Career Opportunity Sales/Marketing IT Services

[cokm]

PEAK IT is an international IT Services company with over 600 employees operating in Holland, Sweden and Finland.

For our Helsinki Office we are looking for highly motivated sales people, Native Finnish speakers and excellent in English, who want to learn, work and grow in their job.

If you have a medium or higher level education marketing/communications/sales and excellent communication and social skills, please send your CV to:

cokm@peakit.nl


Cok Mudde
PEAK IT International
Naarden(Amsterdam) Holland

[DMC]

For our Helsinki Office we are looking for young ...

If you ... are between 23 and 30 years old ...

I'm not interested in the job but it saddens me to see such blatant discrimination, especially as I thought age discrimination was illegal in the EU. A quick google turned up http://www.agediscrimination.info/inter ... nland.aspx which says "The provisions of the Non-Discrimination Directive 2000/43/EC and the Non-Discrimination in Employment Directive 2000/78/EC have been implemented in Finland by passing the Non-Discrimination Act on 1 February 2004. ... According to such provisions, any unjustified discrimination on the basis of age [and a list of other things] is prohibited.
Of course, there are exceptions allowed by the law. It would be interesting to know which of these exceptions you think applies in this case.

[AlexInHelsinki]

Yeah. Ageism.

LAME.

They're prolly applying under the "we only hire 23-30 year olds so we can make them work more and pay them less" exception.

[Pursuivant]

We want a 23-year old with 10 years of work experience...

[AlexInHelsinki]

... and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering who speaks fluent Croatian, Farsi, and Latin. You must be proficient in APL, Regex, Scheme, and Whitespace. Knowledge of R&D production flow, RFA protocol, FFIC-standard procedures, UI apps and neuro-biology required. You are a Self Starter, vegan, and most imporantly, a Team Player.

Please do not apply if you do not fit the above description.

Suitable candidates will be contacted.

[NanaM]

It's funny... there are always people to complain when a job ad requires too much experience (those people in that case are often young and with litle experience). But I had never heard of the contrary before, that people would complain about a job ad that requires an age range but not explicitely XX years of experience in the business.

So it's illegal ? Big deal... At least they played cards on the table, they could have kept that requirement for themselves and carefully ignore applications that do not fit their preferences - like many others probably do, and in those cases do not raise any forum-wandering-law-enthusiasts' eyebrows because these ads simply go unnoticed. Just give the guy a break. I'm sure there will be plenty of newly graduated people with little to none experience who will appreciate that they have a chance for at least one ad that does not come with crazy non-sensical requirements on experience, for tens of others that do.

[Karhunkoski]

So it's illegal ? Big deal...

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how to make yourself popular as an immigrant.

[NanaM]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how to make yourself popular as an immigrant.

And this is a poor attempt to suggest between the lines than no Finn ever break the law (like this SUV driver I saw the other day parking on a passenger crosswalk next to a Post Office, not even caring about the nearby police car).

This was also a poor attempt to quote part of a post by carefully removing the other parts which were more nuanced. So once again for you... In terms of discrimination (age, sex, ethnic origin or whatever) related to jobs/hiring, which of those two evils is worse : posting a job ad with a clear requirement on age, or not mentionning any age range but in practice appyling the same criteria ? You can easily point fingers at the former while dozens of others will do the latter totally unnoticed. That was my point. I did not suggest that immigrants should behave in Finland like in their own Far West.

[Karhunkoski]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how to make yourself popular as an immigrant.

And this is a poor attempt to suggest between the lines than no Finn ever break the law (like this SUV driver I saw the other day parking on a passenger crosswalk next to a Post Office, not even caring about the nearby police car).

Not at all. Of course some Finns break the law, who is trying to suggest otherwise? I think you're reading too much into my post. The points I'm trying to make are:

- If something is law, it doesn't matter two hoots whether you think it's ok to "be honest" about discrimination. Of course discrimination sometimes occurs behind closed doors, but that is no reason to openly accept in job adverts.

- Immigrants also have quite a difficult time becoming accepted in Finland, some would say it's more difficult than many other countries. Most Finns are law-abiding and most have some amount of respect for law and order (some would say they follow it blindly, without questioning. Right or wrong, this is how it is). So along comes an immigrant, publicly declaring that, "So it's illegal ? Big deal...". And every Finn who has even a slight dislike for immigrants, is suddenly given yet another excuse to discriminate against immigrants. Clear now?

