A job advert for a French design company calling for a rigorous, organised, highly motivated but "if possible, not Jewish" candidate has sparked outrage.
The posting for Paris-based NSL Studio got through web moderators on a design jobs website before it was spotted and taken down after 35 minutes.
An angry jobseeker posted a screenshot on Facebook, The Guardian reported.
The ad asked for someone with a sense of hard work who is "not Jewish"
The French anti-racism group SOS Racisme says it is investigating a complaint, but accusations of anti-Semitism are growing.
@NSL_studio Shocking
— Adrian Chatfield (@AdrianChatfield) February 3, 2015
The design studio has given mixed explanations. It has apologised twice, claiming that it was "hacked" and didn't know anything about the advert. It said it is investigating what happened.
But French magazine Les Inrocks quoted an unnamed staff member at NSL telling it the ad wasn't discriminatory that the "no Jews" requirement was to ensure that it didn't hire anyone affected by “religious or cultural” worries.
NSL issued statement on Facebook saying that it "dissociates itself totally from any act or racist propaganda/anti-semites" and claiming the agency "does not discriminate".
[Post Translated From French]
The post said the agency didn't know how the words had come to be in the job advert and that it would take "necessary steps" if the person responsible was revealed to be close to the company.
On Tuesday afternoon it posted a second statement firmly denying any connection to the advert and that it had filed "a complaint with the prosecutor's office of the Republic of Paris".
It said the promotion was "alien" to the company and added that it believes in the "passion and creativity" of its staff, no matter what their background was.
The advert appeared on a French jobs website
The job advert appeared on February 2 on the website graphic-jobs.com, which advertises jobs in multimedia, publishing and printing.
Graphic-jobs.com said in a statement [Translated From French]:
"Following the announcement of employment aired yesterday, we strongly condemn the nature of the content published by the agency NSL Studio. It is in stark contrast with the values we stand for.
We have a team of moderators who daily read, check and validate more than 300 ads. Among them, more than 50 are routinely rejected and not distributed. This is sadly passed through the control. It ran for about 35 minutes before being removed by our staff upon taking knowledge.
We wish to introduce our deepest apologies for the distribution of this announcement. We transferred the items to our lawyer to investigate the judicial action. The control system is always perfectible, we will now strengthen the control of advertisements by additional procedures."
The job ad came after fears of a "Jewish exodus" from France in the wake of a rise in anti-semitic attacks, including a siege that left four hostages dead at a Kosher deli in Paris during the brutal Charlie Hebdo terrorism attacks.