Rat Race Cycles is looking for a new mechanic

The brilliant Nelsy is leaving us next month for pastures new in Colombia, and they'll leave a mechanic-shaped hole in the team.

We're looking for someone with workshop and customer service experience - full details are at ratracecycles.com/jobs

Ideally we'd like to find someone who's not a straight white man, there are plenty of those in our industry already... but we need someone competent, calm, kind and great with customers to join the team.

If you're looking, if you know someone who's thinking of moving on from where they are, or even someone who might be tempted to join us, please do put them in touch.

Thanks!

And what's wrong with being a straight white man?
Or you don't want that because there are plenty abound?
You ought to be picking candidates on merit alone.
The statement exhibits bias and is discriminatory.

Okay, perhaps you need to clarify what you mean by straight white man. Perhaps you mean straight white man is an incompetent sample by nature?

You don't know what you want.

u ok buddy?

lol triggered snowflake

Diversity is absolutely key, but you might get in a little bit of hot water if it’s seen you’re discriminating on protected characteristics for hiring.

It might be better so say “we’re looking for a diverse candidate pool who can fully represent our customers and community where RRC is based” or some variation of corporate speak to say the same thing without explicitly saying it

Wow. Yes, I "ought to be picking candidates on merit", and I hope I do.

But not merit alone - given my acknowledged bias as a straight white man myself, in an industry full of them, I'm keen to make the team in my shop as diverse and inclusive as the customers we serve.

I wonder why someone would have a problem with that...

Of course I'm aware I'm sounding defensive here. I'm not sure of a better way to phrase it, but I'm not looking to discriminate, just trying to make sure that people who aren't straight white men are especially welcome to join us.

Edit: here’s the link that may be helpful for writing job adverts: https://www.gov.uk/employer-preventing-discrimination/recruitment

Discrimination in job adverts
You must not state or imply in a job advert that you’ll discriminate against anyone. This includes saying that you are not able to cater for workers with a disability.

Only use phrases like ‘recent graduate’ or ‘highly experienced’ when these are actual requirements of the job. Otherwise you could discriminate against younger or older people who might not have had the opportunity to get qualifications.

You can treat one group or candidate more favourably if two candidates are both able to do the job, but one has protected characterises and one doesn’t (in the aim of increasing diversity), but maybe not putting it in the ad

I wonder why someone would have a problem with that...

Quite. I'm a straight white male and I'm completely ok with being marked down for this fact given my massive privilege being in this position in the first place, but as above, I don't think you can really explicitly say you're looking to discriminate against any one group. Just protect yourself is all. "looking to promote diversity" as opposed to "not looking for..."

Thanks C4r1s, that's good to read.

The problem is with your statement.

In fact I still don't understand where you are coming from. You seem to implicitly denigrate elements of local culture. People are the product of a local culture and those are the sorts of people you will find to work with. If you are keen on diversity why bring the question up in the first place?

local culture

Its in peckham

I'm a straight white male and I'm completely ok with being marked
down for this fact given my massive privilege being in this position
in the first place,

It's not okay to be voluntarily marked down for reasons unrelated. It may be a privilege and rightly so, so you can do justice to the privilege by doing well at it. That's it.

leave

I'm not denigrating elements of any culture. Our bike shop's in Peckham (well, Nunhead, but fewer people have heard of it), a brilliantly diverse area, yet most of the applications I get are always from straight white men. I recruit on talent and team fit. The mechanic leaving is the only non-binary person in the team at the moment.
So I want to ensure a) people will share the job ad far and wide and b) I want to encourage applications from as diverse a pool as possible.

You can also leave

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyrAPtWLwCs

Rat Race is a great shop run by great people who have helped me out many many times <3
Best to ignore the people who can't understand why they might want to hire people that reflect the cultural diversity of the area and push against racially bias hiring and training practices in this (and almost all) industries.

The chap writing the ad is a white male lol.
He's just trying to give opportunities to discriminated minorities.
Chill bro

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u ok buddy?

Who hurt you?

@Velocio Ban hammer time

congratulations, you're probably the first person to use "woke" in a non-ironic sense on this forum. You win - a trip to the sun, get going.

Had to Google that person. Legitimately, get help. You've obviously gone down a right wing youtube hole.

This is partially what I work in as I moderate a film jobs board.

Legally, its a okay to state you're seeking people especially with lived experience of marginalised backgrounds and will consider candidates based on merit.

A non-white non-male identifying or trans person inherently can offer marginalised customers a feeling of safety and of being understood. It's completely fine to factor this into decision making.

At the end of the day, it's all about skills and those include interpersonal! IMO phrasing would be completely fine.