Officials at Air China, the 2008 Olympics official carrier, are looking to expand and improve the services offered to customers, according to a report published in the English-language newspaper China Daily. Launched this week, the initiative is looking to hire 300 new attendants and is holding a national recruitment period. Apparently, more than 5,000 people across the country have applied to far.
The oddest part about the recruitment (at least to Americans) is the requirements for the hiring process. For example, successful applicants must be between 19 and 25 years old, be unmarried, be between 164 centimeters and 172 centimeters tall (for women) and be fluent in English. Some of these requirements, mainly the English-speaking one, seem fairly intuitive, but many of the others are just downright discriminatory by Western standards.
Having traveled on Air China this summer, I wasn’t completely shocked by the story. Most of the flight attendants that I came into contact with during my flights were attrative, young Chinese women (It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a de-facto requirement that the women be good looking).
It probably makes a lot of business sense for the airline to look to expand in light of the upcoming Olympics, and it definitely makes sense that they’ll want to give foreigners the best impresssion of their operations. However, most Westerners would definitely frown upon these types of hiring practices if they were aware of them.
1 Comment
December 4, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Yes, those hiring practices definitely are disturbing! I once took a class called Social Relations in the Workplace, and we studied the often looks-based discrimination that occurs in the airline industry. Apparently it also happens much more often in the U.S. than many people would think. Are there special perks (possibly Olympics-related) to being a flight attendant for this airline? I don’t understand why so many people would care to be competitive about that job unless either it’s a status thing somehow (perhaps your attractiveness is validated if you are hired) or it’s got some sweet perks.