France: launch of a 2nd tranche of testing aimed at combatting discrimination in recruitment

In the coming weeks, the government will launch a second tranche of tests conducted to shed light on ongoing discrimination in hiring within companies. It will be conducted among 40 randomly selected large companies in the SBF 120 index (Société des Bourses Françaises 120 Index; French stock market index comprising all 60 stocks in the CAC 40 & CAC Next 20 indexes plus 60 further stocks listed on the Premier Marché & Second Marché). France inaugurated this type of initiative with a campaign that ran from October 2018 to January 2019 and tested 40 large companies. The 2018/2019 results revealed ‘potentially discriminatory’ behavior within seven major companies that were singled out, namely AccorHotels, Air France, Altran Technologies, Arkema, Renault, Rexel, and Sopra Steria. The second campaign will use a paired communication testing method, whereby two fictitious applications are sent to the same company, one for each of two fictitious candidates with ‘French nationality’ and which differ only in the supposedly Maghreb-like sound to their names. Other similar paired tests will use residence as the distinguishing criterion, based on addresses located within or outside town or city social priority districts (less advantaged). In terms of size and scope, the first testing campaign saw in excess of 10,000 applications being sent to companies for consideration.