It won't be used by HR teams as generally those responses aren't matched to your application. Instead the are grouped together to help see if there is any bias in the hiring process. E.g if 50% of your applicants are black but you have only 5% of your employees are black there is a problem somewhere
Could you please elaborate?
Let's say the breakdown is:
|Category|% of applications|% hired|
|:-|:-|:-|
|A|20|66.6|
|B|10|33.3|
|won't disclose|40|0|
|Total|100|100|
Note that here I am assuming a categorisation by visible categories, like age, ethnicity, etc, so there are no 'undisclosed' among the hired. Clearly this doesn't apply for characteristics like religion or sexual orientation.
How do you read this if you don't know the composition of the "won't disclose" category?
If won't disclose is: 26.6A and 13.3 B, then the "won't disclose" has the same distribution as the disclosed category, and the results are representative: group A accounted for 2/3 of the applicant and for 2/3 of the hires
Let's take a hypothetical, extreme example and assume that the "won't disclose" are all Bs. Now we have Bs accounting for half the applicants, but only 1/3 of the hires.
If instead the undisclosed are all As, we have As accounting for 60% of the applicants and 66.6% of the hires - a slight over-representation, but how statistically significant will depend on the circumstances.
Again, if you don't know the breakdown of the undisclosed bucket, what kind of inference can you possibly draw???
Also so they can offer reasonable adjustments at interview. Sometimes they will allow someone with dyslexia to see the questions just before the interview, or provide support for someone who is deaf etc.
This logic doesn't make any sense to me. How can someone eliminate bias by adding more information and introducing behaviour that alters choice based on this information? Isn't that what bias is?
For instance one supposed to toss a coin 100 times. For the first 50 it's truly random, they don't even see the result of the tosses or can affect the outcome. Then they are told it's not really the expected random, there are too many heads vs tails. And they are asked to toss the coin differently so the expected randomness is restored. Doesn't make any sense.
Eliminating bias can't happen with revealing more information that affects the outcome. The opposite should be done. Not that this information should not be shared, but somehow we should eliminate judging candidates by anything else but their performance. In a way that the people evaluating candidates don't know the name, gender, age or anything else about the candidates like anonymous tests.
Unfortunately I don't see companies hiring buying into my ideas. But that doesn't make your argument more valid.
Except hiring is an inherently biased process. The interviewers will have pre-conceived biases, even without realising it, that could affect their hiring decision. The people who screen CVs will have biases, hence why many immigrant families choose to give their children "white" names as "ethnic" names can greatly reduce your chances of being hired for certain jobs. It's not random like a coin toss would be.
Usually everyone who gets past the initial stages will have the qualifications that make them suitable for the job, and it's their personality (or extra skills or the interviewer's gut feelings etc.) that influences the final decision in who gets hired. At this point, the outcome is all dependent on that subconscious bias and it could go to anyone. If it consistently goes to people of a certain race/gender over another, when they are all equally capable (not just white over poc, it could also go for an academic only hiring researchers from their home country over locals - this being a specific example that I've heard happen at a nearby university), then there is a problem there.
The information isn't used to affect the hiring process for a specific job as it's happening. It's used to check that the staff hired are representative of the applicant group. If it shows that the diversity of hires are proportional to the ratio of applicants, then the hiring process is unbiased. If it's not proportional, then further inquiries can be made.
>The people who screen CVs will have biases, hence why many immigrant families choose to give their children "white" names as "ethnic" names can greatly reduce your chances of being hired for certain jobs.
it doesn't take a lot to know that Kevin Patel and Richard Chen are Indian and Chinese respectively.
>Except hiring is an inherently biased process. The interviewers will have pre-conceived biases, even without realising it, that could affect their hiring decision. The people who screen CVs will have biases, hence why many immigrant families choose to give their children "white" names as "ethnic" names can greatly reduce your chances of being hired for certain jobs. It's not random like a coin toss would be.
Unfortunately in the current world it is as you say. Imagine a world where companies conducting interviews were regulated and they werent given the information about applicants that are not relevant to the job.
>Usually everyone who gets past the initial stages will have the qualifications that make them suitable for the job,
So the rest is completely pointless, and it should end there.
To be clear I can see that what I am saying is not feasible today, but my point is I don't believe that unfairness and inequality can be tackled by taking even more information into account about people that differentiates them in a way that shouldn't even be considered.
>The information isn't used to affect the hiring
maybe not directly, but it will create company policies etc, and those are again created by people who we know are biased and subjective. What else would it be used for?
Some banks/etc have started doing ‘blind’ hiring - whereby things like name, age and even university is removed from the application before it goes in front of the hirer.
Of course at some stage, the interviewee will be met in person and their characteristic will become evident, but anecdotally anyway, my mom (who works at such a place) has noticed a definite increase in people of different ethnicities being hired. Women was less of an issue so not sure if that’s really changed.
I know some a company that has a target of 50% women in their workplace by 2030. Problem is, women are not 50% of the population in the classroom or applicant pool.
If you realise you only hire people of one race you might introduce anonymising software that takes names off applications. If only one gender is passing interview you might make it so that panels have to have at least one person from each gender. If applicants from state comps aren't getting interviews you might change your process software redacts schools on CVs.
It's more like you look at the results of the 50 coin tosses, and if there's been 45 heads come up, you want to have a look at the coin and the person tossing it to see why.
The demographic details aren't shared with anyone in the hiring process. They're removed before the applications are sent to screeners or hiring managers. Which seems to be what you're suggesting!
Although, obviously they're usually easy to guess at during interviews.
I used to work as an admin in HR and those questions never made it to anyone doing the hiring. We as admin would remove them from applications before they reached anyone hiring and then we put the data into a spreadsheet with no names or anything attached to it. Not sure how it would be done now with most things being online, but I imagine the same is true, the data doesn't make it to the hiring manager
That's so interesting! The only thing I put prefer not to say is religion.
I'm so white im basically translucent so no way I cant put anything but the truth. I'm biologically female and have a male partner, I think gender and sexuality should have no relation to hiring so I'm just honest (sexuality skews towards bi but cba with questions). I kind of struggle with religion though. I'm on the surface atheist but I think religion is so interesting, I'd rather not just say no?
Yes. Places want to have the best people for the job and if any group of people seems to have difficulties then you aren't going to be hiring the best possible.
I don't know if it is the way you've worded your sentence or if I am dumb but I don't understand your sentiment. Are you saying if any one group has difficulty accessing a workplace it is seen as an issue.
Yes. For the simple reason that if 5% of applications are black and 50% of employees are black it is almost certain that a lot of the best applicants aren't getting the jobs.
I recently applied to join an additional working group where I work (large organisation). The application form had a box to answer a question, and a section on the same page that not only asked for protected characteristics such as these, but also strongly encouraged applicants to tick any that apply as the management want to ensure a 'diverse' group of people in this working group.
Like OP I usually skip these types of questions. But in this case there were no boxes for male, white, or straight. So by not ticking, despite the information that it will benefit an application, one would be giving a high implication of being white, male and straight. Forceful divulgence.
Is this legal?
Whilst this would be nice, it isn't necessarily true.
I've been involved in processes where both all-female and all-non-white shortlists have been used to boost "diversity" quotas.
A "prefer not to say" application would have been rejected as not fitting the shortlist requirements.
That said, OP probably isn't any worse off since white and/or male would likely have guaranteed a rejection too!
