Apparently this DC-area tech firm is looking to hire someone ‘Preferably Caucasian’

Staffing and consulting firm Cynet Systems is under fire after the company published a job posting that included “Preferably Caucasian” in the description.

Uh, hey @cynetjobs – what's with this?

Your job listing for a mid-senior level business development position's top qualification is "Preferably Caucasian"

How could you POSSIBLY think that's okay? pic.twitter.com/DPWzpgXqqE

— Helena (@misshelenasue) April 27, 2019

Cynet specializes in staffing and recruiting in areas that include IT consulting, infrastructure consulting and engineering consulting. The job posting appeared on the Sterling, Va.-based company’s main site, LinkedIn page and other job sites.

https://twitter.com/jpp123/status/1122575942046470144

Though the company has since deleted the job posting on its LinkedIn and main site, the tweet above from Helena McCabe garnered more than 7,000 retweets, 12,500 likes and 60 replies from the tech community sharing their outraged disapproval of the description.

McCabe didn’t stop there. She continued expressing her opinion and got a reply from Cynet, which has since been taken down, that stated the individuals involved would be retrained in light of the situation. This led to even more outrage.

I recently had my tweet calling out some serious #racist BS pick up a lot of steam.

What I noticed, though, is that the grand majority of people participating are black.

White folks – racism is our responsibility to help dismantle, too. Stay aware, stay loud, and get helping.

— Helena (@misshelenasue) April 28, 2019

Even LinkedIn joined in on the conversation:

Hi Hester- Thanks for bringing this to our attention! Our team is looking into this job posting to help get this issue resolved. In the future if you run across any inappropriate job postings, please report them to our team. Here's how: https://t.co/zyXfIBzabG Thanks again! -RW

— LinkedIn Help (@LinkedInHelp) April 27, 2019

On April 28, Cynet announced on its social media channels that the individuals involved have now been terminated from the company and will not be just receiving retraining to retain their employment.

Cynet apologizes for the anger & frustration caused by the offensive job post. 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.

— Cynet Systems (@cynetsystems) April 29, 2019

But what else can the tech firm do to remedy this situation? Cynet is a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), meaning it seeks “to partner with other diversity-certified firms” to “benefit corporations and communities in their larger goal in uplifting marginalized members of society,” the company stated on its website.

In an email to Technical.ly, Cynet co-CEO Ashwani Mayur said this:

“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. 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. Further, Cynet Systems itself is proud to be an immensely diverse company. Both of our owners are Indian-Americans, our workforce is over 60% minority, and we are certified as a diversity supplier by the National Minority Supplier Development Council.

The individuals involved in this case were terminated immediately for a significant violation of company policy, and we have already begun a review of all currently existing and upcoming ads to ensure no similar issues exist. 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.”