If the hamsters aren’t telling, why do you think the lawyers and HRers will? 
Dammit.
Bad Hamster! No alfalfa!
Here we go:
Earlier today I sent a resume off to a bio-tech firm. They’re advertising…I’m looking.
I got this back:
Obviously a form letter of the auto-reply sort. Simple enough.
But that second paragraph caught my eye. What legal reason is there to seperate ‘applicants’ from ‘non-applicants’ in this manner?
I’ve done more than my share of hiring and none of my HR departments has ever cautioned me to do this sort of thing.
So…opinions?
It may have something to do with having to give statisitics about race, etc. of applicants to the government for it’s EOE status. If they don’t have you complete an application, they don’t have to count you in the potential pool of applicants.
StG
Two possibilities according to my HR-expert other half:
(i) Data protection. Different classifications indicate different levels of data protection – e.g in Europe there are different laws regarding retention of applicant details in case of legal appeals.
(ii) Legal cover. Differentiating between ‘invited applicants’ and ‘uninvited applicants’ covers a company against legal appeals from people who sent speculative applications and were rejected (i.e. they can’t say “why did person X get the job and not me?”).
Also, it probably says on their paperwork somewhere that they’re not allowed to ask you to pee in a cup for them unless you’re an applicant.
I’m not in HR any more, but I spent many years there, and StGermain is on the money. (Crusoe’s (b) matches, but StG was first. :p)
In my various HR stints, I participated in the review and revision of several companies’ employment applications. From that, I can confirm that carefully defining “applicant,” and specifying what that status exactly means, is an important aspect of protecting one’s ass. It’s particularly true for firms that do government contracting.
All that legalese is meant to convey is this: “You can mail us as much crap as you want, but until you complete an application, you aren’t considered an applicant.”
Especially with bio-tech firms, they may define you as an applicant in anticipation of having you sign a non-disclosure agreement. In some cases, companies do this even for the interviews, if it’s a highly sensitive area.
As a lawyer and HR person in a high-tech firm, I can back up what StG., Cervaise and AbeBabe have said. We differentiate between prospective applicants and actual applicants for EOE reporting (we are a government subcontractor) and our own statistics, for our own internal policy controls to determine how far into someone’s background we can delve, for drug (and for our lab techs, skills) testing, and to determine where we can take someone in our facility during an interview.