Are you trying to argue that because someone technically shouldn't happen I've somehow misremembered fundamental aspects of multiple recruitment's processes over several years?
I'm just saying that it's illegal in the UK. Doing this creates a risk of both financial and reputational damage that far outweighs the potential "benefits" compared to simply improving recruitment practices to comply with both the law and good practice.
Any manager who suggests this is very stupid. Any business owner that endorses it is criminally stupid.
Most employers - even some of the really stupid ones I've worked for over the years - understand that this is the case. So whilst your experience is just your experience, statistically speaking, this simply doesn't happen in the UK.
That's not too say that there isn't discrimination and bias in recruitment. There is. Lots of it. But this kind of systematic, organised, explicit discrimination in pursuit of "quotas"* simply isn't a thing in UK recruitment.
*Where a protected characteristic is an objectively justified requirement for a role, such as a priest needing to be Christian or a women's refuge manager needing to be a woman, or the actor for a specific role needing to be a particular race, age or gender, that's not about quotas.
Where an unethical employer favours women from racial minorities because they are easier to manipulate, that's not about quotas.
Where a manager favours white men because he finds working with anyone else confusing and awkward, that's not quotas.
There are exceptions to this is rare cases where groups of employees are historically under representing groups. The usual example is when recruiting for Board or Non-Executive Director roles, where an employer may decide that the prevalence of Men Called David needs to be addressed. In these cases, employers may restrict recruitment to women or people of non-white heritage for what is usually termed a "proportionate measure for a legitimate business objective", but it is not a step taken without risk and not being up front about the expectations and limitations would only increase that risk.
This is wildly optimistic view of things.
It happens, at scale, openly, across large FTSE100 global companies. And I'm saying that from personal experience of recruitment in such firms and widespread similar experiences from colleagues in other, similarly sized, firms in my industry and adjacent industries.
D&I metrics directly impact people's performance and renumeration, and form part of regulatory reportable information, and that includes having to have specific actions plans to hire the "right" people to meet D&I targets where we are below "benchmarks."
(And to clarify by "quota" I mean I have had a specific % number in my scorecard that my team must have X% BAME / female employees. Likewise the firm has similar metrics which are reported to our regulators. And "we missed it because the best candidate was a white male" is not an acceptable response).
Theres several companies in the industry I work for who try to hire 50/50 those who identify as male female (in an industry that is 97% male in this specific profession). Surely they are looking at this?
>Theres several companies in the industry I work for who try to hire 50/50 those who identify as male female (in an industry that is 97% male in this specific profession). Surely they are looking at this?
No. Because 50/50 isn't even a thing that is fact.
Sex isn't a 50/50 dichotomy. Neither is gender.
I mean 50% men, 50% women, when most companies in my industry have 2-10 of my profession, its often is a clean 50/50 for these companies. Of course this is a rough generalisation, they will vary in the way you suggest, and other ways at times.
Whilst this would be nice, it isn't necessarily true.
I've been involved in processes where both all-female and all-non-white shortlists have been used to boost "diversity" quotas.
A "prefer not to say" application would have been rejected as not fitting the shortlist requirements.
That said, OP probably isn't any worse off since white and/or male would likely have guaranteed a rejection too!
Edit: To various people going "oh no thats illegal!" ..maybe, doesn't change it does happen, and happens quite openly. So telling OP that there is no downside to "prefer not to say" is flat out wrong.
This fits with my experiences of how our recruitment team seems to operate, and given the various initiatives in progress it makes sense.
A lot of the HR pros seem to imply this could/would never happen.
Indeed - it *shouldn't* happen, but the reality is it does, and does so quite blatantly. When you give leadership and management direct quotas to reach X % female / BAME staff, and that requires close to 100% of recruitment to be from those groups, all-X shortlists are an obvious, and efficient way to get there.
Practically, its also a better use of people's time. One of the most painful post-interview conversations I've ever had to have was with a white male candidate who had done a fantastic interview and was clearly the stand out candidate, but was nevertheless being rejected in favour of an ethnic-minority female, because I'd been directly told our team was too white-male and I *had* to hire a girl.
Had to decide between being honest with him that he hadn't got the job because of institutional misandry, or somehow pretend he was a weaker candidate that the *obviously* weaker female candidate we ended up hiring (who, predictably, was a disaster).
>Had to decide between being honest with him that he hadn't got the job because of institutional misandry, or somehow pretend he was a weaker candidate that the *obviously* weaker female candidate we ended up hiring (who, predictably, was a disaster).
Out of nosiness, how did you explain it to him? I can't think of any way to give the first explanation without creating some problems!
Officially I gave him some standard interview feedback on areas he could have improved,
Unofficially since I knew them well enough to have a "down the pub" conversation after work I said when they saw who we'd hired he'd understand why. Which, considering he works in a similar field and is well aware of D&I targets, when we announced the successful candidate I'm sure he put 2 and 2 together.
Demographic information is anonymised and not attached to your application, so it can’t be used by the hiring team. I am always quite comfortable answering them myself, as an HR professional I understand why they’re being asked and I want to contribute to the data. But equally it’s not mandatory, no one is going to chase you down if you put prefer not to say.
That's interesting. I suspect that is the intent at my current employer, but have no evidence.
Our last HRBP told me before she left that our department was seen as a problem because we are 'too white and too male, so you throw all the stats off'.
That's the reason I don't give that information.
If I asked HR I am sure they would give me the same response as most people here, that the data is never used in that way and it's just for reporting purposes. Human nature is what it is though, and if you give someone a target they will bend whatever rules they can to make it work.
not a lawyer but i'd imagine if they're picking candidates because of certain characteristics then they're not picking other candidates because of said characteristics, which could count as discrimination
In my workplace, we as hiring managers/interviewers do not see that information. I'd actually be more worried if they didn't collect it, as it would show lack of interest in ensuring their hiring practices are fair.
I would also assume that companies know what kinda support groups and workshops to run as well?
So, if you find you have a lot of neurodivergent employees, that info can be used to plan for awareness, support groups, workshops to ensure the environment enables them to thrive etc.
I see your point. But, surely not collecting that information would lead to fairer practices as the company would be hiring 'blind', essentially, with no information with which to form a bias?
Not quite - if you do t collect it, you just don’t know if your recruitment practices, places you advertise and language you use are hitting as wide range of candies as you want/need to.
If they are not, you’ll get ‘more of the same’ instead of good range of candies best for the job.
So having diversity data is incredibly helpful to assess it. Some companies might also want (or be obliged) to publish reports on this data and/or how it compares to the actual work does hired.
Unless they strip out the applicants name, previous organizations and universities (which my workplace doesn't), it's fairly easy for shortlistera to make assumptions of someones gender, and often ethnicity or nationality too. If they strip out all that detail, then maybe there's a better chance of truly 'blind' recruitment. Until then though it seems sensible to report on DEI stats.
These are to ensure that there is a minimum bias in the recruitment process (as another comment mentioned - if you have high number of applications for a particular group, but low employment rate of those groups - something is wrong) and that advertising/recruitment reaches broad groups of people.
Some companies/corporations might be also obliged formally or informally to publish annual reports on how their recruitment practices vs employment groups changed and act on possible outcomes and recommendations - which they can't without those stats.
Any semi-modern ATS (application tracking system), will keep these automatically separated from your CV/application to avoid risk of discrimination.
