort in...."
Fuck. You. With. An. Umbrella.
You don't appreciate shit, you're full of shit, yet you're too shit to even just say what you really want to say: fuck you, we don't give a damn. Because being actually honest might also be bad and cost money.
Companies like there are the worse and should all burn in hell
Security Field Tester (Jan 6, 2021): Part of a group that organized a large-scale “peaceful march” in order to thoroughly check security protocols for the Capitol building. Duties included attempts at theft to see if we’d be stopped, testing window durability by attempting to break them, engaging physically with security staff in riot gear to test security training, and shouting terroristic threats in order to see how secure government protocols were in the event of a riot at a governmental building.
This can't be real. There are so many red flags this is fake. 1) Everything is censored. 2) GIS (Google image search) lookup only shows reddit and linkedin. The linkedin post is just as vague "learned a colleague received this!" 3) It's too good to be true. it plays on current fears. 4) It's just so dumb.
Companies usually don't send out detailed rejection letters like this. They're usually like "after reviewing your credentials we decided to go with another candidate" or something vague like that.
Is this not completely illegal? Dunno about the USA, in the UK age is a protected characteristic and you would be fucked for trying this. If it's real ofc.
If this was automated, a company automating rejection emails would never write the reason for rejection. It would be a vague excuse like "not a good fit for the role".
If this was not automated, then no recruiter would be this stupid.
Me, why shouldn't one do that? But my last resume is 10 years old, maybe I am out of touch with all the mumbo jumbo dancing you have to do, to build the "right" resume.
Unless you are trying to get a job with min/max age requirements, like airline pilot or us president, age provides no valuable information to potential employer other than a factor to illegally discriminate on.
Under GDPR you have a right for your application to be reviewed by a human rather than an automated rejection. Is there something like that in the country maybe?
Publicity will help prevent such major oversight. This is the problem with using AI for hiring practices instead of real people. Applying to jobs in the 2020s with a college degree, experience in the field, required employment history, and certifications STILL feels like applying for credit cards online with bad credit due to AI prematurely denying many applicants on frivolous grounds before it even gets to the recruiters email/web portal. That being said I don't think this person is the person who received the email themselves they are just posting it here.
It may not be worth listening to me on this because I only got to preliminary stages of looking for a new job before finding out that I would need to be a full time learning coach for my daughter's online school, but I had ChatGPT rewrite my resume for me. My reasoning was that if AI is weeding out resumes, they'll be less likely to weed out a resume written by what an AI thinks a resume should look like.
This isn't just AI. AI doesn't care about jokes or memes or "professionalism." This was either a review by an actual human that didn't realize people are born on April 20th or an AI told to reject resumes with that date in it.
Either way, it's a really dumb person that set this rule.
My guess is it's programmed to reject 4/20 anywhere it finds it and the programmer didn't take into account that some values can just happen to be 4/20.
Doesn't need to be AI. Just a simple filter to call out the offending information and what field it was in. Still crappy, and something AI would do, but there are cheaper ways to automate the enshittification of job applications.
If that's real and in the US that's age discrimination and you can sue, and easily win, even if they say it's not your age, but the date of your birthday it still would fall under discrimination based on age.
My dad actually got involved in something like this. He got rejected from a job after a background check company confused HIM (a 59-year-old white guy) with another guy (a black 32-year-old man) who happened to share the same name, in the same city, and provided the contracting company with information that stated my father was wanted for felony larceny. I think we wound up getting something like $700 from a small class-action against the background check provider, and it got settled out of court because someone blew it up with the local news.
That’s the great thing about AI, it’s like a human! Humans don’t need to work anymore because our computers speak like us now! It’s only ever really a problem if someone reads what AI wrote.
But if you don’t read it, wow, just look at the spacing, the typography, the paragraphs! the tokens words!
Discrimination as such I don't think so but under the new EU AI regulations they'd be in a world of hurt. For one, did they tell OP that the answer was AI-generated and, as this is a high-risk use of AI, did they include a link to report incidents, do they have human oversight, can they prove that they monitored the AI properly, that it was created with risk management in mind?
There are people laughing at them for not hiring someone born at 20th of April , very same folks riding elevators and not finding weird that the 13th floor is missing.
Age discrimination in the US at least is driven by "40 or over". I think any lawyer would be able to argue that "which day of the year you're born" is not indicitive of a protected class. Because we're fucked in the US and you can still formally be passed up on a job for being under 39 years old as long as you it's not because "you're almost 40, and we're not allowed to get rid of you when you turn 40"
Honestly, they might even consider it fortunate that the company showed them it's cards now and not when they're their actual employer. Dodged a bullet.
I would spam them with even more "inappropriate" but equally plausible applications out of sheer pettiness and the vain hope that a real person would see it and realize that using AI to screen job applications is an awful idea.
It'd probably still flag on 1990-04-20 unfortunately, since the application probably didn't ask for birthday, but date of birth, which would have a year.
Honestly, if you ask for someone's date of birth and they just give you the month and day, that's about as useful as saying it was a Wednesday.
Honestly, if you ask for someone's date of birth and they just give you the month and day, that's about as useful as saying it was a Wednesday.
Which is honestly all you should feel obligated to give them, since it’s illegal to discriminate based on age. The only potential reason an employer would need to ask for birthday during hiring is to be able to distinguish between applicants with identical names.
Ignoring my first instinct, I tried to imagine some context to this, and if someones linkedin profile says he is in his 30s with a lot of experience, but somehow after applying, they got a cv of a 20 year old with little experience, it put them into a situation where the first impression based on this breaks the trust they try to build with an applicant.
It is probably still not wise to point out the age discrepancy, but i can see how I wouldn't want to work with someone who I only know for 5 seconds but already confused me.
There is a chance, the letter was written by an AI, but equaly can be a corporate template.
If it was a typo, and the difference is only a couple days, tough luck, maybe you should remove the "attention to details" part from your cv. :D
If you were normal... 20/4/19xx ... or 20th of April, 19xx. If you insist on freedom units and format, its your own fault!
Also, who knows what it was written to identify? you are all speculating. It could have been weed smokers (420) but it could also have been written to filter out the yanks...!