A police chief in the capital area breached age-equality rules when he decided a candidate would not be invited to a second interview for an assistant chief constable role, according to Iceland’s Equality Complaints Board. The ruling concerns the appointment process for the role in 2023. The board found that the candidate was not given the same chance as others because of age. Five candidates applied and a selection panel assessed them. After the interviews, two were invited to a second interview. Following those steps, someone was appointed to the position. The case turned on whether the decision to exclude the candidate from the second interview involved discrimination based on age. The candidate argued he was not evaluated fairly, pointing to how management experience was weighed. During the hiring evaluation, the decision-makers considered how long the candidate had managed and how recent that experience was. The candidate had 7 to 8 years of management experience, but because that experience was described as more than 15 years old, it was not rated as highly as experience that was more recent. The candidate said this method effectively disadvantaged him because of his age. The Equality Complaints Board accepted that it is not inherently unreasonable to consider both how many years of experience someone has and how recent that experience is. But the board said it could not see that an objective and justifiable assessment had been made about whether the candidate’s management experience was successful or met the role’s qualification requirements. It also found that the police chief’s explanation was not sufficiently solid. The board pointed to language used in responses to the complaint, including references to different work-life generations, and concluded that the overall evaluation on this point was neither objective nor defensible. The board ruled that the police chief discriminated against the candidate based on age by excluding him from the second interview and thereby from the rest of the application process. Source: RUV