This makes sense, but if there are 100 people apply for a job and it is shortlisted to interview only 10 then at that stage the shortlisters shouldn’t know the gender/race/sexual orientation of the people so in theory there wouldn’t be anything wrong with picking 10 white straight males?
Surely it only works if you are physically seeing 10 candidates and then only gender or race can be assumed to be an “iffy” area for selection.
Unless your HR team removed identifying data from applications (e.g. name, name of previous organizations worked for, university etc), it's often easy to make enough assumptions of someone's gender and ethnic background for bias to slip in. In an ideal world, that would be stripped out of applications too.
It will be analysed at a later stage. If they see that, after analysing the data over some time and with other data sets like application demographics, every time the shortlist favours straight white men while the application rates show a much more diverse pool of applicants and only 10% are straight white men, then there is likely to be bias in the application that favours candidates from these backgrounds.
If that's the case, then you're not getting the best talent. The data and case studies have shown that people from diverse backgrounds make the most effective workforces. For instance, having people from different backgrounds mean you're better able to cater to a more diverse base of customers. There are studies that show diverse workforces mean more innovation and adaptability so it makes good business to have a diverse workforce. This is why they want to eliminate bias in the recruitment process so that they can reap the advantages of this.
>erroneous
In what sense? I am not sure if you mean, I made an error (English is not my first language) or that I don't know what I am talking about and made assumptions/provided incorrect information (but I did a few years of hardcore recruitment, so maybe we have a different experience).
Not answering won’t impact you negatively at all, it’s mostly used as a reporting data point for DEI initiatives. In most cases recruiters/individual hiring managers wouldn’t even have access to see the data on a job-by-job basis.
Source - working inside Talent acquisition / HR teams at 3 major investment banks and subsequently consulting to Fortune 500s.
We know that around 60-75% of applicants for any of a set of roles have been white males historically, so when we get 100% non-white or 100% non-male shortlists it does seem fishy.
Interesting. In Canada those types of questions, along with martial status, are not permitted to be asked as part of the hiring process. To ripe for discrimination.
They’re not used in the personnel hiring process itself, but to evaluate a companies overall hiring processes to make sure there isn’t bias impacting their hiring practises.
I hate these questions. I’m transgender and don’t want potential employers to know about that, but answering “prefer not to say” when asked “Is the gender you identify as the same as your sex assigned at birth?” is an answer in itself.
They aren't suppose to be, but they are. The company I used to work for had a habit of only passing on CV's that were from women and / or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community to an alarming degree.
Much like most hiring managers I only wanted the most suitable and qualified individuals for the roles, the majority of which were with the Systems Engineering capability.
Engineering is a heavily male dominated environment, and I would like to see balance there, but when the only CV's passed on are in the aforementioned "categories" it tends to make me raise a quizzical eyebrow.
I’ve seen this used at a global company before to be able to track if they’re hitting diversity quotas for certain positions.
I was told by a recruitment colleague in my company that I was waiting for feedback on a internal job interview for 6 weeks because they needed an external female candidate to apply before they could progress the job req.
This was 2017 so probably got canned when they realised how ridiculous it was, and not many women were interested in become an IT Audit Admin on shit money (yes, this was still a step up for me)
This is a story as old as time but “if” it is being used to fill quotas it can harm or hurt you. My friend a straight white male christian was a special for the Met. He allied twice to be a full time officer and got nowhere. Following some advice he was a prefer not to say white prefer not to say prefer not to say and he was accepted for training. No idea if any of that made a difference obviously.
It's a misuse of statistics. If there is a correlation between % of colour in general population and % of hires in a specialised job vacancy, that would be suspicious. You do realise that there are a lot more white people in the UK than people of colour and do there is a higher proportion of white people in employment?
Are you in HR? I'm assuming not as its a daft question.
That data is gathered so orgs can understand the demographics of applicants. Data can be used to see if certain talent pools aren't being tapped into, may be shared with gov agencies in certain sectors.
Selecting a combo of "white/hetero/male" doesn't mean you aren't selected, unless there's a genuine occupational requirement (such as roles that provide personal care)
Lmao reading this while I’m currently processing a buttload of sponsorship applications to stop my staff getting deported and having their lives uprooted, but apparently I add no value. Thanks!
I just stopped four people from being made redundant, resisted being bullied by the manager who did not want to accept one into their team, and lost about 1,5 months of sleep to make things work for them and the business (all of which was a job in the background, so no one will appreciate how much effort, overtime and sweat went into this, and that is ok - I know), but apparently, that is also not a real job that adds value. Oh well.
OP - you might not have a good experience with HR, but don't poop on the people in these roles.
You can’t really blame us for not reading it as a joke when we are very used to people constantly talking shit about us entirely seriously, tone can easily be misconstrued. But thanks for clarifying!
Whenever I see someone ask this question they nearly always turn out to be white men who think they're discriminated against in the workplace. I'm not sure I've ever heard this question from someone who actually faces discrimination in the workplace simply on the basis of their gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
I do fine thanks.
It's fascinating that, after seeing the sarcastic response to my original post, rather than seeing my post as an equally sarcastic jab back, you take personal offense.
It's for EDI reporting. It helps us get a clear picture of who is being hired and if there are any stats that seem a bit... dodgey.
For example, if a team has 10 women and 1 man but 10 women and 20 men apply for a recent job, we may want to see if there's some unconscious bias taking place. May not be so, but it's always good to check.
Everywhere I've ever worked they have been separate. I have never seen an individual's demographic data, and as the hiring manager I can't even access it. I have seen some aggregated demographic data ie anonymised, combined data. We don't even see the linked data eg the same person who said they were white other also said they were Muslim.
If you're applying through any kind of website/portal/system this data will automatically be separated. If you're applying for a small place by email with attachments, maybe not.
I deal with applications in my job, we're a very small place - 5 employees. The equalities forms we include in our job packs are removed by me before I pass on the applications for shortlisting. Nobody but me ever sees the completed forms. Of course other places may not be as strict, but we take it very seriously.
This is exactly my worry.
We have had all-female and all-minority shortlists come through from HR, which seems suspicious for roles where generally about 75% of applicants would be white male. Clearly they can get that information from the CV anyway but if they are going to discriminate I'd rather not make their lives easy.
I have heard (admittedly apocryphally and without like, scientific data) that certain demographics are more likely to apply for jobs they are vastly underqualified for, which I did see borne out when I was working in HR, so I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the picks for interview have been chosen *exclusively* to help change demographics. I think it's extremely unlikely that more qualified applicants aren't sent to interview just because they're eg. white or male, it certainly wasn't a thing during my time.
Edit: added "more likely to" because I wasn't paying attention at first post.
Such as lack of job opportunities due to check box exercise applications, being called racist just for being born white, having no access to grants or money based only on colour but carry on telling me how whites have it so easy
Whites are (in no particular order)....
Paid more
Less likely to be incarcerated
Less likely to be excluded from school
Make up the vast majority of the ruling class
Make up the vast majority of CEOs
Less likely to be sectioned
Care to share your source on where you get this from? Also the ruling class and CEO is just laughable considering it's a majority white country, the shock of nationals making up the top 10% of earners and position, but I know people like you won't be happy until white people are in chains in their own nation. Also how many white people are in high earning positions in Africa or middle east? Probably pretty low considering they aren't the majority race there but that's likely too logical for you.
Equity.
Grants and funds to help those in communities who are at greater disadvantage, to help them move somewhere towards an even starting block.
