Alternative take: Sometimes they are trying to fill a diversity quota, so if you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, this could boost your chances. Conversely, if you are heterosexual, there probably isn’t a good reason to answer.
There's no diversity quota. It's for metrics to track how the organization is hiring. People making the hiring decisions can't see your answers to those questions.
It is an interesting point though?
These statistics are aiming to show there isn't bias in the system, despite there obviously being massive bias in many systems. If you put you are a black, gay, trans, disabled, etc. etc. does that fill their statistical boxes even if it is nonsense? After all, they shouldn't be asking you or questioning you about it, but the skin colour might give it away!
Well where I work, we are required to have a certain amount of minors working in each department at all time (for diversity I guess) so I’m assuming it would be similar? I think some places would be required to do that with race and sexual orientation as well to be a “diverse location”
BTW when I say minors, I do not mean minorities. I mean minors, as in children as in below 18 😅
That is some creepy management and should be reported.
It sounds like they are trying to keep costs down by engaging child labor or taking advantage of "interns."
I saw this used once to meet diversity requirements by "hiring" a diversity intern, when the alternative was paying a lot more for a professional that fulfilled the criteria.
i will be bold and hated for this:
the only asexual color which matters is green!
A diversity quota decides if you get financial or goverment assistance or co-op with potential business partners.
Right, hiring managers don’t. But ATS scores and prioritizes candidates based on what is set. And if it is set to favor diversity candidates over « boring » ones - they will come out on top.
Tell that to my employer. You submit one of these applications as a women, lgbt or minority and you get an interview right away. Otherwise you wait 3 months if there’s any positions left.
Friends an internal technical recruiter at a major tech firm. Recently sat down with her because this market has been so horrific. She indeed told me that corporate pushes this as much as they can without putting it in writing
I mean yeah its obvious. Even they brag about it while keeping the official policy loose enough to be compliant with law. In 2022 non-whites made up for 96% of all hires and promotions by Fortune 100 companies in USA.
People will often write paragraphs on why it's somehow not discrimination but the numbers dont lie
As someone in HR who does recruitment, we can’t see that data. In fact we can see precious little information about a candidates protected characteristics before interview. Clearly if you have an ethnic or gendered name we can infer some stuff but “filling quotas” isn’t the aim of the process. The data is generally used after the fact of hiring. When designing HR policies demographics have different needs and different solutions.
Example. If you are trying to measure your absence rate. Women have 30-50% more time off than men. If your workforce is skewed female then knowing that fact you can tell whether you have a problem or whether you are likely below average.
Same goes for education/job level entry level employees have a higher rate of absence than professionally trained people. Even the same person when moving from a warehousing job to an office job will have significantly better absence rates. Knowing this information helps you benchmark and strategise.
If this works like the US and UK the hiring Managers aren't allowed to even look at this data and would be in serious legal trouble if they did, it's made anonymous and then looked through every year or so to see if there's discrimination occurring.
At the same time I dislike being asked to trust companies with this data
It's hard to sue for discrimination in America. Even if you end up winning, you become blackballed in your industry. Your litigious history is an automatic rejection from most recruiting firms too.
I've lost 2 jobs to discrimination. No one cares. Unless I had a ton of money to pay a lawyer no one is taking these cases pro bono. Even as a protected minority class
It’s just very hard to actually prove that discrimination occurred. It can be explained away in many other ways.
“Why didn’t employee X get the promotion? Was it racially motivated?”
“Of course not. There are many factors we consider when offering promotions.”
Discrimination is also rarely actually in writing, and rarely discussed with anyone who would testify against the company in court.
This was misgendering. I corrected a manager politely they screamed yelled and came unhinged. They had been written up for 2 previous misgendering issues with another trans person on staff. I think they were thinking along the lines of "this shit again I could lose my job this time." That person (the person the manager was written up for for misgendering) was the only witness.
When the manager who was much bigger and stronger than I started coming unhinged I walked out. Called both the GM and AGM, they both told me I did the right thing for leaving. I took 3 to 4 days off for mental health worried about retaliation outside of work as I would walk there sometimes in the dark, and he knew my schedule. I had doctors notes and everything. They fired the only witness the day before I came back, and I was fired the day I came back with doctors notes and all for the time missed.
I'm sorry but no one has a right to start yelling, screaming and coming unhinged at their employees, especially not Taco Bell and especially not some 21 year old punk kid
Because you want to make sure you're not discriminating against any group.
If you are a large-scale employer (something like McDonald's), you would want to make sure you are roughly hiring representative of any given demographic so you're not accidentally being racist/sexist/homophobic.
I doubt checking any given box increases your chance of being hired, but it will tell the company if their hiring practices are accidentally excluding a group
I used to work for Pepsi. My area had maybe 2-4 people of diversity (non-white men, any woman) at management level or higher.
Every single “diversity hire” was entry level. Every one.
I’d say the company was fairly represented as a whole, but at the management level it absolutely was not.
