An online job advert for a Paris graphic design company specifying that candidates should be rigorous, well organised, highly motivated but “if possible not Jewish” has sparked outrage in France, with a leading anti-racism group taking legal action.
The row started when a Parisian jobseeker noticed the advert placed by graphic design company, NSL Studio, on the jobs site graphic-jobs.com. The advert for a permanent graphic designer specified in its first two lines that the candidate must be rigorous, motivated and keen to develop in an “ultra-dynamic” environment. The third line specified: “If possible, not Jewish.” Shocked, the jobseeker took a screengrab and posted it on Facebook.
The French magazine Les Inrocks swiftly picked up the story. It quoted an unnamed person at NSL Studio saying that the ad wasn’t “at all discriminatory” and that the company did not want to employ anyone restricted by “religious or cultural” worries.
Soon after, NSL Studio tweeted that it had been hacked and would never have posted such a “discriminatory” advert.
Bonjour, il s'agit d'un hack de notre annonce, nous ne posterions jamais ce genre de message discriminatoire, merci de faire tourner l'info.
— NSL Studio (@NSL_Studio) February 2, 2015
The company issued another statement on Tuesday “firmly condemning” the line in the advert and saying that it had taken legal action to establish who was responsible. It also apologised for how the “scandalous” advert had got past moderation systems.
The French anti-racism group SOS Racisme filed a legal complaint.
The row comes with France still traumatised by three days of terrorist attacks last month which began with an attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo and culminated in a bloody siege at a kosher supermarket in Paris in which four people were killed. Security has been heightened around Jewish sites in France and the country’s main Jewish body recently announced that the number of antisemitic acts in France had doubled between 2013 and 2014.