Plenty of funds out there to help disadvantaged white kids too, if you look for them
Would love to see examples (evidence) of the first 2 claims, being called racist for being white is not a normal thing. And evidence/experiments still show that having non-white sounding names puts you at an automatic massive disadvantage in job seeking.
Intersectionality is important and tbh in these times a lot of people of all backgrounds are struggling, however its an undeniable fact that there are several important areas of life where not being white puts you at a disadvantage.
Nowhere does that say that white people have an automatic easy ride in life or that no non white person has a better quality of life than the worst off white person. Just on average, non white people have more barriers to overcome.
Companies usually have a guaranteed interview if you're disabled. They 100% are used as a diversity hire but they can see most of it during the interview
This is nonsense. These data are not used for "diversity hiring" and no, in any company with a half functioning HR, they can't see any of it during the interview or any stage of the recruitment process.
Exactly..not many places have half functionig HRs, I've interviewed people and had their full application form in front of me with all the ethnicity, gender, etc, one place I worked had what reasonable adjustments people had been given at previous workplaces. Their height and weight.
We would basically just tick boxes about their experience, one place would be from 1-10, if their was a non british woman that we gave a 5 and a white man we gave a 9, the non british woman got the job. Its not discrimination as the team was 90% white men and they were trying to improve their gender pay reports
>Their height and weight.
Either you're using a very niche sector where someone would need to provide their height and weight as part of an application, in which case I would expect that information to be shared, to try and make some invalid and bad faith generalisation or you're talking bullshit.
No one is asking height and weight in demographic data forms. Nor are they collecting demographic data in the interview. I'm guessing you've never run an interview, what you're describing would be a breach of GDPR and almost certainly would lead to complaints to ACAS as any company running interviews this way is leaving themselves wide open to discrimination claims. It's also self-evidently true that collecting data in interviews can't tell you anything about your gender pay gap. This is stupid. Your gender pay gap is calculated by looking at the salaries of existing employees. Dear lord. The methodology is defined by government.
I work in engineering, there's a physical test at most of the jobs i've worked where they also take your height and weight.
100% it goes against gdpr, good luck making a complaint against it. Again this is going with "half functioning hr" which is extremely rare especially in big companies.
As I said, you're applying a bad faith argument to make some point about demographic data collection.
Height and weight is not part of demographic data collection and you were gathering it as part of a necessary process specific to your situation. It's totally unrelated and irrelevant to the conversation at hand - the collection of demographic data in applications.
You work in engineering, so I'll give you some leeway on the poor HR functions as engineering is notorious for bad people process, poor practice, and discrimination. However, I can assure you, the way engineering companies operate is not how the majority of other companies operate. If there's a spectrum of practice, I'd put law and engineering at the far end of bad practice. You're at the bottom, most other companies are doing better than that.
But your point about good luck making a complaint. ACAS and employment tribunals don't need you to have a functioning HR to find against you.
So it was all one form, height, weight, ethnicity, gender. I would just get the whole application form with everything in it. I would also not need to know height or weight, that should've been handled by hr.
I have only ever interviewed in engineering so maybe it is our hrs are just bad.
I know what you mean about acas but first you need to know I have everything, I'm not saying that in an interview - that would also be hr which is normally outsourced, so I didn't breach your data. But on top of that prove you weren't hired because I had that info.
I can attest to this, too. My 'dimensions' have been taken during the interviewing process. Usually for equipment purposes and all the required health checks.
On the gender pay gap aswell hiring women in engineering roles in an en engineering company (the purpose of the interview is to hire that person) would reduce the pay gap where there aren't as many women in the higher paid roles because it's male dominated and clerical roles where most of the women are are lower paid.
Not sure if you edited your comment, only saw that bit when someone else commented.
Not quite, but if the company have a disability fair pledge, a disabled person must be considered for an interview as long as they meet the minimum criteria of the role (where the benchmark might be 'we only interview the candidates who scored as a minimum 3x high and 1x medium on their competency/skills). If it is evidenced they did not meet the criteria - no interview.
The disability (or any other) information is typically not provided to the managers at the short-listing stage to avoid bias one way or another.
I have interviewed people who haven't met the criteria and when I've asked hr why they sent them for an interview it was under the guaranteed interview scheme.. which basically just meant they said they had a disability and wanted a guaranteed interview.
This just means that your HR or shortlisting managers don’t understand how this scheme works OR even worse, don’t follow their guidance/requirements on purpose (to increase the interview stats in company favour) - both are equally wrong.
Minimal criteria must be met or it’s waste of everyone’s time (including the applicant). Hopefully sooner or later this will lead to questioning metrics accuracy - if you interview people who should fail shortlisting, so their chance of getting work are none, any audit will lead to questions as to why there’s so little disabled candidates hires, when there is a decent number of interviews.
Yeah. I have a couple of them.
One black, one white. Im all for equality in my bikesexuality.
Plus, one of them is british and the other Japanese.
(R1 and Street triple 765rs)
Tell me more about the R1 - which model year? I’ve got an ‘08 FZ1, it’s a bit of an understated bike really so i go kinda un-noticed. A few suspension upgrades later and it’s a great bike
I once got sacked from a job reapplied a week later at the time there was no trans I checked the gay box got interview from my old boss.he tapped the box on the form at the end and said what's this you have a wife I said equal opportunitys we laughed he said start on monday.i also did this for a council job got refused 7 times the 8 time I ticked trans got interview worked there for five years always tick that box
In my life I have received plenty of aspersions that I am a racist because of the colour of my skin. Despite having black friends. Very upsetting. Black on white racism exists, I've seen it first hand.
My partner's family are of white-Irish stock, and in the early twentieth century they received much racism. White on white racism still exists today.
It won't be used by HR teams as generally those responses aren't matched to your application. Instead the are grouped together to help see if there is any bias in the hiring process. E.g if 50% of your applicants are black but you have only 5% of your employees are black there is a problem somewhere
That only works if the people who refuse to answer are a representative sample of the applicants.
If you understand stats you don't work in HR
That's not correct.
Could you please elaborate? Let's say the breakdown is: |Category|% of applications|% hired| |:-|:-|:-| |A|20|66.6| |B|10|33.3| |won't disclose|40|0| |Total|100|100| Note that here I am assuming a categorisation by visible categories, like age, ethnicity, etc, so there are no 'undisclosed' among the hired. Clearly this doesn't apply for characteristics like religion or sexual orientation. How do you read this if you don't know the composition of the "won't disclose" category? If won't disclose is: 26.6A and 13.3 B, then the "won't disclose" has the same distribution as the disclosed category, and the results are representative: group A accounted for 2/3 of the applicant and for 2/3 of the hires Let's take a hypothetical, extreme example and assume that the "won't disclose" are all Bs. Now we have Bs accounting for half the applicants, but only 1/3 of the hires. If instead the undisclosed are all As, we have As accounting for 60% of the applicants and 66.6% of the hires - a slight over-representation, but how statistically significant will depend on the circumstances. Again, if you don't know the breakdown of the undisclosed bucket, what kind of inference can you possibly draw???
Also so they can offer reasonable adjustments at interview. Sometimes they will allow someone with dyslexia to see the questions just before the interview, or provide support for someone who is deaf etc.