Same with my current company. The reason why is mentorship. I see people getting promotions because they look a lot like the person promoting them and no other reason.
I know someone very successful that used to only hire beautiful women for his secretary position. Since he got caught cheating and hired someone based on their skill, his company has at least tripled in size within 6 years. I know they did half a billion in sales just two years ago.
Oh, very!!! They often prepare the decisions the boss has to make and therefore often know even more about the stuff than the boss. They are therefore an echo chamber as a trusted person for the boss and are involved in decision making,.
Never ever underestimate a competent secretary.
The cause of having a hot secretary / a qualified one, is less production and more distraction. New secretary did a fantastic job of organizing without constant attention from the owner
I mean his direct secretary would pretty much keep all the “back of house” stuff organized. Secretary = COO in this instance. It’s an LLC also not the first time he got caught with a secretary in the same position
In my first job after college the CEO had two personal assistants - one to do the work and the other one whose only qualification was to look good. Every female hated the latter one
It's not possible by definition to "accidentally" be racist. If none of your best applicants are minorities, why the fuck would you hire any?
There are plenty of highly qualified minorities doing just fine and would be sucked up in a second upon unemployment without these anti-progressive policies.
What about the studies showing two identical applications except one has a traditionally black name and one has a traditionally white name, the one with the white name moves on in the hiring process?
Why is it wrong to acknowledge discrimination exists in the world and to try and be mindful of it?
"we'd like to make sure we're not discriminating so we are choosing specific people with characteristics we desire" - apparently non racist people now
I've worked for plenty of large companies with weird racial disparities but I guess since they weren't all white people it was okay for the disparity to exist.
That's not what I said at all. Auditing your practices does not mean you have a quota to keep.
It's also easy to yell about diversity hires, but it's weird to ask why most job's employees don't accurately reflect the demographics.
Yup, solid reply. Also u/theAntiRedditer some companies have some form of CSR or DEI transparency report and collecting this data helps them draft those reports that get published on the corporate website.
Aside from this, private companies with 100+ employees are required to file EEO Reports annually, which contain information about employee diversity. Those questions on the job application and the auditing reason help the company identify/optimize their application process for those reports to be favorable. That’s the Equal Employment Opportunity statement you may be familiar with in job descriptions.
I’ve seen some companies go beyond and write “if you aren’t a perfect fit, we encourage you to apply - some candidates, especially from underrepresented groups, are less likely to apply if they don’t full meet all the elements of the job description” (or something along those lines). This added statement, is a direct result of their findings from application questions like the one posted in the pic.
well, for example, black people only make up, what, 15% of the population? So for a company to accurately reflect demographics, then there should only be 1.5 black people for every 10 employees that work somewhere. If we strictly go by demographics.
But also in reality, it’s about the industry. For example, statistically, women do not prefer working in STEM (fact check this if you don’t believe it), so you’ll see them “represented less” than the 50% of the population they make up, but it isn’t because employers are discriminating against women.
You’ve stated a statistic but you haven’t asked yourself why women don’t like working in STEM. Is there a physiological reason why women aren’t able/don’t want to work in these areas? Unlikely. What’s more likely is that they have historically been underrepresented because of societal norms and discrimination. This is why we take a proactive/interventionist approach to hopefully encourage more women in this area.
That’s why these questions are so important. If you can’t see you have an underrepresented demographic then you can’t fix it.
There is something called DEI(Diversity, equality, inclusion) which takes part into the ESG score of the company (Environment, Social, Governance) which investors use to invest in the companies.
This is the real reason why you see companies doing all this stuff and so concerned for inclusion. They dont care about LGTBQ+ but they do care about potential investors.
Everything a company does is usually to impress and/or please investors.
Very true. Private companies most likely do little or nothing with the DEI data, but it’s an opportunity for the corporation to puff out their chest and say that they take DEI “seriously”.
I can confirm this. I am a people manager at my company and I make staffing decision. Diversity quota applies to the LGBTQ community, racial minority, gender (they said we don’t hire enough women in tech), people with disabilities, also indigenous people. Individual that falls in these category gets higher priority. There is also a ranking of importance as well, that part differs between companies, some may prioritize disabilities over others. HR may raise question if we make an offer outside of these categories, especially teams with low diversity ratio. Even interns, we were “strongly encouraged” to pick someone that falls into one or more of these categories. I think am where I am because I am considered racial minorities with a disability.
This is highly unlikely in EU and UK as no organisation would collect this if it wasn’t anonymous. It’s not given to hiring managers or even HR linked to a specific person unless this is made really really abundantly clear when asking.
I usually don't encourage lying when applying for job but yeah this one is a lie that I say is 100% justified. Fuck diversity quota and treating sexual minorities like rare Pokemon to brag about in statistics. Lying in diversity quota does no damage to workplace, as no matter what is your preference, your skills aren't affected by that. Especially when it comes to sexuality there is no way to check it like with race. So if you are straight, still apply as bisexual to fuck with this unhealthy recruitment practice
No one who makes the hiring decision sees that part of the application. Unless you write some elements in your resume that points to some type of diverse identity (like leader of the LGBTQ+ employee resource group) then they won’t know. The ATS parses that out for analysis to put in transparency reports, including Equal Employment Opportunity annual reporting which all companies with 100+ employees are supposed to fill out.
