When hiring an employee it shouldn’t matter what their melanin level or ethnicity is, who they sleep with or what gender they are

Career opportunities that I’m even half qualified for show up frequently as a recommendation in my email or on my LinkedIn feed.

Most of the time I ignore them as I’m pretty happy working at Dockside Magazine and building up my own media entity Muskoka Unlimited (Shameless plug: we’re looking for advertisers/sponsors).

But, that doesn’t mean I don’t keep an open eye and ear because you never know what type of Godfather offer or can’t miss opportunity will show up if you’ve closed yourself off completely.

Quick Tip: it’s a good idea to do a resume/CV update every few months and have a quality cover letter that is fluid enough to work with different positions in your field in case one of those opportunities pops up.

So far, anything worth my time that peaks my interest usually has 1,000 plus applicants and there hasn’t been anything that made me want to put all my effort into getting the position.

However, the other night I was going through personal emails when an editor’s position at a large business in Toronto popped up.

It peaked my curiosity, so I dug deeper and found that the pre-application questionnaire was a lot longer than I had remembered them to be and full of ridiculous questions that have nothing to do with whether or not I’m qualified for the position.

I took a couple of screenshots because it was easier than trying to write it all out . . .

The fact that NONE of this matters in regards to whether or not I can be a copy editor is shown by the people writing these questions adding “not listed” and “I choose not to answer” as options.

There was also the prerequisite Indigenous identification question and other non-essential questions.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this show up and last year a couple Government of Canada departments were hiring positions that I was completely qualified for and it was even worse than the above.

How worse? The job postings for federal government positions – you know, the federal government that is supposed to be for “all Canadians” – stated that preferential treatment would be given to members of Indigenous, visible minorities, LGBTQIA+, etc.

Side Note: I know very dark skinned Italians, Greeks and Portuguese who are farther away from being “white” than many Middle Eastern and so-called Latin people (P.S. cheers to the morons who forgot their basic history: Latin is from Ancient Rome whose descendants are Italians and other Europeans that brought their languages around the globe).

That last sentence was simply to show how utterly ridiculous this whole thing is. But, I digress.

It doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are, what pigmentation your skin has, what sexual orientation, what gender, whatever … Not one of those things makes you better or worse at the role this company is hiring for.

All that really matters for this job can you perform your duties at a high level? Are you an expert at English spelling and grammar for media platforms? Do you have a professional writing and editing background?

For the majority of careers and jobs, the only thing that should matter is do you have the skills to pay the bills or not. And skills also mean strong character, being a good human and teammate, etc.

If you check all the boxes in terms of your job-related abilities, then the physical attributes, sexual preferences, and other non-performance related items shouldn’t matter.

Sure, there are certain roles where languages, ethnicity, skin tones and even sexual orientation and gender will be beneficial or essential. But those are few and far between.

The vast majority of jobs and careers can be done by any human being who has the appropriate skills, experience and character to do them.

I understand that a lot of businesses hands are tied by the rules set out by government agencies in the effort of “inclusiveness and diversity” and I know there are many good intentions behind these rules, but sometimes good intentions turn into bad ideas and even worse practices.

Constantly worrying about people’s ethnicities, racial profiles, religions, sexual orientations, genders, and similar items only leads to more division and less acceptance. Think about how many people answer these questions honestly and don’t get hired.

A lot of them will question whether or not it’s because they didn’t fit a certain “profile” rather than looking at what skills they could improve on. On the flip side, someone who does get hired could think they were only hired to fill a certain “profile” and then question their own abilities even if they happen to be the best at what they do.

The only true way to be inclusive is to only focus on a person for their character and abilities and ignore everything else – particularly when it comes to hiring the right person for a job.

Judging someone solely on their character (and in employment hires, their skills) is the most inclusive and accepting thing you can do.

It means you are accepting the person for who they are as a person, not defining them by their physical appearance or sexual preference or ethnic group or religion or other features.

Not one person I have spoken to about this wants to be hired for anything other than their skills and experience . . . which is why I think we should all start checking the “I prefer not to answer” box when these silly questions come up.

It will be our way to silently protest and say, hire the right person for the job for the right reason and the only reason: The fact they are the best candidate and have the skills to pay the bills.