This logic doesn't make any sense to me. How can someone eliminate bias by adding more information and introducing behaviour that alters choice based on this information? Isn't that what bias is? For instance one supposed to toss a coin 100 times. For the first 50 it's truly random, they don't even see the result of the tosses or can affect the outcome. Then they are told it's not really the expected random, there are too many heads vs tails. And they are asked to toss the coin differently so the expected randomness is restored. Doesn't make any sense. Eliminating bias can't happen with revealing more information that affects the outcome. The opposite should be done. Not that this information should not be shared, but somehow we should eliminate judging candidates by anything else but their performance. In a way that the people evaluating candidates don't know the name, gender, age or anything else about the candidates like anonymous tests. Unfortunately I don't see companies hiring buying into my ideas. But that doesn't make your argument more valid.
Except hiring is an inherently biased process. The interviewers will have pre-conceived biases, even without realising it, that could affect their hiring decision. The people who screen CVs will have biases, hence why many immigrant families choose to give their children "white" names as "ethnic" names can greatly reduce your chances of being hired for certain jobs. It's not random like a coin toss would be. Usually everyone who gets past the initial stages will have the qualifications that make them suitable for the job, and it's their personality (or extra skills or the interviewer's gut feelings etc.) that influences the final decision in who gets hired. At this point, the outcome is all dependent on that subconscious bias and it could go to anyone. If it consistently goes to people of a certain race/gender over another, when they are all equally capable (not just white over poc, it could also go for an academic only hiring researchers from their home country over locals - this being a specific example that I've heard happen at a nearby university), then there is a problem there. The information isn't used to affect the hiring process for a specific job as it's happening. It's used to check that the staff hired are representative of the applicant group. If it shows that the diversity of hires are proportional to the ratio of applicants, then the hiring process is unbiased. If it's not proportional, then further inquiries can be made.
>The people who screen CVs will have biases, hence why many immigrant families choose to give their children "white" names as "ethnic" names can greatly reduce your chances of being hired for certain jobs. it doesn't take a lot to know that Kevin Patel and Richard Chen are Indian and Chinese respectively.
>Except hiring is an inherently biased process. The interviewers will have pre-conceived biases, even without realising it, that could affect their hiring decision. The people who screen CVs will have biases, hence why many immigrant families choose to give their children "white" names as "ethnic" names can greatly reduce your chances of being hired for certain jobs. It's not random like a coin toss would be. Unfortunately in the current world it is as you say. Imagine a world where companies conducting interviews were regulated and they werent given the information about applicants that are not relevant to the job. >Usually everyone who gets past the initial stages will have the qualifications that make them suitable for the job, So the rest is completely pointless, and it should end there. To be clear I can see that what I am saying is not feasible today, but my point is I don't believe that unfairness and inequality can be tackled by taking even more information into account about people that differentiates them in a way that shouldn't even be considered. >The information isn't used to affect the hiring maybe not directly, but it will create company policies etc, and those are again created by people who we know are biased and subjective. What else would it be used for?
Some banks/etc have started doing ‘blind’ hiring - whereby things like name, age and even university is removed from the application before it goes in front of the hirer. Of course at some stage, the interviewee will be met in person and their characteristic will become evident, but anecdotally anyway, my mom (who works at such a place) has noticed a definite increase in people of different ethnicities being hired. Women was less of an issue so not sure if that’s really changed.
The NHS already does this in terms of name, age, gender, etc. Its not perfect but its a start.
I know some a company that has a target of 50% women in their workplace by 2030. Problem is, women are not 50% of the population in the classroom or applicant pool.
If you realise you only hire people of one race you might introduce anonymising software that takes names off applications. If only one gender is passing interview you might make it so that panels have to have at least one person from each gender. If applicants from state comps aren't getting interviews you might change your process software redacts schools on CVs.
It's more like you look at the results of the 50 coin tosses, and if there's been 45 heads come up, you want to have a look at the coin and the person tossing it to see why. The demographic details aren't shared with anyone in the hiring process. They're removed before the applications are sent to screeners or hiring managers. Which seems to be what you're suggesting! Although, obviously they're usually easy to guess at during interviews.
Thanks, this is helpful.
I used to work as an admin in HR and those questions never made it to anyone doing the hiring. We as admin would remove them from applications before they reached anyone hiring and then we put the data into a spreadsheet with no names or anything attached to it. Not sure how it would be done now with most things being online, but I imagine the same is true, the data doesn't make it to the hiring manager
That's so interesting! The only thing I put prefer not to say is religion. I'm so white im basically translucent so no way I cant put anything but the truth. I'm biologically female and have a male partner, I think gender and sexuality should have no relation to hiring so I'm just honest (sexuality skews towards bi but cba with questions). I kind of struggle with religion though. I'm on the surface atheist but I think religion is so interesting, I'd rather not just say no?
Not necessarily. They might just be poor candidates
There is still a problem just not with the interview process in that case
For genuine curiosity if this scenario was flipped is it considered a problem?
Yes. Places want to have the best people for the job and if any group of people seems to have difficulties then you aren't going to be hiring the best possible.
You know, I’ve never thought about it that way, but it makes complete sense
I don't know if it is the way you've worded your sentence or if I am dumb but I don't understand your sentiment. Are you saying if any one group has difficulty accessing a workplace it is seen as an issue.
Yes. For the simple reason that if 5% of applications are black and 50% of employees are black it is almost certain that a lot of the best applicants aren't getting the jobs.
I recently applied to join an additional working group where I work (large organisation). The application form had a box to answer a question, and a section on the same page that not only asked for protected characteristics such as these, but also strongly encouraged applicants to tick any that apply as the management want to ensure a 'diverse' group of people in this working group. Like OP I usually skip these types of questions. But in this case there were no boxes for male, white, or straight. So by not ticking, despite the information that it will benefit an application, one would be giving a high implication of being white, male and straight. Forceful divulgence. Is this legal?
That's weird and not how it's supposed to be done.
Whilst this would be nice, it isn't necessarily true. I've been involved in processes where both all-female and all-non-white shortlists have been used to boost "diversity" quotas. A "prefer not to say" application would have been rejected as not fitting the shortlist requirements. That said, OP probably isn't any worse off since white and/or male would likely have guaranteed a rejection too!
Given that this is r/HumanResourcesUK, that would be illegal.
so is murder but it happens often
Are you trying to argue that because someone technically shouldn't happen I've somehow misremembered fundamental aspects of multiple recruitment's processes over several years?
I'm just saying that it's illegal in the UK. Doing this creates a risk of both financial and reputational damage that far outweighs the potential "benefits" compared to simply improving recruitment practices to comply with both the law and good practice. Any manager who suggests this is very stupid. Any business owner that endorses it is criminally stupid. Most employers - even some of the really stupid ones I've worked for over the years - understand that this is the case. So whilst your experience is just your experience, statistically speaking, this simply doesn't happen in the UK. That's not too say that there isn't discrimination and bias in recruitment. There is. Lots of it. But this kind of systematic, organised, explicit discrimination in pursuit of "quotas"* simply isn't a thing in UK recruitment. *Where a protected characteristic is an objectively justified requirement for a role, such as a priest needing to be Christian or a women's refuge manager needing to be a woman, or the actor for a specific role needing to be a particular race, age or gender, that's not about quotas. Where an unethical employer favours women from racial minorities because they are easier to manipulate, that's not about quotas. Where a manager favours white men because he finds working with anyone else confusing and awkward, that's not quotas. There are exceptions to this is rare cases where groups of employees are historically under representing groups. The usual example is when recruiting for Board or Non-Executive Director roles, where an employer may decide that the prevalence of Men Called David needs to be addressed. In these cases, employers may restrict recruitment to women or people of non-white heritage for what is usually termed a "proportionate measure for a legitimate business objective", but it is not a step taken without risk and not being up front about the expectations and limitations would only increase that risk.
