application form questions re religion and sexual orientation

poet123

Or because generally, schools ask the candidates to have an informal look around the school before the interview stage.

LittleVoice

sigrid wrote: »

it will be anonymous.... they'll take that part off and send it down river to the people who care about it it'll never have your name attached to those sheets. the way i see it is i have nothing to hide and dont care

But to really make use of the data in monitoring diversity in the workplace, names (or reference numbers for cross checking) need to be applied.

If they are removed at the start of the application process, all you know about from the forms are your applicants' categories. You don't know whether you then short-listed in line with the proportion of, say, white females applying. You don't know whether those offered jobs were disproportionately from, say, a black ethnic group.

My own observation (I admit from a limited number of organisations) is that the forms are indeed generally separated from the application forms, counted for some kind of diversity report and never used in any other way, useful or otherwise.

GrammarGirl

I always find this debate interesting, because I really have no problem with answering questions on my race or sexual orientation. It's no different to disclosing your marital status or age, really. None of these things should count towards or against a job application, and unless you have something to hide, why does it matter?

Just out of interest, do the government ever look at any of these application forms? I very much doubt it, so it's hardly a case of monitoring. I think some people read too much George Orwell!

Debt_Free_Chick

LittleVoice wrote: »

Or because all applicants were interviewed

And to prove that those interviewed weren't "filtered out" on race, gender, age, sexuality grounds ......... the company has details of those who applied.

LittleVoice

sigrid wrote: »

well you cant really use it anyway. its just a safeguard in case someone says your company isnt being fair and diverse.

But you could use the data if you processed it in the way I suggested could be done - to find out whether there appears to be a bias in short-listing or appointing.

For instance if you received 100 applicants for 5 jobs and 80 were from green minority people and 5 from blue people but only blue minority people were appointed, it would mean you needed to investigate why, for instance, no green people were appointed.

seven-day-weekend

poet123 wrote: »

Or because generally, schools ask the candidates to have an informal look around the school before the interview stage.

I think this is how they knew. There were not all that many applicants.

Debt_Free_Chick

LittleVoice wrote: »

But you could use the data if you processed it in the way I suggested could be done - to find out whether there appears to be a bias in short-listing or appointing.

For instance if you received 100 applicants for 5 jobs and 80 were from green minority people and 5 from blue people but only blue minority people were appointed, it would mean you needed to investigate why, for instance, no green people were appointed.

Exactly! That's why employers keep the data - to prove this is NOT the case

seven-day-weekend

What if only people from one particular group had all the requirements for interview? Are you supposed to interview someone from another group just so the sample is representative, even though they may not be a good candidate?

olly300

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Exactly! That's why employers keep the data - to prove this is NOT the case

But then they do nothing with it and/or deny they even collected it.

Debt_Free_Chick

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

What if only people from one particular group had all the requirements for interview? Are you supposed to interview someone from another group just so the sample is representative, even though they may not be a good candidate?

Not necessarily. If the employer can "objectively justify" that the excluded candidate was excluded on grounds other than race, gender, creed, sexuality, age etc etc then that's all they need to do.

I said earlier .... employers have to "prove a negative" i.e. prove that exclusion is NOT due to some discriminatory grounds.