Recruitment and selection of workers in Israel: The question of disparate impact

Abstract

Like employers elsewhere, Israeli firms rely on an extensive variety of mechanisms to recruit and select job applicants. Some of these recruitment sources such as word‐of‐mouth referrals, reliance on local employment exchanges, and newspaper advertisements limit information on job openings to Jewish workers, and/or discourage Arab workers who are citizens of Israel from applying. Where Israeli Arab workers do succeed in identifying and applying for job vacancies, their chances of employment are disproportionately impaired by intensive employer use of such selection factors as the personal interview, experience, residency, and army service requirements. Currently the Israeli legal system permits employers to use recruitment and selection criteria which, although neutral on their face, have a discriminatory effect on Arab workers. To provide equal employment opportunity for Israeli Arab workers, Israeli policy should challenge recruitment policies and techniques which reach only a limited segment of the labour force. Similarly, selection criteria shown to have a significantly detrimental effect on Arab hiring rates should be prohibited in the absence of evidence that they are job related. Requiring that standards be affirmatively related to considerations of efficiency and productivity would benefit the Israeli Arab worker, promote the best interest of the employer, and would be reflective of principles of social justice on which basis the State of Israel was founded.

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