This is wildly optimistic view of things. It happens, at scale, openly, across large FTSE100 global companies. And I'm saying that from personal experience of recruitment in such firms and widespread similar experiences from colleagues in other, similarly sized, firms in my industry and adjacent industries. D&I metrics directly impact people's performance and renumeration, and form part of regulatory reportable information, and that includes having to have specific actions plans to hire the "right" people to meet D&I targets where we are below "benchmarks." (And to clarify by "quota" I mean I have had a specific % number in my scorecard that my team must have X% BAME / female employees. Likewise the firm has similar metrics which are reported to our regulators. And "we missed it because the best candidate was a white male" is not an acceptable response).
That's illegal.
Theres several companies in the industry I work for who try to hire 50/50 those who identify as male female (in an industry that is 97% male in this specific profession). Surely they are looking at this?
>Theres several companies in the industry I work for who try to hire 50/50 those who identify as male female (in an industry that is 97% male in this specific profession). Surely they are looking at this? No. Because 50/50 isn't even a thing that is fact. Sex isn't a 50/50 dichotomy. Neither is gender.
I mean 50% men, 50% women, when most companies in my industry have 2-10 of my profession, its often is a clean 50/50 for these companies. Of course this is a rough generalisation, they will vary in the way you suggest, and other ways at times.
Whilst this would be nice, it isn't necessarily true. I've been involved in processes where both all-female and all-non-white shortlists have been used to boost "diversity" quotas. A "prefer not to say" application would have been rejected as not fitting the shortlist requirements. That said, OP probably isn't any worse off since white and/or male would likely have guaranteed a rejection too! Edit: To various people going "oh no thats illegal!" ..maybe, doesn't change it does happen, and happens quite openly. So telling OP that there is no downside to "prefer not to say" is flat out wrong.
This fits with my experiences of how our recruitment team seems to operate, and given the various initiatives in progress it makes sense. A lot of the HR pros seem to imply this could/would never happen.
Indeed - it *shouldn't* happen, but the reality is it does, and does so quite blatantly. When you give leadership and management direct quotas to reach X % female / BAME staff, and that requires close to 100% of recruitment to be from those groups, all-X shortlists are an obvious, and efficient way to get there. Practically, its also a better use of people's time. One of the most painful post-interview conversations I've ever had to have was with a white male candidate who had done a fantastic interview and was clearly the stand out candidate, but was nevertheless being rejected in favour of an ethnic-minority female, because I'd been directly told our team was too white-male and I *had* to hire a girl. Had to decide between being honest with him that he hadn't got the job because of institutional misandry, or somehow pretend he was a weaker candidate that the *obviously* weaker female candidate we ended up hiring (who, predictably, was a disaster).
>Had to decide between being honest with him that he hadn't got the job because of institutional misandry, or somehow pretend he was a weaker candidate that the *obviously* weaker female candidate we ended up hiring (who, predictably, was a disaster). Out of nosiness, how did you explain it to him? I can't think of any way to give the first explanation without creating some problems!
Officially I gave him some standard interview feedback on areas he could have improved, Unofficially since I knew them well enough to have a "down the pub" conversation after work I said when they saw who we'd hired he'd understand why. Which, considering he works in a similar field and is well aware of D&I targets, when we announced the successful candidate I'm sure he put 2 and 2 together.
This is by far the most honest and nuanced feedback so far. Thank you.
They are generally used as simple demographic stuff.
Demographic information is anonymised and not attached to your application, so it can’t be used by the hiring team. I am always quite comfortable answering them myself, as an HR professional I understand why they’re being asked and I want to contribute to the data. But equally it’s not mandatory, no one is going to chase you down if you put prefer not to say.
Thanks for the response.
Not true, multiple companies in my industry use it to hire 50/50 in a 96/4 profession.
That's interesting. I suspect that is the intent at my current employer, but have no evidence. Our last HRBP told me before she left that our department was seen as a problem because we are 'too white and too male, so you throw all the stats off'. That's the reason I don't give that information. If I asked HR I am sure they would give me the same response as most people here, that the data is never used in that way and it's just for reporting purposes. Human nature is what it is though, and if you give someone a target they will bend whatever rules they can to make it work.
Report them because that's illegal.
In what way is it illegal?
not a lawyer but i'd imagine if they're picking candidates because of certain characteristics then they're not picking other candidates because of said characteristics, which could count as discrimination
In my workplace, we as hiring managers/interviewers do not see that information. I'd actually be more worried if they didn't collect it, as it would show lack of interest in ensuring their hiring practices are fair.
I would also assume that companies know what kinda support groups and workshops to run as well? So, if you find you have a lot of neurodivergent employees, that info can be used to plan for awareness, support groups, workshops to ensure the environment enables them to thrive etc.
I see your point. But, surely not collecting that information would lead to fairer practices as the company would be hiring 'blind', essentially, with no information with which to form a bias?
It's usually not seen by the person hiring, and there's tonnes of evidence that hiring is almost always biased though.
Now that I can attest to! An old manager turned nemesis.
Not quite - if you do t collect it, you just don’t know if your recruitment practices, places you advertise and language you use are hitting as wide range of candies as you want/need to. If they are not, you’ll get ‘more of the same’ instead of good range of candies best for the job. So having diversity data is incredibly helpful to assess it. Some companies might also want (or be obliged) to publish reports on this data and/or how it compares to the actual work does hired.
Unless they strip out the applicants name, previous organizations and universities (which my workplace doesn't), it's fairly easy for shortlistera to make assumptions of someones gender, and often ethnicity or nationality too. If they strip out all that detail, then maybe there's a better chance of truly 'blind' recruitment. Until then though it seems sensible to report on DEI stats.
These are to ensure that there is a minimum bias in the recruitment process (as another comment mentioned - if you have high number of applications for a particular group, but low employment rate of those groups - something is wrong) and that advertising/recruitment reaches broad groups of people. Some companies/corporations might be also obliged formally or informally to publish annual reports on how their recruitment practices vs employment groups changed and act on possible outcomes and recommendations - which they can't without those stats. Any semi-modern ATS (application tracking system), will keep these automatically separated from your CV/application to avoid risk of discrimination.
Thank you for your response. Really helpful.
This makes sense, but if there are 100 people apply for a job and it is shortlisted to interview only 10 then at that stage the shortlisters shouldn’t know the gender/race/sexual orientation of the people so in theory there wouldn’t be anything wrong with picking 10 white straight males? Surely it only works if you are physically seeing 10 candidates and then only gender or race can be assumed to be an “iffy” area for selection.
Unless your HR team removed identifying data from applications (e.g. name, name of previous organizations worked for, university etc), it's often easy to make enough assumptions of someone's gender and ethnic background for bias to slip in. In an ideal world, that would be stripped out of applications too.
It will be analysed at a later stage. If they see that, after analysing the data over some time and with other data sets like application demographics, every time the shortlist favours straight white men while the application rates show a much more diverse pool of applicants and only 10% are straight white men, then there is likely to be bias in the application that favours candidates from these backgrounds. If that's the case, then you're not getting the best talent. The data and case studies have shown that people from diverse backgrounds make the most effective workforces. For instance, having people from different backgrounds mean you're better able to cater to a more diverse base of customers. There are studies that show diverse workforces mean more innovation and adaptability so it makes good business to have a diverse workforce. This is why they want to eliminate bias in the recruitment process so that they can reap the advantages of this.
