When I apply for a job online, often at the end of the process I am asked two questions; one about my Ethnicity and the other about my Gender.
In all cases it states that I have the option NOT to answer these questions, and as I understand it the answers I give cannot be used in any way as part of the selection process.
This leads me to wonder why do they even ask these questions? If it doesn’t matter what I answer and they can’t use that information anyway, why bother to ask?
To guess, I would say that it would greatly enhance any letters that they would send you.
I’ve been in charge of correspondence with applicants before, and it can be a bit awkward if they have an unusual/gender neutral name. You would then have to send the letter addressed to ‘Dear Pat Adams’ instead of the ‘Dear Mr. Adams’ that the rest of the applicants are getting.
I am not an HR person, but one reason I can think of, if the employer is under some obligation to show they are attempting to hire more minorities and/or females, (or show they are not presenting any obstacles to such job candidates), they may need this information to be able to say, for instance: We had 30 people apply for this position, of those, 25 replied to the questions about gender and enthnicity. Of the 25, 19 said they were male, 23 said they were white. The job was offered to the best candidate, who happened to be a white male. Again, I don’t know if this sort of thing even goes on, but it seems to me, this could be why they ask.
Satch
Some employers are required to track and report this information. Others may do so, to be armed against charges of employment discrimination. In their response letter, they can give statistics about their applicant pool, in the manner described by Satchmo.
That’s part of it, but regardless of whether the company is under some obligation to hire more minorities or women (and I’m unaware of a circumstance where this is the case since quotas are illegal) many companies recognize their interest in having a diverse workforce and so use this information to increase and traget their recruitment efforts with an eye to hiring more people of color or men/women.
As I understand it, it is equally illegal to apply positive discrimination (at least in the UK). Our HR department requires such information to be sent separately (hard copy) where it is filed largely for the reasons Satchmo states earlier. However, there isn’t a quota, it’s purely so they can prove that their advertisements target a selection of gender and ethnicity to ensure that they have a better chance of getting the right person for the job, regardless of colour, gender, etc.
In the US it’s not illegal to engage in “affirmative action” to increase minority employment as long as the AA plan is well-defined in its goals and temporary. The information is kept separate from other application material and is voluntary on the part of the applicant.
dolphinboy, I have edited the title of this thread. In the future please try to choose more descriptive titles.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
It’s almost certainly also so there’s a decent stack of evidence if a case of discrimination is brought against the company…not having any form of anonymous monitoring of ethnic backgrounds is likely to look very bad in an employment tribunal.