1y ago

This person's rejection reason

279 comments

That is probably a slam dunk (minor) discrimination lawsuit. Your circumstances of birth, including the date, are not something you can be judged for.
Follow up with your ID or Birth certificate and ask "Excuse me?"
- @ocassionallyaduck
  @ThePicardManeuver
  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?
  
  Nobody said that they are from the US.
  
  At the moment you have 69 upvotes, so I can't, in good conscience, upvote you. But you're right.
- 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.
  
  Whelp, time for arson then. Sorry, it's the rules.
  
  What about star sign? That's got to be illegal, and it's p close to this
- Just set your profile to @ not US system and your birthday will be 20/4 instead!
- Classic age discrimination.
  Make sure to find a lawyer who is 69 years old and whose license plate is LOL80085.

"Nobody was born on 4/20 except Hitler. We do not wish to hire Hitler at this time."
- at this time
  
  Times they are a changin'
- "However, the skillset has been retained in our documentation for future potential expansion into potential expansion."
  
  "Your skills and qualities tell us you may be over qualified for the position. We would like to offer you a role in management instead."
  
  The Sudetenland branch is hiring.
- Well that's your loss I hear he's great at PR

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
- Thank you for the opportunity!
  
  I appreciate the time and effort it took to reply
- I'd rather get a rejection email than eternally wondering why an AI filtered me out
  
  It's not the email that bugs me, it's the fake politeness and language like "but we care! We really do!"

Glad that won't happen to me. I was born on January 6th.
- Now I'm imagining someone legitimately putting their Jan6 involvement on a resume.
  Window Structural Integrity Tester (Jan 6th, 2021): Responsibilities included - unconventional team-building activities, conditioning, navigating unfamiliar territory, and breaking down barriers.
  
  Nah, it’d probably be more like:
  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.
- Of course everything is censored, there is no reason to share personal info like that.
  I don't know what Geographical Information Systems have to do with this post, are you referring to a reverse image search like google or tineye or something? What were you expecting to find? The original email with all of the aforementioned personal info? Are you surprised content could be posted to Reddit before anywhere else?
  Current fears are justified.
  Poe's Law tells me not to assume anything is satirical because there will always be people that stupid or greedy.
  And yeah, it could be fake, 100%, but your arguments were really dumb.
  
  GIS might be Google Image Search in this case, though I haven't seen it abbreviated like that before.
- 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.
- 1 is in no way a red flag, don't put other's personally identifying information on the Internet.
  
  Disagree. If this was true, terrible companies should be named and shamed.
- I fucking hate people like you.
  "Everything on Reddit/Lemmy is fake and gay. Here's my evidence."
  All evidence easily has an explanation, most of it laughably so.
  What do idiots who claim everything is fake get out of it? To troll the OP? Or do you just want to spread your misery?

This is most likely fake.
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.
- Or the LLM is just that incompetent lol

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.
- Only over 40, and this isn't age it's their birthday.
  
  It’s age modulo!
  
  Hell, it's the United States "Home of the free™", where you can sue for anything.

You should have left in the company name. Shame them publicly.

Wait who puts their birthday on a resume?
- 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.
  
  Many places now, that might be illegal to ask for, like race and sex.
  
  Don't put your age. It can lead to unintentional (or intentional) age discrimination and it's better for your experience to be the focus.
  Age isn't a factor in hiring, so there's no need to put it on there. It could only be a detriment to the applicant.
  
  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.
  
  Personally, I would say it shouldn't matter.
  I wouldn't want to know the birth date of a person I was interviewing, and there's no need for my interviewer to know mine.
- It wasn't on their résumé it was on their LinkedIn.
  Although now the question becomes, why would you put your DOB on LinkedIn, which I have no idea.
  
  I just looked at my LinkedIn and don't see anywhere that birthday is even displayed. This is clearly fake.
- who doesn't?
  
  I have never, ever put my birthday or age on a CV. Fuck that.
  
  I don't even have my age on mine.

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?
- Lol, not in the US.
  
  Yes in the US. You can't discriminate based on age
  
  You have the right to apply somewhere else. 😘
  
  I'm pretty sure the GDPR is exclusively an American thing, though I'm not personally aware of this clause, myself.
- That is not what GDPR is about.
  
  You could've done a simple search, or even write your comment in a way where you don't state it as a fact but instead you're now blatantly wrong.

On the one hand this is a bad that this happened to you, because the reasoning is completely idiotic.
On the other hand it can be a learning lesson that it's better to write your birthday as April 20th, and never as 4/20.
PS: Please name that company publicly. Maybe write a short mail to a website about tech news, like https://arstechnica.com or https://www.wired.com. You could also try the blog https://boingboing.net
- Seems like they should really keep using 4/20, seems like an effective pre-screening tool for places I don't even want to walk by, let alone work at.
- But that's still Hitler's birthday, which is very unprofessional.
  
  Also the anniversary of columbine... Man I hate my birthday.
- 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.
- Why does a company even need your date of birth on an application?
  
  For the $5 starbucks gift card they give out on employee birthdays

If you're in the US and can afford it, Talk to a lawyer.
This is blatant discrimination of a immutable attribute which is a Civil Rights violation.
This is written evidence to that fact.
- I really hope OP goes through with the lawsuit because of how funny it is. I want to see it make big news
- This is why I assume this must be fake. Because even a trainee HR employee would look at that email, and not send it out.
  
  Nobody looked at that email, it was automated
  
  Assuming they're checking the emails at all.
  Remember when that guy decided to read a book while his Tesla was doing basic lane following, and merged into a semi? I 'member.

