JC's got a point about discrimination in recruitment. Allow me
to expand.
First, in countries like the US, the law clearly falls on the side
of the job applicant, rather than the recruiter. Should the
applicant fail to get the job, he or she can legally challenge the
decision. Once that happens, the onus is clearly upon the recruiter
to justify the decision based strictly upon the requirements of the
job.
Over the years, Australia has been adopting the American model.
Hell, I ought to know - as a recruiter for six years, I made some
reasonably good money ensuring that my clients could brush off any
legal challenges to their hiring decisions.
I'm not implying any ignorance on your part, lwflee, but the
situation in countries like the US is vastly different from that in
Singapore. For example, were a US recruiter to put, "Only
successful applicants will be notified" in a job ad (as is common
practice in Singapore), he'd be strung up by the balls before he
could call his lawyer.
Second, the US Army has been using structured testing and
interviewing for its recruitment purposes since 1917. With all of
their test data, plus the fact that many of their war heroes like
Audie Murphy are not highly educated, any half-competent lawyer
could successfully argue in court that academic or intellectual
performance has little, if any, to do with combat effectiveness.
Lyndie England's language disabilities do not constitute the
general intellectual disability which would be needed to justify a
decision not to take her into the Army.
To summarise, with the way the law is weighted in the applicant's
favour, plus the existing data that supports the case of combat
effectiveness in the absence of academic performance, John's
assessment of the situation vis-a-vis the discrimination law is
correct.
