Recruitment processes includes evaluation of candidates qualifications and employers have the opportunity to found recruitment decisions on candidate personal suitability. What falls under the term personal suitability though, has during the years been a bit unclear. The first purpose of this study is therefor to examine the evaluation of qualifications, the term personal suitability and also employer’s possibilities to use the term in a non-discriminatory way in a recruitment process, this through the legal dogmatic method. The second and third purposes are further to put the evaluation of qualifications and the concept personal suitability in a social context and observe possible risks associated to the recruitment process from a genus perspective. Those purposes and questions are answered through the socio-legal method. The study is a literature study and it is limited to only concern direct discrimination because of gender. The result shows that employers can use the term personal suitability in recruitment processes if the candidate’s educational qualifications and work- and profession experience are equivalent. The employer has to be able show reasons for the decision though, explain why the personal suitability’s were needed and how they are connected to the actual work to make sure that the decision does not constitutes discrimination because of gender. The result also shows several risks associated to the evaluation of qualifications and the term personal suitability. The risks might be caused by the social norms society creates, norms that further creates expectations about how women and men are or should be as employees, leaders and colleagues. These social norms create risks if they affect references, interviewers, employers and recruiters to the extent that one gender becomes mistreated. Social norms are created all over and will most likely continue to exist. They may also be one reason why our labour market is gender segregated and why women in general are given less favorable opportunities and possibilities. The study shows that it is of importance that references, interviewers, employers and recruiters don’t get affected and perceive jobseekers personal suitability based on out-dated and discriminatory norms.

The recruitment processes include evaluation of candidates’ qualifications where the employers got the opportunity to base their recruitment decisions on personal suitability. Although the personal suitability often is used in recruitment decisions there is a lack of legal definition of what is comprised within the term personal suitability. However, there are legal regulations such as the prohibition of discrimination and demands of objective reasons in the public sector that restricts employers’ disposal of the personal suitability. This study aims to define the extent to which the concept can be used without being in conflict with the legal regulations entries that restrict the free admission for employers in the public sector. This is followed by the goal of increasing awareness by trying to identify the risks that is associated with the term and how they can be understood from a perspective of diversity in the labour market. The method used for this study is legal dogmatic with its' purpose to examine how the restrictions stands in relation to the use of the personal suitability in court cases. The result demonstrates that employers must be able to set the personal suitability in relation to the qualifications required for the requested position to prove that there is no violation with neither the prohibition of discrimination or the public requirement of objective grounds. The court cases also showed that despite the guidelines evolved through practice is still not completely uniform because each unique situation affects the legal assessment. The risks identified is that the use of personal suitability could possibly mean that discrimination becomes invisible because of possible underlying factors that will determine conclusions the employers makes to found their recruitment decision. With that realization also the problems highlighted for further studies are to in a more comprehensive study examining norms closely based on either the gender or intersectional perspective to gain a deeper understanding of how the use of the personal suitability may lead to consequences for the working populations’ opportunities in the labour market.