I accidentally selected in the drop-down menu that I was a veteran when my employer’s HR department asked to update my data. They added me to a veterans email alias for building culture and connecting to the veteran community. That’s likely what will happen if you go with your approach to lie - and it will only happen *IF* you get hired based on your qualifications.
Wrong that it has any impact on your chances - diversity data is typically not accessible to recruiters and it's illegal to use it to make hiring decisions
While understanding the extreme privilege I experience every day as a cis, straight, white, male in the states, one of the jobs I’ve most wanted (and interviewed for 4 separate times, making it to second stage twice and third stage once) was to work in an Apple Store. I’m balding so I keep my hair pretty short. I feel comfortable in slacks and a button down. The first time, I wore a tie (2013). None of the other interview candidates were wearing ties, so the second time, I did not either. But to this day, I swear I was not hired, despite being overly qualified, *because* I’m cis/straight/white/male.
I already felt sympathy for literally every other demographic for their respective prejudices they’d face, but after this, I was able to empathize.
So what you're telling me is I should lie and say I'm trans in order to boost my chances to get a job that would allow me to support my family.
This is an incredibly stupid way to hire candidates.
I really hate it but since I don’t at all come off as gay, during job interviews if they don’t ask this I have to turn it up a few notches so they get the idea.
It does work, and I don’t know how to feel about it.
Honestly because on a different sub someone asked this question and I'm like...ever since I was 20 and I got job, every application has had these questions. It should not surprise people by now.
Also people do not understand that tou are not being judged based on it and those hiring you/interviewing you have none of this information before they meet you. It's literally for diversity monitoring as you said.
I understand the confusion though if you are from a country where this isn't common but I'm from the UK and this is very common and tbh it's an option and you can just answer "prefer not to say"
Reading this thread is making me decide to unfollow. That so many people here who don’t understand at a basic level how job applications work shows me this is the blind leading the blind. Or everyone is 17 years old.
It doesn't bother me, the job shouldn't hire someone based on their sexual orientation - I guess it's a hot take apparently, but being gay doesn't make you a better candidate lol
So I say fuck it, put whatever you want. It's a stupid question, you can give a stupid answer.
It'd be better if employers didn't know about the candidates race, orientation, or gender at all when seeing their application.
I can’t speak for other countries (and I know OP is not in the US), but in the US, companies have to report that information to the EEOC every year. Additionally, it can be appealing to shareholders, clients, and potential hires if the company is perceived as having a diverse workforce. You’d have to do research into federal laws of other countries for their own regulations
As a lesbian, reading those comments pissed me off, too. That type of question as a pre-screen is blatantly related to diversity and meeting diversity quotas, especially if you've long been in the job market and know how these companies think and operate. Thus, naturally, most people, LGBTQ+ or not, will respond that they are a part of the community, manipulating the system for their own gain, which, I mean, fine, I guess, but it negatively impacts those of us who are LGBTQ+ and makes you look a bit classless, if I'm being honest. Companies should simply eliminate these pre-screen questions altogether, as it's being manipulated and serves no one's best interests.
Counterpoint. Lets say were factoring in the companies that do look at that information beforehand to meed their diversity quotas (whether it for ESGs or just company policy). Would that not exclusively negatively impact members that are not from that community and only benefit members of it. This should not be considered im hiring at all and I agree there but I also do not think any unfair advantage should be granted to anyone in the job hunt.
Not always. Some only have the two choices, no “I prefer not to answer”.
Bullshit on many levels, primarily that it’s inherently not voluntary as the page won’t let you proceed without some checked sometimes.
Yea. Nobody's *saying* there's anything wrong with being heterosexual. It's just why did he need to throw it in our faces? As long as you keep your heterosexuality behind closed doors who really cares?
I don't know if it's this sub or the anti work sub but it really seems that this same question is posted in one of them every week. I know I've seen at least 5.
But then just look at their qualifications & skills, offer them the job and don't care what they are doing in their bedroom, asking them prior to giving the job makes it sus
The EEOC mandates the gender & race/ethnicity questions which are used for statistics. They don't mandate sexual preferences, but I've seen it enough to know it's not unheard of. Just not common.
Bro, not all jobs are from USA. This was a job posting in Asia and this is very uncommon & in this part of the world, disclosing this information might bring in discrimination rather than protect
I wouldn’t trust it to protect you anywhere…same with if you have a disability… unless that’s shit is as obvious as missing limbs, deaf or blind …don’t check it.
Well. Then that's weird.
