When you’re setting up job postings to try to bring on new talent, you may be aware that you’d like to hire someone who recently graduated from college. Perhaps you believe they’re going to have skills and abilities that your other workers lack. Maybe you’re trying to change your company culture and you want to bring in young talent.
There are a lot of reasons to do this, and many of them make sense. However, if you create a job posting that says you want to hire a recent college graduate, you may get yourself into legal trouble.
What’s the problem?
The problem, essentially, is that a job ad that mentions “recent graduates” appears to be a coded way of saying that you’re not going to hire older workers. They’re basically being told not to apply unless they just graduated from college, which tends to happen to people around 22 years of age. Now, there are those rare individuals who may have graduated from college in their forties, but they’re far less frequent and it makes your job posting appear to be targeting a specific age group.
This is a problem because you cannot legally discriminate against those who are 40 years of age and older. They’re supposed to be given the same treatment and the same opportunities. You don’t want to make an older worker feel like there’s no point in applying, even though they have the skills that you need, because their age is going to hold them back.
If you have run into some legal trouble, perhaps because of the way you worded a job posting unintentionally, then you need to know about all of your legal options to protect your company’s reputation and future.