A Virginia-based staffing firm is apologizing after an ad seeking white job candidates sparked outrage on social media.
According to The Associated Press, Cynet Systems' listing for a Tampa, Florida-based account manager asked for "preferably Caucasian" applicants with technical experience. The post quickly went viral after it appeared on job sites such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor, WJLA-TV reported.
"How could you POSSIBLY think that's okay?" Twitter user @misshelenasue asked Cynet early Saturday. Her tweet, which has been shared more than 8,000 times, included a screenshot of the ad.
The company tweeted Sunday that it has fired the employees responsible. It also removed the ad, the AP reported.
"Cynet apologizes for the anger & frustration caused by the offensive job post," the company said. "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 next day, Cynet Co-CEO Ashwani Mayur released a formal statement about the controversy.
"First, we would like to say simply that we truly regret the fact that individuals formerly employed by Cynet Systems went outside of company policy and included an inappropriate requirement in a job listing," the statement read. "We understand why some may have been upset seeing this listing, because we were too. It is a long-standing policy for our company to refuse any request to list jobs only seeking candidates of any specific ethnicity, gender, or other inappropriate restrictions, and we will turn clients down if they demand requirements of this type be included."
Mayur touted the company's diverse work force and added that the employees involved "were terminated immediately."
"We have already begun a review of all currently existing and upcoming ads to ensure no similar issues exist," his statement continued. "We are also looking at measures that could help us catch offensive or outside-of-policy ads before they ever go live to ensure this can't happen again."
>> Read the full statement here
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