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Three Black job applicants filed a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint against Facebook claiming they were rejected for employment despite being fully qualified, The Washington Post. reported.
According to the publication, a hiring manager told one of the three applicants, “There’s no doubt you can do the job, but we’re really looking for a culture fit.”
However, it was never clear if that level of “fit” was defined, but the assumption was that there was not a place for them at the company due to the color of their skin.
Prior to this incident, the company – whose Black workforce is less than four percent – faced an EEOC complaint from a Black woman with a Ph.D. who told federal regulators that she was qualified, but was turned down. She, too, was not “culture fit” for the position to which she applied.
Facebook operations manager, Oscar Veneszee Jr., told The Washington Post he believes applicants he referred and knew were very qualified for employment at the company were turned down because they were deemed incongruent with the company’s primarily white culture.
“When I was interviewing at Facebook, the thing I was told constantly was that I needed to be a culture fit, and when I tried to recruit people,” Veneszee said, “I knew I needed [to] find people who were a culture fit. But unfortunately, not many people I knew could pass that challenge because the culture here does not reflect the culture of Black people.”
The social media giant has been under EEOC investigation since July due to complaints of “systemic racism in hiring practices” brought about by Veneszee, who is Black, and two people he recruited but who were not hired.
A representative from the company denied the existence of a cultural fitness test for hiring new employees in a statement to WaPo and reaffirmed the company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.
“We’ve added diversity and inclusion goals to senior leaders’ performance reviews. We take seriously allegations of discrimination and have robust policies and processes in place for employees to report concerns, including concerns about microaggressions and policy violations.”
Rhett Lindsay, a former Facebook recruiter, told the paper there were roadblocks when it came to hiring a more diverse staff and that fitting into the culture of the company, which is not inclusive of minorities is like a “cloud” over potential applicants.
“There is no culture fit checkmark on an application form, but at Facebook it is like this invisible cloud that hangs over candidates of color.”