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Creating a level playing field for job applicants
Perhaps, just as questions about age, gender preferences and politics have been made redundant (even illegal), job applicants should no longer be required to name where they studied and recruitment processes should have institutions’ names redacted from all applicants’ listed qualifications.
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Nearly all job application apps still ask to indicate your age, gender, degrees/institutions etc. There are some apps that indicate that the question about your age /gender etc is OPTINAL, however, when I tried to submit, the application was not accepted, so I HAD to answer the question about my date of birth. That is a pure discrimination ( notable, I am far from my retirement age!!! and I am a natural woman!). The discrimination also comes with the name. If you have not got an English-looking name, so “everyone” ( reviewing panel members) doubts that you can actually TEACH in English. Why the level of literacy is falling behind in Australia while the majority of teaching staff is native English-speaking people? New graduates should learn from someone who is experienced. Can you actually prove that a recent graduate is better than an experienced person with at least 5 years of hands-on experience in academic teaching? The team should be mixed: there should be experienced and unexperienced teaching staff, so the younger should learn form the more experienced older. Sometimes, younger staff can introduce new ideas, “fresh blood”. Sometimes, older staff can help younger staff to survive the challenging environment. But where to find such a smart administration who can balance the team????
The best way to level the playing field is to remove all useful information from the application and choose the successful candidate by throwing dice.