People are shocked this Linkedin job advert says applicants should be ‘preferably Caucasian’

An American IT and engineering staffing company has come under fire for posting a job advert on LinkedIn specifying candidates should be “preferably Caucasian”, according to screenshots posted on Twitter.

The job listing was highlighted by Helena McCabe, who tweeted on Saturday:

Uh, hey @cynetjobs​

- what's with this? Your job listing for a mid-senior level business development position's top qualification is “Preferably Caucasian” How could you POSSIBLY think that's okay?

McCabe posted a screenshot of the job listing with her tweet, which read:

Preferably Caucasian who has good technical background including knowledge of RPA.

According to other screenshots posted on Twitter, the same job listing appeared on several other websites.

The screenshots of the job advert provoked a wave of Twitter backlash.

In response to complaints over the job post, Cynet Systems tweeted on Monday:

Cynet apologizes for the anger & frustration caused by the offensive job post. It does not reflect our core values of inclusivity & equality. The individuals involved have been terminated. We will take this as a learning experience & will continue to serve our diverse community.

A spokesperson from Cynet Systems said:

First we would like to say simply that we truly regret the fact that individuals formerly employed by Cynet Systems went outside of company policy and included an inappropriate requirement in a job listing. We understand why some may have been upset seeing this listing, because we were too. 

It is a long-standing policy for our company to refuse any request to list jobs only seeking candidates of any specific ethnicity, gender, or other inappropriate restrictions, and we will turn clients down if they demand requirements of this type be included. Further, Cynet Systems itself is proud to be an immensely diverse company. Both of our owners are Indian Americans, our workforce is over 60 per cent minority, and we are certified as a diversity supplier by the National Minority Supplier Development Council.

The individuals involved in this case were terminated immediately for a significant violation of company policy, and we have already begun a review of all currently existing and upcoming ads to ensure no similar issues exist. We are also looking at measures that could help us catch offensive or outside-of-policy ads before they ever go live to ensure this can’t happen again. 

More: This Muslim woman's response to Islamophobic protesters is absolutely perfect

More: Black women denied job for ‘ghetto’ name and company blames hackers for racist emails