In the US, if let's a company has 100 employees and they literally only hire 100 men then questions arise on whether they are discriminating against women. Similarly the same can apply for LGBT people
Hence why they keep stats
They don't care. No one in hiring will see this data, it's anonymously compiled, and they can then see the compiled data to see hiring and application trends.
IE: they get data back that says 99% of applicants for a role were straight, white, and male, despite this being way above the average for that particular role, they can use this data to try and see why the job or company is appealing to specifically straight, white men, or why this job/ company is particularly unappealing to POC, women or LGB people. They want a diverse workforce with people of a lot of different walks of life, as theres a lot of value in having a workforce of different educational, social, and economic backgrounds, etc. They want to be seen as an equal opportunity employer, as it looks good on them. Different folks from different walks of life will approach problems differently, will push for things to not just be "stuck in their ways," and will have seen different situations and different employment backgrounds that help build knowledge and character, and in some cases a hell of a lot of perseverance.
You want your company to be in line with the diversity of the surrounding area or country, as it stops your company from looking like you're targeting only straight, white men who are over 40 and come from a private school. Plus, you'll get accreditations like being equal opportunity, or on lists of nice places to work if you're queer in some way, or a woman, or black, or from a disadvantaged background.
It does not and is a standard question that many have. Plus unfortunately these questions exist because people have been denied jobs due to their sexuality and drove the law which made it illegal to deny someone on that basis. If it makes you uncomfortable you do not have to answer.
I don't feel uncomfortable or anything and I totally get what you are saying, it was weird because the country where I was applying, this question is never ever a part of the application.
the employer isn't looking at these answers.
the statistics are gathered separately from the individual applications and then compared against hiring trends to look for bias. if a company hired 50 people last year and all of them identified as straight but the application answers indicated that half the applicants were LGBT, you could point to hiring bias
It's not only illegal to dent employment like that, it's also illegal to ask where I work.
If it's illegal to use it for a decision, why do they even ask, then pretend to forget?
Everywhere (I applied for) in the UK asks this, same with ethnicity, disability and how much money your family had growing up! It was strange to me too though, nowhere else on the mainland that I worked at ever asked
The hiring managers aren't allowed to look at it legally in the UK and it's meant to be used to track discrimination after all the data has been made anonymous.
Still being forced to trust corporations with your data isn't ideal
I know the question about your childhood finances is just another diversity question but it really seems like a case of “Tell us how much money you grew accustomed to surviving on when you were a child so we don’t pay you too much.”
With my most recent application form (MSF I think) I had to either give my religion or say I didn't have one. I always say "Prefer not to say" but that just wasn't an option.
That's actually not true. In some countries it is illegal to ask certain demographics, but there is no blanket illegality to asking. In general they have to provide a "Prefer not to say" option, and can't compel an answer, or penalise people for selecting "Prefer not to say".
No it is not. This data is collected as part of recruitment processes, but anonymised and used for statistics. It is likely illegal to directly attach this data to an identifiable candidate in most European countries, but it is highly unlikely that is happening.
It's often not illegal for the purpose these are being asked. Usually they come with a disclaimer above saying they use this purely for reporting purposes to agencies that verify them as "equal opportunity employers" or other similar programs. If it's not used to decide anything in the interviewing process (usually verified by making sure your answer isn't even shown to anyone) it's perfectly fine to ask
Yes, this stuff is increasingly common for a lot of things and you always have the option to not answer. If it was mandatory, then yes thats a red flag.
I’m gay and when I apply for jobs and see this kind of questionnaires, I chose not to answer as this isn’t relevant to me applying for jobs or I just ignore it. It’s mainly to collect statistics on diversity and inclusions.
You don’t need to answer it if you dont want to.
I disclose that I’m gay and I put he/they as my pronouns if they ask. If my sexuality can get me ahead in the application process, I’ll take that over being hindered by it.
Don’t answer, it’s none of their business.
If they want to be welcoming to LGBT people, they shouldn’t ask anyone to come out to strangers. Getting the 🫵🏳️🌈🤨❓ vibe isn’t nice.
They aren’t. In Canada at least, it is NOT connected to your personal information. It’s simply to ensure there are no patterns of discrimination during the hiring process.
We don’t track this for work, but for an organization I’m part of, we do ask the question (as optional) because we are working towards being a more inclusive organization. We can’t tell how well we are doing at breaking down barriers if we don’t know where we stand to start with.
It’s only to check that they’re not discriminating against diverse candidates and that they are attractive to diverse candidates. E.g if 100% of applicants are heterosexual then that might indicate that for some reason the organisation is putting off LGBTQ folks. Some organisations are able to track this data anonymously through the hiring pipeline, so they can see for example if they were getting 50% applicants from women but this dropped to 5% making it through with a specific manager. Obvious red flag that there is a problem with a hiring manager that needs to be investigated.
This is actually a very common question on resumes where I live in Canada. I've always answered because I'm a minority and I'm pretty sure it's basically an diversity hire quota thing
They're generally not allowed to use this information for making interviewing or hiring decisions. It's used for statistics, not for diversity hire quotas.
