A tech staffing company in Virginia has apologized and removed a job posting that included a line seeking potential candidates who are “Preferably Caucasian.”
CBS News reports that Cynet Systems, located in Sterling, Va., apologized for the job posting in a statement posted to Twitter Sunday.
{mosads}The company said that the individuals responsible for creating the job post have since been fired, and that the post “does not reflect our core values of inclusivity & equality.”
“We will take this as a learning experience & will continue to serve our diverse community,” the company wrote on Twitter.
The since-deleted job description was posted on LinkedIn and included a bullet point at the top that read: “Preferably Caucasian who has good technical background.”
The company issued a follow-up statement Monday, two days after the offensive post was first noticed, according to CBS News.
In the statement from Cynet Systems Co-CEO Ashwani Mayur, he pointed out that both he and the company’s other CEO are Indian-American, and said that 60 percent of the company’s workforce are minorities.
“We understand why some may have been upset seeing this listing, because we were too,” Mayur wrote. “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.”
He added that the company is reviewing all existing current and future job postings to “ensure no similar issues exist.”
A LinkedIn spokesperson told CBS News the posting on the site was removed as soon as it was noticed, and that such ads are violations of company policy.