SDU HR
No more asking about the age of job applicants
On 28 March 2022, a law was passed prohibiting employers from asking a job applicant about their age. The law has thus established that there must be no discrimination in the labour market by screening job seekers on the basis of their age.
The purpose of the amendment is to help prevent companies from passing over unemployed seniors due to age when they apply for jobs. Discrimination against job applicants on the basis of age is illegal, yet many unemployed seniors find that they are being passed over because of their date of birth when companies do the first screening of job applications.
The legal text reads: “An employer may not request information about an applicant’s age when submitting, uploading, filling in, etc. a job application.”
The University of Southern Denmark is not exempt from this law, and SDU HR has therefore now removed the question regarding age when a job seeker applies for a job (VIP, DVIP and PhD) via SDUjob. In addition, there is no longer any mention of age in the guidelines for job applicants.
The age of applicants will no longer be included in recruitment statistics.
The University’s HR system (HCM) has been updated to accommodate the law, which comes into effect on 1 July 2022. Contact SDU’s Head Consultant w. personnel management, Josephine Ingversen Lethenborg, or employment lawyer Sharajé Thomasen if you have any questions.
See the law (in Danish) here: https://www.retsinformation.dk/eli/lta/2022/372