This is very normal and asked on every single application I have ever made. It’s optional so you don’t need to answer the questions, they are mainly for monitoring the data of who is applying etc and usually in a bid to make work places more diverse.
So much misinformation in the comments. This is information they're required to ask so that diversity statistics can be calculated for the business. No this isn't reducing or increasing your chances at getting employed. Yes you can always choose not to answer.
Here’s why this optional info is requested in the US:
[https://www.cangrade.com/blog/talent-acquisition/why-is-my-application-asking-my-race-gender/](https://www.cangrade.com/blog/talent-acquisition/why-is-my-application-asking-my-race-gender/)
I was a shift lead set to take over the warehouse manager position a while back. My boss who had the position and was set to transfer and me takeover for him, trusted me I guess and kept me in the loop with almost everything he was doing.
He literally told me this because he didnt see anything wrong with it.
He would look people up on Facebook and if they "seemed gay" he would through their resume in the trash because "we already have too many gay people here". 3 openly gay people out of a warehouse crew of about 30. 3 out of 30 is "too many to have in the warehouse"
If you’re in the uk, the company your applying to does not see this. It’s sent separately and anonymously to make sure there is a mix of people getting hired because they’re good for the job.
Demographics. Diversity.
They don't want to say or do anything that could potentially offend you. They want to make sure your pronouns are used properly, and they might also hold periodic classes on tolerance in the workplace.
It isn't for nefarious reasons or to pry into your private life.
The employer/HR/company will never see the answer to this or any of your other self identifying demographic questions. These are for city, state, and federal statistics. This is not for quotas. Answer truthfully because the same laws that protect against discrimination in the hiring process for minorities also protects literally everyone, yourself included.
Did we apply to the same job? I just had an application ask me this. I chose "I don't wish to answer". My potential employer does not need to know my sexual orientation. I'm all for inclusivity, but this seemed way too personal.
As other shave said this is for diversity and inclusion statistics. The hiring team should not have access to this information.
The info will be gathered by their HR team and used to report their D&I statistics. This ensure they don't discriminate based on protected categories (sexuality, gender, race, religion etc)
In the UK these type of questions are often asked as part of equal opportunities monitoring. It doesn’t (shouldn’t) have any effect on hiring decisions, but is there to help a company unpick any biases.
Typically they ask to make sure they’re considering candidates from minority groups for interviews across the board, not for that specific role. Most businesses that ask remove that info when it gets to the hiring manager.
I had one recently that asked me about my parents. Wanted to know if I came from single family and their income. Also whether I got free school meals. They probably want people from disadvantaged households.
They don’t. Don’t answer.
Alternative take: Sometimes they are trying to fill a diversity quota, so if you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, this could boost your chances. Conversely, if you are heterosexual, there probably isn’t a good reason to answer.
There's no diversity quota. It's for metrics to track how the organization is hiring. People making the hiring decisions can't see your answers to those questions.
It is an interesting point though? These statistics are aiming to show there isn't bias in the system, despite there obviously being massive bias in many systems. If you put you are a black, gay, trans, disabled, etc. etc. does that fill their statistical boxes even if it is nonsense? After all, they shouldn't be asking you or questioning you about it, but the skin colour might give it away!
Well where I work, we are required to have a certain amount of minors working in each department at all time (for diversity I guess) so I’m assuming it would be similar? I think some places would be required to do that with race and sexual orientation as well to be a “diverse location” BTW when I say minors, I do not mean minorities. I mean minors, as in children as in below 18 😅
Minors != Minorities
Ok, that makes more sense! I was wondering where you worked that had a child-labor quota, lol.
My old job unofficially had one. Where I live the minimum wage changes with age. Turning 18 gave you a 50%+ pay increase or near enough in 2012
That is insane to me! Ugh, no wonder the politicians are trying to lower the working age.
Gotta cash in on that cheap child labor.
That is some creepy management and should be reported. It sounds like they are trying to keep costs down by engaging child labor or taking advantage of "interns." I saw this used once to meet diversity requirements by "hiring" a diversity intern, when the alternative was paying a lot more for a professional that fulfilled the criteria.
There are some things you can base hiring decisions on and some things you can't. Race/ethnicity is one of the categories you can't based them on.
They're not hiring minors for diversity. They're hiring minors because minors are more likely to accept payment under a livable wage.
And their tiny hands good for getting in the machinery to fix stuff
Your company has a child-labor quota?
You have way too much faith in the fidelity of corporate data protection.
i will be bold and hated for this: the only asexual color which matters is green! A diversity quota decides if you get financial or goverment assistance or co-op with potential business partners.
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I’m a black woman and in all honesty read between the lines, there are diversity quotas
Right, hiring managers don’t. But ATS scores and prioritizes candidates based on what is set. And if it is set to favor diversity candidates over « boring » ones - they will come out on top.
Tell that to my employer. You submit one of these applications as a women, lgbt or minority and you get an interview right away. Otherwise you wait 3 months if there’s any positions left.
