As striking as it may be to anyone who hasn’t lived in Latin America, discrimination based on skin color, race, height, weight, gender and sexual orientation is the order of the day when it comes to looking for a job in some countries. In most Latin American countries (and in Spain) a photograph is required when submitting a resume for a job.

In Mexico, not only are employers looking at photos to make the typical judgement of “she’s probably going to have kids soon, no use to us” — which is bad enough — but they are also using carefully crafted job postings to make sure they weed out “undesirables”. The best part? “Diversity-friendly” American companies in Mexico are doing it too:

When Michigan-based automotive supplier Lear Corp. needed a secretary for its office in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, it placed a classified ad seeking a “female … aged 20 to 28 … preferably single … with excellent presentation.”

And to ensure that it got the right candidate, Lear asked applicants to include a recent photo with their resumes.

It may sound shocking, but it’s pretty standard. It took me about 30 seconds to find the ads in the image above on a Mexican newspaper’s website. I knew that just by looking under “secretaries” I’d dig up some gems.

According to the LA Times, Mexico is looking to crack down on this practice. I see that as a far-out dream, not so much because of the infamous Mexican machismo but because of the blatant racism that exists in Mexican society. It’s so engrained in the heads of most people that some people don’t notice when they are discriminating and others don’t notice when they are being discriminated against. And when you realize this, you also realize that posting a job for someone who’s at least 5′ 9″ (as did Coca Cola Femsa, according to the LA Times article), it’s not about some safety issue, but about the ideal candidate looking more like Vicente Fox than Benito Juarez.

You also better be macho and live up to the manly standards that your future employers will hold you to. You better not be gay.

This practice is not limited to Latin America, of course. A huge scandal arose back in 2002 when a chain of supermarkets in Spain, Sanchez-Romero, was accused of throwing away the resumes (with requisite photos) of job applicants, and thereby not protecting their personal information. But that wasn’t the worst part — it was the comments that hiring managers had written on the applications (see image above), which range from xenophobic to sexist to just plain weird:

- Foreigner, fat, darky, he looks like Pancho Villa but hungry.

- Foreigner. That really doesn’t matter, he’s scary, he looks like an indian.

- No, because she’s gypsy and ugly.

- She’s fat, has zits, a beard (fuzz), a moustache and goatee. See photo.

- No because he’s old.

- No. Thug. Leather jacket.

- He’s nuts. His father is an alcoholic, he lived in public housing. Local government has custody of his daughter. Unlucky.

- South American. Dark, but not black, skin a “café con leche” color with too much “café”.

- No. Bad makeup job, pig face.

- From the ghetto. Drug addict face.

- I don’t like her face, plus she’s 26 and already separated.

- Leukemia, chemotherapy. She’ll have hair in two months. Pretty.

- Annoying and ugly.

They certainly didn’t discriminate when they were discriminating — it sounds like they hated everyone.

Special thanks to reader Cindylu for tipping us off to this story.

Via / LA Times (reg. required) and El Mundo