I have occasionally mentioned how Shell were always ahead of the curve when it came to political correctness, what with the active promotion of women, ethnic minorities, disabled, etc., etc. - largely to the detriment of the average working guy. What I may not have mentioned was how I was approached by Shell about 15 years ago when they were starting to apply this sort of approach to their recruitment and how they wanted to be able to prove that there was absolutely no discrimination in their selection. What they were trying to do was outsource the initial vetting of applications to people who would check out the basics and not be influenced by any external factors - effectively a cover-my-a** attitude which would ensure no one could come back and say the interview was slanted against them. There were many no-go areas for the interviews, which basically stopped you from forming any sort of opinion about the applicant - even their ability! Age, race, sex, family status, education, qualifications(!) were not to be discussed, so it was more a case of finding out if they understood the terminology of the role they were aiming for than anything else - with successful "applicant" being passed on for technical approval in the line.
This was all to be conducted on the telephone, so had the major drawback of the interviewer having a voice to use as a sub-conscious way of discriminating (who said the english class system was such that one person speaking will automatically cause another to despise them?).
As you might guess, the training was wasted on me - mainly as my key point in recruitment was trying to get a fully rounded view in order to understand whether the person could add to the team dynamic or not.
Anyway, back to the course. It ignored the voice issue - but now of course technology could be employed to disguise that and even allow the applicant to be heard as if they were the race / age / sex / nationality they wanted to choose, just to ensure no bias. BUT, I suddenly thought, they couldn´t use zoom, as that would give away too much, so would have to have an talking avatar - also of their choice.
Well - I went on the web and looked to see what was available, and discounting the zombie-killers and super-powered cartoons, I can honestly say that you would struggle to find a gender / racial neutral one.
So of course I had to make one.
As you will see, there is no hair to give the game away, no shape to the body, no basic colour to any part of it.
Basically it is a two-part "thing" that is grey on white and grey on black.
Theoretically it should be perfect for gender-neutral toilets, but as I write that, I get the feeling that it is undeniably masculine -probably due to the square shoulders (unless you are a 70s tv "Dallas" tv fan, in which case it would probably appear feminine).
I think it may be a bit too gender-obvious and I may have to revise it to neutralise it a bit more.
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