Think you've got an erroneous a in your first sentence
>erroneous In what sense? I am not sure if you mean, I made an error (English is not my first language) or that I don't know what I am talking about and made assumptions/provided incorrect information (but I did a few years of hardcore recruitment, so maybe we have a different experience).
I think they meant "there is a minimum bias" -> "there is minimum bias"
Not answering won’t impact you negatively at all, it’s mostly used as a reporting data point for DEI initiatives. In most cases recruiters/individual hiring managers wouldn’t even have access to see the data on a job-by-job basis. Source - working inside Talent acquisition / HR teams at 3 major investment banks and subsequently consulting to Fortune 500s.
Lol... You wouldn't be the first white male to conclude there must be some conspiracy from HR as you didn't have enough white males to interview.
We know that around 60-75% of applicants for any of a set of roles have been white males historically, so when we get 100% non-white or 100% non-male shortlists it does seem fishy.
Considering the fiasco with the RAF why wouldnt you assume something that is actually happening
theres multiple companies in my industry that hire 50/50 for a role that is organically biased male dominated.
Interesting. In Canada those types of questions, along with martial status, are not permitted to be asked as part of the hiring process. To ripe for discrimination.
They’re not used in the personnel hiring process itself, but to evaluate a companies overall hiring processes to make sure there isn’t bias impacting their hiring practises.
Ah, ty. Appreciate you sharing this with me.
The person conducting the shortlisting and Interviews won't get to see that.
I hate these questions. I’m transgender and don’t want potential employers to know about that, but answering “prefer not to say” when asked “Is the gender you identify as the same as your sex assigned at birth?” is an answer in itself.
They aren't suppose to be, but they are. The company I used to work for had a habit of only passing on CV's that were from women and / or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community to an alarming degree. Much like most hiring managers I only wanted the most suitable and qualified individuals for the roles, the majority of which were with the Systems Engineering capability. Engineering is a heavily male dominated environment, and I would like to see balance there, but when the only CV's passed on are in the aforementioned "categories" it tends to make me raise a quizzical eyebrow.
No idea why they do this, but the very next interview I get asked these questions. I'll embody the character of uncle ruckus....no relations.
I’ve seen this used at a global company before to be able to track if they’re hitting diversity quotas for certain positions. I was told by a recruitment colleague in my company that I was waiting for feedback on a internal job interview for 6 weeks because they needed an external female candidate to apply before they could progress the job req. This was 2017 so probably got canned when they realised how ridiculous it was, and not many women were interested in become an IT Audit Admin on shit money (yes, this was still a step up for me)
This is a story as old as time but “if” it is being used to fill quotas it can harm or hurt you. My friend a straight white male christian was a special for the Met. He allied twice to be a full time officer and got nowhere. Following some advice he was a prefer not to say white prefer not to say prefer not to say and he was accepted for training. No idea if any of that made a difference obviously.
It's a misuse of statistics. If there is a correlation between % of colour in general population and % of hires in a specialised job vacancy, that would be suspicious. You do realise that there are a lot more white people in the UK than people of colour and do there is a higher proportion of white people in employment?
My employer aims to precisely reflect the ethnic breakdown of the UK in our workforce.
I put the wokest options in the belief it will help me get the job, esp with NHS and civil service jobs
So what is it you think is ‘woke’? Sounds like the problem might be you.
Did it work then?
[удалено]
That’s interesting, I truthfully meet the ‘woke’ options and it’s definitely not a cheat code for me lol
Are you in HR? I'm assuming not as its a daft question. That data is gathered so orgs can understand the demographics of applicants. Data can be used to see if certain talent pools aren't being tapped into, may be shared with gov agencies in certain sectors. Selecting a combo of "white/hetero/male" doesn't mean you aren't selected, unless there's a genuine occupational requirement (such as roles that provide personal care)
Nah I have a real job that adds value.
Yet here you are, asking us to help you... And you're getting the help.
You should note that I thanked the people who responded with non-sarcastic answers.
And then shit on their career choices
See other responses in this thread.
this is Reddit - none of us are paid to be here, this isn't our job. Do you perform your job on Reddit for free?
Dont respond then, your choice 👍
Lmao reading this while I’m currently processing a buttload of sponsorship applications to stop my staff getting deported and having their lives uprooted, but apparently I add no value. Thanks!
I just stopped four people from being made redundant, resisted being bullied by the manager who did not want to accept one into their team, and lost about 1,5 months of sleep to make things work for them and the business (all of which was a job in the background, so no one will appreciate how much effort, overtime and sweat went into this, and that is ok - I know), but apparently, that is also not a real job that adds value. Oh well. OP - you might not have a good experience with HR, but don't poop on the people in these roles.
It was a joke dude. The response to my OP was rude, so my response was equally so. Keep up the good work looking after your people.
You can’t really blame us for not reading it as a joke when we are very used to people constantly talking shit about us entirely seriously, tone can easily be misconstrued. But thanks for clarifying!
With an attitude like that I’ll bet you flit from job to job and people suss you out pretty quick. Good luck job hunting.
Whenever I see someone ask this question they nearly always turn out to be white men who think they're discriminated against in the workplace. I'm not sure I've ever heard this question from someone who actually faces discrimination in the workplace simply on the basis of their gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
I do fine thanks. It's fascinating that, after seeing the sarcastic response to my original post, rather than seeing my post as an equally sarcastic jab back, you take personal offense.
Not personal offence. I have no idea why this post came up, or this sub. I have nothing to do with HR.
It's for EDI reporting. It helps us get a clear picture of who is being hired and if there are any stats that seem a bit... dodgey. For example, if a team has 10 women and 1 man but 10 women and 20 men apply for a recent job, we may want to see if there's some unconscious bias taking place. May not be so, but it's always good to check.
I never answer any of those as I never trust that this information will be kept 100% separate from the people making the decisions to hire.
Everywhere I've ever worked they have been separate. I have never seen an individual's demographic data, and as the hiring manager I can't even access it. I have seen some aggregated demographic data ie anonymised, combined data. We don't even see the linked data eg the same person who said they were white other also said they were Muslim. If you're applying through any kind of website/portal/system this data will automatically be separated. If you're applying for a small place by email with attachments, maybe not.
I deal with applications in my job, we're a very small place - 5 employees. The equalities forms we include in our job packs are removed by me before I pass on the applications for shortlisting. Nobody but me ever sees the completed forms. Of course other places may not be as strict, but we take it very seriously.
Theres multiple companies in my industry that hire 50/50 in a 96/4 industry, everywhere I have worked they have not been seperate.
Downvoted for a perfectly legitimate fear
This is exactly my worry. We have had all-female and all-minority shortlists come through from HR, which seems suspicious for roles where generally about 75% of applicants would be white male. Clearly they can get that information from the CV anyway but if they are going to discriminate I'd rather not make their lives easy.
I have heard (admittedly apocryphally and without like, scientific data) that certain demographics are more likely to apply for jobs they are vastly underqualified for, which I did see borne out when I was working in HR, so I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the picks for interview have been chosen *exclusively* to help change demographics. I think it's extremely unlikely that more qualified applicants aren't sent to interview just because they're eg. white or male, it certainly wasn't a thing during my time. Edit: added "more likely to" because I wasn't paying attention at first post.