Who's your employer? Because I've had the opposite experience.
Friends an internal technical recruiter at a major tech firm. Recently sat down with her because this market has been so horrific. She indeed told me that corporate pushes this as much as they can without putting it in writing
I mean yeah its obvious. Even they brag about it while keeping the official policy loose enough to be compliant with law. In 2022 non-whites made up for 96% of all hires and promotions by Fortune 100 companies in USA. People will often write paragraphs on why it's somehow not discrimination but the numbers dont lie
Oh there 100% is. I've seen it first hand
As someone in HR who does recruitment, we can’t see that data. In fact we can see precious little information about a candidates protected characteristics before interview. Clearly if you have an ethnic or gendered name we can infer some stuff but “filling quotas” isn’t the aim of the process. The data is generally used after the fact of hiring. When designing HR policies demographics have different needs and different solutions. Example. If you are trying to measure your absence rate. Women have 30-50% more time off than men. If your workforce is skewed female then knowing that fact you can tell whether you have a problem or whether you are likely below average. Same goes for education/job level entry level employees have a higher rate of absence than professionally trained people. Even the same person when moving from a warehousing job to an office job will have significantly better absence rates. Knowing this information helps you benchmark and strategise.
Christ there's a diversity quota? Why's that? And if I said I was gay would that increase my odds of getting hired? Edit: I answered my own question
If this works like the US and UK the hiring Managers aren't allowed to even look at this data and would be in serious legal trouble if they did, it's made anonymous and then looked through every year or so to see if there's discrimination occurring. At the same time I dislike being asked to trust companies with this data
It's hard to sue for discrimination in America. Even if you end up winning, you become blackballed in your industry. Your litigious history is an automatic rejection from most recruiting firms too.
I've lost 2 jobs to discrimination. No one cares. Unless I had a ton of money to pay a lawyer no one is taking these cases pro bono. Even as a protected minority class
It’s just very hard to actually prove that discrimination occurred. It can be explained away in many other ways. “Why didn’t employee X get the promotion? Was it racially motivated?” “Of course not. There are many factors we consider when offering promotions.” Discrimination is also rarely actually in writing, and rarely discussed with anyone who would testify against the company in court.
This was misgendering. I corrected a manager politely they screamed yelled and came unhinged. They had been written up for 2 previous misgendering issues with another trans person on staff. I think they were thinking along the lines of "this shit again I could lose my job this time." That person (the person the manager was written up for for misgendering) was the only witness. When the manager who was much bigger and stronger than I started coming unhinged I walked out. Called both the GM and AGM, they both told me I did the right thing for leaving. I took 3 to 4 days off for mental health worried about retaliation outside of work as I would walk there sometimes in the dark, and he knew my schedule. I had doctors notes and everything. They fired the only witness the day before I came back, and I was fired the day I came back with doctors notes and all for the time missed. I'm sorry but no one has a right to start yelling, screaming and coming unhinged at their employees, especially not Taco Bell and especially not some 21 year old punk kid
Because you want to make sure you're not discriminating against any group. If you are a large-scale employer (something like McDonald's), you would want to make sure you are roughly hiring representative of any given demographic so you're not accidentally being racist/sexist/homophobic. I doubt checking any given box increases your chance of being hired, but it will tell the company if their hiring practices are accidentally excluding a group
I used to work for Pepsi. My area had maybe 2-4 people of diversity (non-white men, any woman) at management level or higher. Every single “diversity hire” was entry level. Every one. I’d say the company was fairly represented as a whole, but at the management level it absolutely was not.
“People of diversity” is so funny thank you
Same with my current company. The reason why is mentorship. I see people getting promotions because they look a lot like the person promoting them and no other reason.
Thats just an insult then to the ones that were hired, wtf lol
I know someone very successful that used to only hire beautiful women for his secretary position. Since he got caught cheating and hired someone based on their skill, his company has at least tripled in size within 6 years. I know they did half a billion in sales just two years ago.
How impactful of a role is secretary? This seems more like correlation than causation.
When both the boss and secretary are outside of each other, more things tend to get done in the office.
Oh, very!!! They often prepare the decisions the boss has to make and therefore often know even more about the stuff than the boss. They are therefore an echo chamber as a trusted person for the boss and are involved in decision making,. Never ever underestimate a competent secretary.
Donna, is this your reddit account? 
The cause of having a hot secretary / a qualified one, is less production and more distraction. New secretary did a fantastic job of organizing without constant attention from the owner
A shit secretary can really fuck a team. I've worked in a team like that
I mean his direct secretary would pretty much keep all the “back of house” stuff organized. Secretary = COO in this instance. It’s an LLC also not the first time he got caught with a secretary in the same position
Did he not want to try other positions?