We genuinely appreciate
🤣You obviously don't you dickheads

“Nobody wants to work anymore”
- why is your comment glowing golden for me?
  
  Is it like a disgusting brown/yellow? I was having that all day yesterday but I don't see it on the post you're talking about.

I fucking despise the fact that AI almost exclusively is responsible for throwing out 99% of all resumes before they reach a human being
- 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.
  
  What is wrong with April 20th?
  
  If a person set the rule it is definitely not an AI...
- The problem isn't AI the problem is brainless humans who configured the AI.
  AI isn't going to become skynet and take over the world unless someone tells it to. In which case the human is the problem.
  
  Someone is going to tell it to
  
  You know someone is stupid enough to do it 😂

Reminds me of my sister getting in trouble for saying she had to go at 4:20. It was deemed "unprofessional". She has a appointment, lol

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.
- Age is only a protected class if you are 40 or older.
  
  Well that's dumb.
- You can't teach an old dog new tricks because it is illegal

Well I'd certainly say they dodged a bullet
- This is precisely what I came here to say!

My dude, that is not a company you want to be working for. On the bright side.
- Going to be able to buy a lot of weed after the lawsuit.
  
  Idk if birth dates are protected classes or statuses in most places.

Local company? Send it to the local news. They'll jump all over a reference to end of days AI.
- Local news will use ai to write the article
  
  I mean, we use AI to write Lemmy comments, so I figure it's all fair.
- 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.

Well, I hope that this gets someone in shit.

That's embarrassing. Ping their recruitment team on LinkedIn.
- Ping their recruitment team on LinkedIn
  This is such a weird way to say "post this screencap publicly on LinkedIn and tag their entire C-level team"
  
  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.

"Choose a better date to be born on next time, okay?"

Historical fun fact: this is why Hitler was rejected from art school in Vienna.
- Fake news artists would NEVER reject weed
- Fun fact for those downvoting that post: 4/20 was also Hitler’s birthday.

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!

My oldest child was almost born on 4/20, but he decided to cook a little longer.
My wife was so relieved, lol.
- *bake a little longer.
  C'mon man. It was right there.
  
  Lol, that was on purpose.
  
  and for that reason I give him a downvote
- Just missed Hitler's birthday!

Could this be considered discrimination? Rejecting applicant based on something they have no control over and unrelated to the position.
- I doubt individual birthdays are considered a protected class, so I doubt it.
  
  ... yet.
  You arent going to write protections until it becomes apparent they are needed.
  Stupidest timeline? Maybe
- 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?
  
  Probably not. It's super expensive to do it properly. Definitely in the millions of dollars range.
- A good lawyer could probably argue a case for age discrimination.
  After all, if they were one day older or younger, they would not have been summarily denied.
  
  Most (maybe all) age discrimination statutes only protect people over 40 so may not apply here depending on the specifics.

LOL! I was born on 4/20 too (and so was Hitler, btw ☹️)
- See! They're trying to avoid hiring another Hitler!
  
  That's dumb. Say what you will about hitler, but he was very efficient. Capitalists historically were major fans of hitler.
- Don't worry, that's also when Columbine and the Deepwater oil crisis happened too.
- So was my ex, who was kinda hitleresque

So the email validation guy is also writing date validation code?

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.
- Who are these "same folks" that you're talking about?
- Do I smell discrimination?
  
  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"

That is what you get for having the same birthday as Hitler.
- Maybe that's why they kicked him out of art school...

“respect” and “professionalism” yeah

That's because they're using the wrong date format.
/s
- ISO 8601 is love. ISO 8601 is life.
  
  Does it work with omitting the year though?
- ISO 8601 would probably still trigger the AI

I don't understand why the name of the company is redacted. They chose to send this letter, let 'em own it.

Fake as fuck

Damn, hopefully that won't happen to me. I was born on June 9th
- You can only apply to jobs in European countries.
  Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
  
  Says the guy who was probably born on September 6.
- Nice
- That date means nothing to me, what happened there?
  
  Nice day.

Sue them for age discrimination and watch their lawyers sweat awhile.
- That's not the case here
  
  How so?

Lol I’m just imagining whomever told AI to do this must have had a bad date with a Taurus. Your chakras are all wrong!!

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.
- The company is cards?
  
  Correct. You don't want to work for cards. The corporate structure is too flimsy. /s

that's unfortunate. sure looks like they could use some competency in the area applied-for.

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.

I mean that's what you get for writing the date wrong :)

If that’s not a reason to write your dates in a less unhinged format, I don’t know what is.
- 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.
  
  I just put the month name instead of the month number personally, assuming this is in response to a resume sent in and not an online form.

That is what happens when you don't write your birthday in the correct format you filthy barbarian
- 4\20

So, uh, what was on 4/20?
- For possible non US people? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/420
  
  In fairness for non-US this makes even less of an issue as my birthday is 20/4 and 4/20 as a date is meaningless.
- It's a reference to smoking weed. Reread it with that in mind and it'll be clear.
- Hitler's death.
  
  Close. He died on 4/30, he was born on 4/20. But there were many deaths at Columbine High School on 4/20/1999.

People: “AI is going to take over the world!”
AI:

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
- The issue is the 4/20 (blaze it).
  It also seems fake.

They should not censor the company name.
- But then you might realize it's fake.
  
  What do you mean ‘Company Business Incorporated Pty Ltd.’ Isn’t a legitimate employer?

What? How old are you?
- Op is 54 years old
  
  I see what you did there.
  
  How do you know?
- It means April 20th, not April 2020.
  
  OP can always say they meant April 1920 and sue for age discrimination.

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...!

279 comments