Just mark it disabled black woman, get the interview and watch them squirm because they can't call you out on it. Don't elaborate. Leave.
I worry about being discriminated against by being White-British.
you'll survive
You don't get a capital W. But you do get preferential treatment in most areas of life. So stop worrying.
Such as lack of job opportunities due to check box exercise applications, being called racist just for being born white, having no access to grants or money based only on colour but carry on telling me how whites have it so easy
Being called racist for being born white. Give your head a wobble.
Whites are (in no particular order).... Paid more Less likely to be incarcerated Less likely to be excluded from school Make up the vast majority of the ruling class Make up the vast majority of CEOs Less likely to be sectioned
Care to share your source on where you get this from? Also the ruling class and CEO is just laughable considering it's a majority white country, the shock of nationals making up the top 10% of earners and position, but I know people like you won't be happy until white people are in chains in their own nation. Also how many white people are in high earning positions in Africa or middle east? Probably pretty low considering they aren't the majority race there but that's likely too logical for you.
'Nationals' careful, your racism is showing.
Yeah didn't think you had a source either ;)
Equity. Grants and funds to help those in communities who are at greater disadvantage, to help them move somewhere towards an even starting block. Plenty of funds out there to help disadvantaged white kids too, if you look for them
Must of missed mine when I was growing up then huh
Yep, and that's not the fault of any of the people receiving it now.
Would love to see examples (evidence) of the first 2 claims, being called racist for being white is not a normal thing. And evidence/experiments still show that having non-white sounding names puts you at an automatic massive disadvantage in job seeking. Intersectionality is important and tbh in these times a lot of people of all backgrounds are struggling, however its an undeniable fact that there are several important areas of life where not being white puts you at a disadvantage. Nowhere does that say that white people have an automatic easy ride in life or that no non white person has a better quality of life than the worst off white person. Just on average, non white people have more barriers to overcome.
I'd like to identify as an OAP so that I can claim my state pension a few years early.
Companies usually have a guaranteed interview if you're disabled. They 100% are used as a diversity hire but they can see most of it during the interview
This is nonsense. These data are not used for "diversity hiring" and no, in any company with a half functioning HR, they can't see any of it during the interview or any stage of the recruitment process.
Exactly..not many places have half functionig HRs, I've interviewed people and had their full application form in front of me with all the ethnicity, gender, etc, one place I worked had what reasonable adjustments people had been given at previous workplaces. Their height and weight. We would basically just tick boxes about their experience, one place would be from 1-10, if their was a non british woman that we gave a 5 and a white man we gave a 9, the non british woman got the job. Its not discrimination as the team was 90% white men and they were trying to improve their gender pay reports
>Their height and weight. Either you're using a very niche sector where someone would need to provide their height and weight as part of an application, in which case I would expect that information to be shared, to try and make some invalid and bad faith generalisation or you're talking bullshit. No one is asking height and weight in demographic data forms. Nor are they collecting demographic data in the interview. I'm guessing you've never run an interview, what you're describing would be a breach of GDPR and almost certainly would lead to complaints to ACAS as any company running interviews this way is leaving themselves wide open to discrimination claims. It's also self-evidently true that collecting data in interviews can't tell you anything about your gender pay gap. This is stupid. Your gender pay gap is calculated by looking at the salaries of existing employees. Dear lord. The methodology is defined by government.
I work in engineering, there's a physical test at most of the jobs i've worked where they also take your height and weight. 100% it goes against gdpr, good luck making a complaint against it. Again this is going with "half functioning hr" which is extremely rare especially in big companies.
As I said, you're applying a bad faith argument to make some point about demographic data collection. Height and weight is not part of demographic data collection and you were gathering it as part of a necessary process specific to your situation. It's totally unrelated and irrelevant to the conversation at hand - the collection of demographic data in applications. You work in engineering, so I'll give you some leeway on the poor HR functions as engineering is notorious for bad people process, poor practice, and discrimination. However, I can assure you, the way engineering companies operate is not how the majority of other companies operate. If there's a spectrum of practice, I'd put law and engineering at the far end of bad practice. You're at the bottom, most other companies are doing better than that. But your point about good luck making a complaint. ACAS and employment tribunals don't need you to have a functioning HR to find against you.
So it was all one form, height, weight, ethnicity, gender. I would just get the whole application form with everything in it. I would also not need to know height or weight, that should've been handled by hr. I have only ever interviewed in engineering so maybe it is our hrs are just bad. I know what you mean about acas but first you need to know I have everything, I'm not saying that in an interview - that would also be hr which is normally outsourced, so I didn't breach your data. But on top of that prove you weren't hired because I had that info.
I can attest to this, too. My 'dimensions' have been taken during the interviewing process. Usually for equipment purposes and all the required health checks.
On the gender pay gap aswell hiring women in engineering roles in an en engineering company (the purpose of the interview is to hire that person) would reduce the pay gap where there aren't as many women in the higher paid roles because it's male dominated and clerical roles where most of the women are are lower paid. Not sure if you edited your comment, only saw that bit when someone else commented.
Not quite, but if the company have a disability fair pledge, a disabled person must be considered for an interview as long as they meet the minimum criteria of the role (where the benchmark might be 'we only interview the candidates who scored as a minimum 3x high and 1x medium on their competency/skills). If it is evidenced they did not meet the criteria - no interview. The disability (or any other) information is typically not provided to the managers at the short-listing stage to avoid bias one way or another.
I have interviewed people who haven't met the criteria and when I've asked hr why they sent them for an interview it was under the guaranteed interview scheme.. which basically just meant they said they had a disability and wanted a guaranteed interview.
Disability Confident is a voluntary scheme and the interview is only guaranteed if the disabled person meets the essential criteria.
This just means that your HR or shortlisting managers don’t understand how this scheme works OR even worse, don’t follow their guidance/requirements on purpose (to increase the interview stats in company favour) - both are equally wrong. Minimal criteria must be met or it’s waste of everyone’s time (including the applicant). Hopefully sooner or later this will lead to questioning metrics accuracy - if you interview people who should fail shortlisting, so their chance of getting work are none, any audit will lead to questions as to why there’s so little disabled candidates hires, when there is a decent number of interviews.
That's interesting,maybe that's why they do it. None of those questions would come to me, I just say why they aren't suitable and give them a score.
Bikesexual. I like motorbikes.
You mean we finally have our very own definition too??
Bro…you like bikes??
Yeah. I have a couple of them. One black, one white. Im all for equality in my bikesexuality. Plus, one of them is british and the other Japanese. (R1 and Street triple 765rs)
Tell me more about the R1 - which model year? I’ve got an ‘08 FZ1, it’s a bit of an understated bike really so i go kinda un-noticed. A few suspension upgrades later and it’s a great bike
I once got sacked from a job reapplied a week later at the time there was no trans I checked the gay box got interview from my old boss.he tapped the box on the form at the end and said what's this you have a wife I said equal opportunitys we laughed he said start on monday.i also did this for a council job got refused 7 times the 8 time I ticked trans got interview worked there for five years always tick that box
In my life I have received plenty of aspersions that I am a racist because of the colour of my skin. Despite having black friends. Very upsetting. Black on white racism exists, I've seen it first hand. My partner's family are of white-Irish stock, and in the early twentieth century they received much racism. White on white racism still exists today.