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&lt;p&gt;Another disturbing dispatch from the front lines of the job search: &lt;em&gt;The Huffington Post&lt;/em&gt; once again raises the specter of recruiters weeding out job applicants who aren&#39;t already employed. But that&#39;s not all: according to sources quoted in the piece, &quot;there are more secretive and systemic forms of hiring discrimination.&quot; And if the words &quot;secretive and systemic&quot; evoke images of spies embroiled in cloak and dagger operations, then you&#39;re not too far from what HuffPo claims in the truth&amp;mdash;companies using &quot;codewords for whites and codewords for blacks,&quot; or to specify whether an employer is seeking a male or female for any given position.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The need for such codes arises, obviously, from the fact that it&#39;s illegal to select candidates based on their race or gender. And it would appear that some recruitment firms are desperate enough for business that they&#39;re willing to help clients flaunt those laws. One recruiting veteran sums up the situation as follows in the piece:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;As a recruiter, you get an HR director on the phone, and they tell you point blank, &#39;We want somebody in this age bracket, or this particular gender, currently has a job. We don&#39;t want to see a resume from anyone who&#39;s not working.&#39; It happens all the time.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;As disturbing as the allegations about racial and gender bias are&amp;mdash;and reprehensible, if true&amp;mdash;the part of that quote that most jobseekers should be concerned about is the sentence about weeding out applicants who aren&#39;t currently working. The reason: it&#39;s the only one that isn&#39;t illegal&amp;mdash;and therefore the one that&#39;s most likely to directly affect you or someone you know.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At a time when 14.5 million Americans are unemployed&amp;mdash;many of whom are simply victims of economic circumstance&amp;mdash;it&#39;s completely absurd that companies would discriminate against those without jobs. Sure, you want to hire someone whose skills and experience are current. But the recruiter in the piece&amp;mdash;himself someone who ranks among the unemployed seeking a job&amp;mdash;lays out a rationale from companies that seems illogical at best:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;It&#39;s nearly impossible to get a job unless you already have a job. Companies will view you, especially people over 50 like me, they view you as somebody that&#39;s gonna require more money, that&#39;s not gonna be productive, or that might have some personal problems, because if you were a good employee you would have never lost your job in the first place.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the ridiculous notion that unemployed people are &quot;gonna require more money&quot; or be less productive than a headhunted prospect, consider the unjustness of that last piece: that good employees never would have lost their jobs in the worst economy since the Great Depression&amp;mdash;a recession that wiped entire companies, and millions of jobs, off the map in a matter of months. It&amp;rsquo;s hard to tell what job seekers should feel more in relation to that notion: whether they should be insulted by it or relieved that, when they do find a job, it won&#39;t be at an organization populated by the type of person who would believe such a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In that respect, at least, candidates should be glad to be getting screened out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;em&gt;The Huffington Post&lt;/em&gt;: How Employers Weed Out Unemployed Job Applicants, Others, Behind The Scenes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;--Phil Stott, Vault.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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