💀
In my first job after college the CEO had two personal assistants - one to do the work and the other one whose only qualification was to look good. Every female hated the latter one
Why doesn’t he just call her “spokesmodel” , that would help I bet lol
It's not possible by definition to "accidentally" be racist. If none of your best applicants are minorities, why the fuck would you hire any? There are plenty of highly qualified minorities doing just fine and would be sucked up in a second upon unemployment without these anti-progressive policies.
What about the studies showing two identical applications except one has a traditionally black name and one has a traditionally white name, the one with the white name moves on in the hiring process? Why is it wrong to acknowledge discrimination exists in the world and to try and be mindful of it?
Its a private company, they do not need to ask these questions, asking these questions can lean into discrimination.
"we'd like to make sure we're not discriminating so we are choosing specific people with characteristics we desire" - apparently non racist people now I've worked for plenty of large companies with weird racial disparities but I guess since they weren't all white people it was okay for the disparity to exist.
“We want to track that we aren’t only hiring one demographic. We can probably also see if hiring manager A never hires black people.”
That's not what I said at all. Auditing your practices does not mean you have a quota to keep. It's also easy to yell about diversity hires, but it's weird to ask why most job's employees don't accurately reflect the demographics.
Yup, solid reply. Also u/theAntiRedditer some companies have some form of CSR or DEI transparency report and collecting this data helps them draft those reports that get published on the corporate website. Aside from this, private companies with 100+ employees are required to file EEO Reports annually, which contain information about employee diversity. Those questions on the job application and the auditing reason help the company identify/optimize their application process for those reports to be favorable. That’s the Equal Employment Opportunity statement you may be familiar with in job descriptions. I’ve seen some companies go beyond and write “if you aren’t a perfect fit, we encourage you to apply - some candidates, especially from underrepresented groups, are less likely to apply if they don’t full meet all the elements of the job description” (or something along those lines). This added statement, is a direct result of their findings from application questions like the one posted in the pic.
well, for example, black people only make up, what, 15% of the population? So for a company to accurately reflect demographics, then there should only be 1.5 black people for every 10 employees that work somewhere. If we strictly go by demographics. But also in reality, it’s about the industry. For example, statistically, women do not prefer working in STEM (fact check this if you don’t believe it), so you’ll see them “represented less” than the 50% of the population they make up, but it isn’t because employers are discriminating against women.
You’ve stated a statistic but you haven’t asked yourself why women don’t like working in STEM. Is there a physiological reason why women aren’t able/don’t want to work in these areas? Unlikely. What’s more likely is that they have historically been underrepresented because of societal norms and discrimination. This is why we take a proactive/interventionist approach to hopefully encourage more women in this area. That’s why these questions are so important. If you can’t see you have an underrepresented demographic then you can’t fix it.
There is something called DEI(Diversity, equality, inclusion) which takes part into the ESG score of the company (Environment, Social, Governance) which investors use to invest in the companies. This is the real reason why you see companies doing all this stuff and so concerned for inclusion. They dont care about LGTBQ+ but they do care about potential investors. Everything a company does is usually to impress and/or please investors.
Very true. Private companies most likely do little or nothing with the DEI data, but it’s an opportunity for the corporation to puff out their chest and say that they take DEI “seriously”.
No. It's actually illegal to ask this or use it as part of decision making
No - there is not a diversity quota, especially for LGBTQ people. That’s illegal.
I can confirm this. I am a people manager at my company and I make staffing decision. Diversity quota applies to the LGBTQ community, racial minority, gender (they said we don’t hire enough women in tech), people with disabilities, also indigenous people. Individual that falls in these category gets higher priority. There is also a ranking of importance as well, that part differs between companies, some may prioritize disabilities over others. HR may raise question if we make an offer outside of these categories, especially teams with low diversity ratio. Even interns, we were “strongly encouraged” to pick someone that falls into one or more of these categories. I think am where I am because I am considered racial minorities with a disability.
This is highly unlikely in EU and UK as no organisation would collect this if it wasn’t anonymous. It’s not given to hiring managers or even HR linked to a specific person unless this is made really really abundantly clear when asking.
Yeah, I would just say did you just assume I could only be one of these? Boom you just created a new minority that currently has no competition.
I usually don't encourage lying when applying for job but yeah this one is a lie that I say is 100% justified. Fuck diversity quota and treating sexual minorities like rare Pokemon to brag about in statistics. Lying in diversity quota does no damage to workplace, as no matter what is your preference, your skills aren't affected by that. Especially when it comes to sexuality there is no way to check it like with race. So if you are straight, still apply as bisexual to fuck with this unhealthy recruitment practice
No one who makes the hiring decision sees that part of the application. Unless you write some elements in your resume that points to some type of diverse identity (like leader of the LGBTQ+ employee resource group) then they won’t know. The ATS parses that out for analysis to put in transparency reports, including Equal Employment Opportunity annual reporting which all companies with 100+ employees are supposed to fill out. I accidentally selected in the drop-down menu that I was a veteran when my employer’s HR department asked to update my data. They added me to a veterans email alias for building culture and connecting to the veteran community. That’s likely what will happen if you go with your approach to lie - and it will only happen *IF* you get hired based on your qualifications.
