Complainant

Respondent

Anonymised Parties

A potential employee

An employee assessment provider.

Representatives

Written submission – did not attend.

Jacob Twomey Solicitor

Act

Complaint/Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 77 of the Employment Equality Act, 1998

CA-00012464-001

13/07/2017

The complainant applied for a process technician position with a bio-pharma company believing that his qualifications were exactly what the bio-pharma company were looking for.

The recruitment process included an initial telephone screening interview with a recruitment company. The complainant was one of 785 candidates to apply, from this number 468 candidate were invited to attend an assessment centre – this was the next step in the recruitment process.

The complainant failed to progress to the next stage after the assessment centre.

The complainant believes the respondent’s submission suggests that the sole reason for a claim made by him is due to inequality on the grounds of race.

The complainant’s submission almost entirely relates to his opinion on the appropriateness and /or fairness of the tests conducted at the assessment centre.

On page one of his submission the complainant states:

“The respondent fails to explain as to why a qualified graduate with a Masters in Biotechnology and Business from a well renowned Irish university and post-graduate qualification in biopharmaceutical engineering and trained in biopharmaceutical process technician activities from NIBRT is suggested to be not a good candidate for an interview. But a series of ill-defined psychometric tests that do not show direct evidence of how it relates to ability to work is a better judge. Furthermore, bias is introduced into the testing by group discussions that are not carried out professionally and aim to judge a candidate’s personality over 20-minute window”

The complainant goes onto state:

“The respondent certainly and incorrectly suggests that there is no bias in the selection procedure and that I have been unable to provide hard proof of discrimination. For obvious reasons, providing hard proof given the circumstances I was in is impossible but certain proceedings as noted raises concerns about the selection procedure, its validity, and its ability to discriminate with plausible deniability”.

The remainder of the complainant’s submission outlines his opinion of psychometric testing and how he disagrees with the results obtained from the tests and group discussion. The complainant also raises questions in relation to the competence and qualifications of the individuals marking the tests and observing the group discussion.

The respondent company is owned by a lady who is an occupational psychologist with over 23 years’ experience in senior public and private sector roles. She has an extensive background and qualification in psychometric design and assessment, with specialist expertise in the pharmaceutical, medical instrumentation, state body and higher education sectors. To date the respondent has been involved in over 750 assessment processes, has assessed over 75,000 candidates and oversees a team of consultants who have an average of 20 years’ experience in HR and candidate assessment.

The role of process technician was advertised on behalf of the client pharmaceutical company by an agency. The complainant was one of 785 applications received by the client.

The complainant successfully got through an initial pre-screening interview by the respondent and was one of 468 candidates invited to participate in the next stage of assessment and was invited to attend the assessment centre.

All candidates had to complete five tests. The candidates’ results did not meet the standard required by the client company.

The next tests were an Occupational Preference Inventory followed by a Group Discussion. In the Occupational Preference Inventory, there are no right or wrong answers and in the Group Discussion the complainant did not demonstrate the behaviours being looked for.

Those who were successful at the assessments progressed to a further round of interviews. The respondent is not aware of the race or nationality of any of the applicants but a quick review of the names in question would suggest that there was no bias against individuals based on race, nationality, national origins, etc.

The client company ultimately hired 50 – 53 new process technicians from those that were assessed at Assessment Centre. The successful candidates included individuals from countries such as Ireland, the UK, Brazil, Croatia, the Philippines, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Romania, Moldova and China.

My task in this investigation is not to comment on the appropriateness or fairness of the recruitment process or the Assessment Centre although I do believe it would be remiss of me not to highlight the fact that the process was the same for all candidates.

In his own submission, the complainant has admitted that it is impossible to provide hard proof under the circumstances.

Under the Employment Equality Act 1998 the initial burden of proof rests with the complainant in as much as he must prove that there is a prima facia case. In this case the complainant has failed to do this and it is for this reason that the complaint under the Employment Equality Act 1998 fails.

See above.

Equality, Burden of Proof.