A government commission in the UK has found that that nation’s top businesses use “unacknowledged ‘poshness tests’” when hiring, rather than hiring candidates from all social classes equally. Savages.

When questions of civil rights, or inequality, or discrimination arise, we are often reminded that we are supposed to be striving for an ideal: the ideal of meritocracy, where everyone rises and falls on their own merits. Take a moment to consider the problems with our ideal.

Beleaguered job seekers: you can look forward to a day very soon when the fate of your employment will no longer be in the hands of some bored and prejudiced HR person. Instead, you will be able to be rejected by a computer program, which can mathematically quantify your many shameful human flaws.

As a standard part of hiring new workers, lots of businesses run background checks on applicants using the FBI's criminal databases. But those databases have serious problems.

Earlier this week, Gawker posted a job listing seeking applicants for a reporter position. Among the responses was this letter from Hjalmar Sveinbjőrnsson and Alex, two under-employed Swedish roommates. We have reproduced the letter without correcting grammar or punctuation; the images shown above were attached. Gawker's response follows.

A man we'll call Robert has a profile on the employment website Monster.com, and earlier today he received a message from a recruiter about a job in "beautiful Northwest Arkansas."

We are currently searching for a talented, part-time graphic artist to assist our Art Director. Applicants should be available to come into our New York office 2-3 days a week, and must also have/be the following:

In light of the many changes taking place across several Gawker media sites, we are looking to add some especially courageous night and weekend writers to the Gawker team. Beginning this weekend, we will hold auditions for those interested in sacrificing their time and relationships for the Gawker graveyard shifts. Each prospective writer will be assigned a full weekend (or two to three nights) to cover.

Google wants to get into the LOLcat business, but Steve Yegge is damned if he's going to help; the engineer told a tech conference that "I am officially quitting that job on national TV." Also in today's Valleywag roundup: Google is showering programmers with 50 percent raises and trips to Paris; Karl Rove advertised in his favorite gay sex app; and a tech writer is minting money off a single review.

Our photo of an Abercrombie manager's strident "styling" note in a break room brought forth a flood of reminiscences from commenters familiar with Abercrombie's hotties-only hiring policies. Our favorite, though, was this email from a regretful former Hollister manager.

After our stories last month detailing American Apparel's photo-based hiring policy, picky beauty standards, and pissed-off work force, we wondered: Have things changed at AA? According to a recent job applicant: not a bit.

Yesterday, we told you about American Apparel's practice of making hires and promotions based largely on "full body" employee photos. We now have internal documents and photos detailing the policy—plus, former employees vent on life in AA's fashion dungeon.

Facebook is going on a 20 university, 5 business school tour of the nation looking for fresh meat. Yesterday's stop was NYU, says a Valleywag spy. "Of course I grabbed some free sandwiches and the best part: FACEBOOK GUM!" Interested? The spy says it "seems like they are extremely interested in programmers that speak multiple languages." Since Facebook gets its users to translate the site for free, we're betting the Facebook recruiter actually meant programmers should know the following languages:

The advertising industry is too white! It's been an issue forever-see any episode of Mad Men for the historical perspective. Two years ago the NYC Commission on Human Rights decided to hold hearings about diversity in advertising, and all the big ad agency conglomerates enthusiastically signed on. Declaring a firm commitment to diversity is a modern hallmark of the ad industry, along with every other industry. Since diversity hasn't been achieved, of course, the hearings drag on to this day. But Ad Age reports that at last night's meeting, only six white people showed up, and "two were members of the commission, two were lawyers and one was a journalist." That's problematic, since white people are supposed to be the ones getting educated here. And they got called on it:

A tipster tries to convince us Google's cutting cost and clamping down on hiring:

Despite local radio ads, sources tell Silicon Alley Insider Yahoo has frozen its hiring until July. Or it's freezing its hiring in July. One of the two. The point is that purse strings are tight at Yahoo. The news jibes with what we heard shortly after Yahoo reported its first quarter earnings in April, sources told us Yahoo was cutting back on travel expenses. Still, budgeted or no, sometimes Yahoo knows talent when it sees it and goes hard after it. How else to explain the email below?

PAUL BOUTIN — Once your hangover wears off, January 2 is the day to start your search for the Web 2.0 bubble job that'll finally, finally make you rich. First, you'll need to reconfigure your approach. A checklist for selling out after the jump.

• A compelling play-by-play of the goings-on at FOO Camp '06. We don't know about you, but starting the day watching Kevin Rose popping a zit at an Addictive Users seminar and ending with Moshe Cohen entertaining the masses with his zany clownish antics is well worth the privilege of being a Friend of O'Reilly. [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog]

Business 2.0 Magazine thinks you should recruit employees at Burning Man. They're wrong.

Hang with government informants! Bribe execs from Baidu! Microsoft, which recently lost the exec in charge of kicking Google's ass, is currently hunting for an official Google-fighting point man in China. This seems like a great chance to live out those power fantasies of your childhood in a market where competition means more than who has the better engineering department. In China, it's all about tattling on your competitor, jailing dissidents, and buying into the censorship culture. How refreshing after this mamby-pamby liberal Valley environment!