[Rick1]

Could we make some blacklist (as there is a list of the most wunderfull companies to work for?) they are all so worried about their image so maybe they do something about it. This one should be on the blacklist because age discrimination is ILLEGAL. Unfortunately our politicians are too busy with holidays and their own benefits to put this in place.

Please make a blacklist and start to delete this advertisement!

And Karhunkoski: totally right , only some do not understand it (yet)

And as it looks that Nana comes from France (with one of the best workers protections , I do not know if she thinks that is a bad thing. Too much is not good as is too little (which are many Finns only now complaining about, why would that be

[NanaM]

- If something is law, it doesn't matter two hoots whether you think it's ok to "be honest" about discrimination. Of course discrimination sometimes occurs behind closed doors, but that is no reason to openly accept in job adverts.

Fair enough. Why is this ad still here if that's illegal ? Anybody feels like sueing that company ?

So along comes an immigrant, publicly declaring that, "So it's illegal ? Big deal...". And every Finn who has even a slight dislike for immigrants, is suddenly given yet another excuse to discriminate against immigrants. Clear now?

Yeah if you stick to those 4 words I wrote out of a two-paragraph post then you can keep on argueing alone. I don't think saying this makes me guilty of giving excuses to Finns who dislike immigrants to dislike them even more, this is far-fetched. I don't think many Finns who dislike already immigrants would care about the comment I wrote in a job ad on this forum, let alone even get to read said job ad. And would I have not written that comment I believe these people would still not like immigrants. If you think the comments we write on a forum can change in either way the way Finns who dislike immigrants think about immigrants, I'm afraid you are misleading.

And as it looks that Nana comes from France (with one of the best workers protections , I do not know if she thinks that is a bad thing. Too much is not good as is too little (which are many Finns only now complaining about, why would that be

What does this has to do with the topic ? It doesn't really matter where I come from. Then people try to give me lessons about stereotypes on immigrants ? LOL

I would also be interested to know how many people knew so-called age discrimination in job ad was forbidden before DMC posted that link. I honnestly didn't, and it's good to know.

[CatNip]

This kind kind of job ad it totally illegal in Finland. If this kind of ad would be placed in any newspaper or job portal in Finland, there would be consequences.

Nowadays even a barber shop cannot put dofferent prices for men and women due equality laws.

[cokm]

We did not mean to break the laws about ages but we are looking for junior sales people who obviously have little experience and are therefore in most cases younger. we are willing to give people with little experience an excellent opportunity.

[AlexInHelsinki]

If you're doing HR/recruiting work, you really should be more educated about the laws pertaining to that sector...especially something as obvious as ageism. It doesn't represent you or your company well.

[NanaM]

As pointed out by DMC there are exceptions to the law against ageism :

Are there any specific exceptions in your laws?

According to the Non-Discrimination Act, different treatment based on age is not considered discrimination when it has a justified purpose that is objectively and appropriately founded and derives from justifiable objective relating to employment policy, the labour market, vocational training or other comparable issue, or when the different treatment arises from age limits adopted in qualification for retirement or invalidity benefits within the social security system. A procedure based on an equality plan and intended to implement the intention of the Non-Discrimination Act in practice is not considered discrimination, either. In addition, different treatment founded on a genuine and determining requirement relating to a specific type of occupational activity and the performance of said activity is not considered discrimination, provided that the treatment is justifiable and appropriate.

Furthermore, the Non-Discrimination Act does not prevent specific measures aimed at the achievement of genuine equality in order to prevent or reduce the disadvantages caused by different types of discrimination. However, this type of affirmative action must be appropriate to its objective.

Likewise, there is a possibility to place employees indirectly in a different position based on age. Indirect discrimination shall be deemed to have occurred when an apparently neutral provision, criterion or practice puts a person at a particular disadvantage compared with other persons in the same position, unless said provision, criterion or practice has an acceptable aim and the means used are appropriate and necessary for achieving this aim. Thus, a requirement concerning specific expertise, length of work experience or similar factors may be acceptable if they can be justified by reverting to a genuine and substantial requirement relating to the occupational activities and the performance of the said activities. For example, it is commonly acceptable that notice periods and accrued holidays are longer for those employees with a longer employment relationship. Furthermore, if not directly linked to any exact age and provided that the working tasks objectively require good physical condition, the requirement of physical stamina may also be acceptable. In addition, the existence of a collective bargaining agreement imposing e.g. particular salary determination provisions may also allow indirect age discrimination by e.g. allowing lower salary categories to younger employees or students not possessing required education or work experience.