Campaign to End Discrimination Against the Unemployed

San Francisco, CA – SmartRecruiters, the free recruiting software provider, announces the "Unemployed, Please Apply" campaign on its Zero Unemployment Movement  Facebook page. Businesses are asked to take direct action in response to recent reports of discriminatory practices that target the unemployed, including those featured in national news. The message,  "Unemployed Need Not Apply" has been explicitly stated in job advertisements, and is under investigation by the US Department of Labor, the EEOC and the National Employment Law Project.

The pledge campaign from SmartRecruiters asks businesses to commit to interview at least one unemployed candidate for every job opening by pledging on social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) through the "Unemployed, Please Apply" page (https://www.facebook.com/zerounemployment?sk=app_249196291797196).

Unfortunately, discrimination against the unemployed is a harsh reality for millions of Americans. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission calls the prescreening of unemployed candidates an "emerging practice." In a recent survey, SmartRecruiters found that 82% of recruiters, hiring managers, and human resources professionals, report the existence of discrimination against the unemployment.

"The tolerance for discrimination against the unemployed deeply upsets me," said SmartRecruiters CEO Jerome Ternynck. "There is an unwritten rule that unemployed candidates just aren't qualified. Our survey revealed that 55% of recruiters and HR managers have 'personally experienced resistance when presenting qualified yet unemployed candidates to clients/colleagues.' Not only is this bad business, it's also unfair and needs stop right now!"

"Because a person isn't working, it doesn't mean they don't have skills," said Bonnie Elsey, president of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, at Facebook's announcement for their Social Jobs Partnership with the US Department of Labor, NACE, State Work Force, and Direct Employers.

Isabelle Englund-Geiger interviews unemployed candidates for every open position at her company, Benz Communications. She said, "Discarding currently-unemployed candidates is very short-sighted. If didn't equally evaluate unemployed candidates, we would have missed out on many of our most successful hires, including our office manager, a senior-level bi-lingual writer and some of our top consultants."

The SmartRecruiters survey also shows that many hiring managers are under misconception that 30% of unemployed job seekers are "unemployed for a reason" and 23% of unemployed job seekers are "probably not qualified."

"I am very disturbed when I hear that employers don't want to even look at resumes of people that have been out of work for 6 months or just (are) unemployed," said the Depart of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis at Facebook's Social Jobs Announcement Oct. 20. "It's as though people have created this problem themselves, and that's just not true."

To help end discrimination against the unemployed, visit and pledge  "Unemployed, Please Apply" (https://www.facebook.com/zerounemployment?sk=app_249196291797196).

About SmartRecruiters

SmartRecruiters provides free recruiting software that makes hiring easy for thousands of businesses around the world. Leveraging the power of a free open Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and pervasive social networks, SmartRecruiters is democratizing access to top talent for the largest hiring segment - the over 99% of businesses that employ less than 2,500 people. In April 2011, SmartRecruiters launched the Zero Unemployment Movement to support the company's purpose of eradicating unemployment globally. SmartRecruiters, based in San Francisco CA, was founded in 2010 by Jerome Ternynck, a recognized recruiting thought leader and pioneer of the recruiting software industry.