Three candidates claim to have participated in a particularly degrading recruitment session organized by a company based in the Middle East. The government has opened an investigation.
«We don’t like your smile». «VYou have a body shaped like a roller coaster“. A banal recruitment in a hotel near Madrid airport turned into the most uninhibited sexism. On November 5, 2022, Meccti, a company based in the Middle East and specialized in recruitment, is organizing job interviews for the airline Kuwait Airlines. On its Instagram site, the company did indeed offer a recruitment day, among many others, in Madrid on this date (see below). It is specified that “the weight (of candidates) must be proportional to a minimum height of 1m60and that candidates must display a “excellent general presentation“, without giving more details.
As part of this recruitment day, around sixty candidates were selected, including only three men. During the interviews, the recruiter would have asked them to undress “to check for tattoos, scars or birthmarks“, according to the Spanish media The newspaper .
«He asked me to pull up my dress. I pulled her up a little, he hit just below my knee and he pulled her up to my pantiestestifies one of the three candidates cited by The newspaper. The dress had a zipper in the back and he asked me to pull it down to my waist and stay in a bra“. Some candidates even suffered sexist comments from the recruiter. The three women also claim that a candidate who spoke seven different languages would have been disqualified because of a “eyebrow scar“. Candidates who were too wrapped up, who wore glasses or apparent moles, would also not have been selected for these reasons.
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The affair has reached the ears of the government. The Spanish Ministry of Labor announced this week the opening of an investigation into the recruitment processes of the Meccti company. Joaquin Perez Rey, Spain’s Secretary of State for Employment, described the facts as “intolerable behavior that violates the dignity and fundamental rights of these womenduring a press conference. The case comes as a new law for equal treatment and non-discrimination at work was approved by the Spanish Parliament in July 2022.
For its part, Meccti, which works with other airlines such as Qatar Airways, Etihad and Saudi Arabian Airlines, remained silent. Via its Instagram account, the company announced a new recruitment session in Spain in January, without giving a precise date.
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