application form questions re religion and sexual orientation

Emmzi

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?

No. but HR might want a closer look at your shortlisting criteria and process.

They would want to ensure you hadn't started shortlisting out people on the basis of something you knew all the green/ blue people didn't have, just to get them out of the running, which wasn't an actual requirement of the job.

eg
- none of the blue poeple do touch typing
- you don't like blue people
- you shortlist on the basis of touch typing to ensure they don't get seen
- but the job is for a fork lift truck driver
- HR not happy and have a closer look at why all the greens have interviews

hope I have explained that ok :-)

Debt_Free_Chick

olly300 wrote: »

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

Yup - companies hire endless HR staff to maintain a conspiracy theory

The data collected is kept in accordance with the Data Protection regulations and can only be released in accordance with those regulations.

Emmzi

By the way - in every organisation I have worked in, the purpose of the form is explained.

The fact that provision of information is optional is explained.

The information does not go to the hiring manager, ever, at shortlisting or any other stage.

And the shortest forms I have ever seen were 10 years ago in Belfast. Tick box, protestant, catholic, other, that was all they were monitoring. I guess what we check on changes with the times and how society views itself in each era.

Savvy_Sue

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?

If you can legally justify placing limitations on the kind of people you will appoint, you can make that clear in your advertisements.

For example, I often see advertisements asking for someone who speaks one or other of the languages widely spoken in this city, which is reasonable if you need someone to work with a particular community group. Our charity only employs women, under (I think) Section 7 ii (e) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1972. And for some key leadership posts we can legitimately ask for someone of a particular faith.

woody01

Why are you moaning?
Are you are homosexual buddhist?
Or a lesbian muslim?

seven-day-weekend

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

If you can legally justify placing limitations on the kind of people you will appoint, you can make that clear in your advertisements.

For example, I often see advertisements asking for someone who speaks one or other of the languages widely spoken in this city, which is reasonable if you need someone to work with a particular community group. Our charity only employs women, under (I think) Section 7 ii (e) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1972. And for some key leadership posts we can legitimately ask for someone of a particular faith.

For example, we recently had a new Pastor for our church. So it was quite important to make sure the person chosen was a Christian!

He also happens to be a South African Asian. Plenty of 'minority' there! But that was immaterial to the post, whereas being a Chrisitan was essential.

ss70

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

If employers are supposed to consider people regardless of these things, then it is not necessary to ask them

That is what i think too.
I imagine if i was to ask the interviewer about his/her sexuality, religion and ethnicity. I would probably be told its none of my business and immediately shown the door! Which is how i feel when i am asked to fill in the forms...

surreysaver

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

If our Equal Ops monitoring forms indicated that we were only getting applications from white people, it would be time to consider advertising elsewhere.

So it would be okay if you were getting applications only from ethnic minorities, then?

Emmzi

surreysaver wrote: »

So it would be okay if you were getting applications only from ethnic minorities, then?

what do you think? I reckon you know the answer to this and might be being a teensy bit deliberately provocative ...;)

Savvy_Sue

Emmzi wrote: »

what do you think? I reckon you know the answer to this and might be being a teensy bit deliberately provocative ...;)

I think you're right, but ...

Taking the example of my own work, we do this exercise with our volunteers as well as our staff. Until a couple of years ago the vast majority of our volunteers were white. Slowly that's changing. For that reason I talked about starting from a predominantly white base.

We also monitor the age of our volunteers, and they're getting younger too. Since our client group tends to be younger than middle aged, that's helpful too.