When an online application asks you to volunteer your gender, race info…should you? Or, do you decline at this point in the process? I was wondering what the SD had to say about this and your reasoning behind your answer to this OP.
On one hand, they will find out sooner or later. But, OTOH, maybe later is better?
I guess the greater question is whether you really want to work for some place that cares about such things sooner or later…
The questions are legitimate, for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with discrimination, but plenty to do with EEO.
You can answer them and maybe get an interview. Or, you can refuse to answer them and be looked at as someone who’s not a team player and would likely be a problem employee. In that case, don’t hold your breath waiting for an interview.
I dunno. I have never felt strongly about it, so I answer.
Places in the US which have spent the effort to do it on-line are subject to Executive Order 11246. The company has a federal contract of a sufficient volume that they have to track their applicants. If you don’t answer, they are just dividing by a different denominator when they compute the ratio of selections/applicants.
All US companies with over 15 people are supposed to keep an applicant flow to document their compliance with the Uniform Guidelines for Employee Selection Procedures, but most non-federal contractors don’t focus on this*.
*California and a few other states YMMV
The gender/ethnicity data collected from applicants really is separate from the selection process. At most places, it is just a bookeeping activity required by the regulations.
I won’t comment on whatever selection bias may be present based on reading into “Firstname Lastname” in a stack of resumes.
Heartily agree with parsnip. The companies that ask are asking because they are required to ask and make the results available to the government. Your response, and in fact whether or not you choose to respond, are tracked completely separately from the decision-making process by any reasonably responsible company. This should be true even if a place still uses hardcopy applications, with the EEO info on a separate sheet.
You providing a true response helps the company, and the government if it comes to that, accurately assess how its recruiting and selection match up to the labor market at large. But your self-disclosure is completely voluntary.
These surveys show nothing about whether someone’s a team player - for many applicants, the hiring person shouldn’t know whether applicants not in a protected class did or did not complete the surve. I work in academia and while I’ve not worked on any hiring committees at MPOW, I did at FPOW, and I assume that the functions are similar:
We had no idea who completed the survey or for applicants who were not a member of a protected class or for members of a protected class who chose not to complete the survey. If a member of a protected class completed the survey, we received that information. Once this happened, we had to make sure that we documented that those applicants were given equal consideration as others not in one of the protected classes and explain why said applicants weren’t interviewed if they weren’t.
During a long career in which part of my duties involved hiring people, I always saw the entire application when choosing which applicants to select for interview. Incomplete applications were put in the “Dear John Letter” basket. I’d consider an application with EEO questions left blank as incomplete. YMMV.