‘Preferably Caucasian’ With A Good Tech Background: Company Under Fire For Racist Job Posting

A Virginia tech company is under fire after the discovery of what seems to be a blatantly racist, not to mention illegal, job listing posted on multiple job listing sites including LinkedIn, HuffPost reports.

Cynet Systems, an IT staffing and recruiting company, posted a sales and business development role with a job description presented as a bulleted list. While most of the list was typical, including years of experience required and highlighting job responsibilities, the very first item on the list raised eyebrows.

“Preferably caucasian who has good technical background,” it reads in part.

Twitter user Helena McCabe was among the first to notice the bizarrely inappropriate language in the posting, which she pointed out in a tweet on Saturday.

“How could you POSSIBLY think that’s okay?” she said in her post.

McCabe’s post quickly gained momentum, having at the time of this writing amassed more than 14,ooo likes, almost 8,000 retweets, and hundreds of replies. It didn’t take long for a variety of media outlets to pick up the story as well, placing further pressure on Cynet Systems to respond.

In the meantime, social media users continued to pile on.

“You said the quiet part out loud,” one person said on Twitter.

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? pic.twitter.com/DPWzpgXqqE

— Helena (@misshelenasue) April 27, 2019

The company failed to respond to the growing public outcry until almost a full day after the news had spread to all corners of the internet. Finally, late Sunday, they responded to the controversy in a tweet of their own.

“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,” the company said.

The apology mostly fell flat, with many criticizing the response as overly generic.

“Sure it doesn’t…” tweeted black activist Tariq Nasheed, quoting Cynet’s claim that the incident “does not reflect our core values of inclusivity & equality.”

As Cynet’s apology left most unimpressed, one of their co-CEOs, Ashwani Mayur, provided a statement to HuffPost and other media outlets in a further attempt to smooth over the situation.

“Both of our owners are Indian-Americans, our workforce is over 60 percent minority, and we are certified as a diversity supplier by the National Minority Supplier Development Council,” Mayur said.

Mayur went on to indicate that the company was working to implement measures that would catch offensive or “outside-of-policy” ads before they are posted to avoid a similar incident int the future.