The 3rd gender and forms of address

Dear Mr./Ms. …

But what about diversity? Gender-neutral forms of address and their use in the e-recruiting process.Following a resolution by the Bundestag, all registers of personnel must offer a third gender option as of 2019. Gender-neutrality in recruiting is important to avoid being suspected of discrimination as an employer. As a software provider, our e-recruiting solutions also respond to this need for a third gender. While a large amount of information and tips are already available in relevant media and blogs on formulating gender-neutral job advertisements, how to use gender-neutral forms of address can be a complicated question.

Salutations

As of yet, there is no commonly accepted form of address in correspondence on which to base the search for a best practice. There are, likewise, no statutory requirements. Therefore, we have gathered multiple possible forms of address for use if a gender-neutral salutation is desired:

Option 1

If it is not possible or desirable to offer a third salutation option, the salutation can be eliminated entirely. While this might not sound very personal, it is functional. For example:

Hello, thank you very much for your application. We will now review your documents and respond to you as quickly as possible.

Thank you very much for your application. We will now review your documents and respond to you as quickly as possible.”

Option 2

If you know the individual’s first name, you can formulate a gender-neutral salutation, for instance, as follows: “Hello Jane Doe” or “Good day, John Doe”. This also works in other languages, for instance “Hallo Jane Doe”.

Thank you very much for your application, Elena Example. We will now review your documents and respond to you as quickly as possible.”

Option 3

You can also use the reason for the e-mail as a greeting, adding the name afterwards if necessary. As in these examples:

Thank you very much for your application, Elena Example. We will now review your documents and respond to you as quickly as possible.”

Thank you very much for your message, Tim Test. I would be happy to respond to your questions on the payment of travel expenses…

Your password has been reset, Fred Forgetful. Please click this link …

In recruiting / applicant management software

This is how we handle it in the BeeSite Recruiting Edition digital process:

Selection field salutation or gender

The salutation is not a mandatory field, if offered in the online application, but can be left empty if desired. The associated selection list for salutation can include the values

“Mr.” “Ms.” and “no information”

If there is a selection list for sex, it can include not only

“male” and “female”, but also “no information” or at least the word “diverse”

If desired or elevant for filling the position, further detail can be added with words like

“trans” or “intersex”

The first name

The individual’s first name can be requested as a mandatory field, for instance for use in a salutation as indicated in the examples above. However, if you want to avoid potential accusations of discrimination in advance, you can certainly set the

first name

field to optional. However, if the first name is part of core master data, a check for duplicates or similar functions in the recruiting process, this should be reviewed in advance and adjusted if necessary to ensure these functions are not impacted.

E-mail correspondence

Place holders can reflect the selected gender-neutral form of address. The system automatically replaces the greetings and enters the relevant values and names for each cover letter. The rest of the e-mail is also kept gender neutral. We avoid formulations like

Thank you for your application for the salesman position

Instead, we write

Thank you for your application to the position indicated above

If it is not possible to avoid gender-neutral terms, you can add a star (*) or underscore (_) to indicate that both men and women are included in the address. However, from a functional standpoint this is only necessary in a few cases. However, we recommend taking time to revise not only job advertisements but the text used in e-mail correspondence.