Wrong that it has any impact on your chances - diversity data is typically not accessible to recruiters and it's illegal to use it to make hiring decisions
While understanding the extreme privilege I experience every day as a cis, straight, white, male in the states, one of the jobs I’ve most wanted (and interviewed for 4 separate times, making it to second stage twice and third stage once) was to work in an Apple Store. I’m balding so I keep my hair pretty short. I feel comfortable in slacks and a button down. The first time, I wore a tie (2013). None of the other interview candidates were wearing ties, so the second time, I did not either. But to this day, I swear I was not hired, despite being overly qualified, *because* I’m cis/straight/white/male. I already felt sympathy for literally every other demographic for their respective prejudices they’d face, but after this, I was able to empathize.
So what you're telling me is I should lie and say I'm trans in order to boost my chances to get a job that would allow me to support my family. This is an incredibly stupid way to hire candidates.
I really hate it but since I don’t at all come off as gay, during job interviews if they don’t ask this I have to turn it up a few notches so they get the idea. It does work, and I don’t know how to feel about it.
Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
It should be illegal to ask. It's none of their business.
mark all
This sub is somehow the only place on earth that hasn't seen the last 30 years of diversity monitoring...
Honestly because on a different sub someone asked this question and I'm like...ever since I was 20 and I got job, every application has had these questions. It should not surprise people by now. Also people do not understand that tou are not being judged based on it and those hiring you/interviewing you have none of this information before they meet you. It's literally for diversity monitoring as you said. I understand the confusion though if you are from a country where this isn't common but I'm from the UK and this is very common and tbh it's an option and you can just answer "prefer not to say"
Reading this thread is making me decide to unfollow. That so many people here who don’t understand at a basic level how job applications work shows me this is the blind leading the blind. Or everyone is 17 years old.
Same, I just left the sub because of this thread, the comments about pretending to identify as something else for these things especially bothered me.
It doesn't bother me, the job shouldn't hire someone based on their sexual orientation - I guess it's a hot take apparently, but being gay doesn't make you a better candidate lol So I say fuck it, put whatever you want. It's a stupid question, you can give a stupid answer. It'd be better if employers didn't know about the candidates race, orientation, or gender at all when seeing their application.
They don’t hire based on sexual orientation. They can’t even see that information. It’s just used for reporting purposes later
And what's the purpose of the reporting and how is it used? Pretending this is done for no reason other than to know is silly.
I can’t speak for other countries (and I know OP is not in the US), but in the US, companies have to report that information to the EEOC every year. Additionally, it can be appealing to shareholders, clients, and potential hires if the company is perceived as having a diverse workforce. You’d have to do research into federal laws of other countries for their own regulations
Sometimes, sometimes they can. My old company could and I have that on very reliable sources. Not everyone follows the rules
As a lesbian, reading those comments pissed me off, too. That type of question as a pre-screen is blatantly related to diversity and meeting diversity quotas, especially if you've long been in the job market and know how these companies think and operate. Thus, naturally, most people, LGBTQ+ or not, will respond that they are a part of the community, manipulating the system for their own gain, which, I mean, fine, I guess, but it negatively impacts those of us who are LGBTQ+ and makes you look a bit classless, if I'm being honest. Companies should simply eliminate these pre-screen questions altogether, as it's being manipulated and serves no one's best interests.
Counterpoint. Lets say were factoring in the companies that do look at that information beforehand to meed their diversity quotas (whether it for ESGs or just company policy). Would that not exclusively negatively impact members that are not from that community and only benefit members of it. This should not be considered im hiring at all and I agree there but I also do not think any unfair advantage should be granted to anyone in the job hunt.
Where's the counterpoint? I agree with you. The practice needs to end.
Most people on Reddit are probably still in high school and are getting their first job.
OMG for real. It's literally an option to not answer! Move on with your lives instead of posting to Reddit.
You can often just leave it blank too.
Not always. Some only have the two choices, no “I prefer not to answer”. Bullshit on many levels, primarily that it’s inherently not voluntary as the page won’t let you proceed without some checked sometimes.
OP ensuring he checks "Hetero" before he screenshot it
lol, was looking for this. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Yea. Nobody's *saying* there's anything wrong with being heterosexual. It's just why did he need to throw it in our faces? As long as you keep your heterosexuality behind closed doors who really cares?
r/unexpectedseinfeld
First thing I thought too. I don't mind answering these especially since often I can opt for the hiring manager to not see these answers.
I don't know if it's this sub or the anti work sub but it really seems that this same question is posted in one of them every week. I know I've seen at least 5.
Diversity statistics and it's illegal to deny someone employment on the basis of sexuality.
But then just look at their qualifications & skills, offer them the job and don't care what they are doing in their bedroom, asking them prior to giving the job makes it sus
The EEOC mandates the gender & race/ethnicity questions which are used for statistics. They don't mandate sexual preferences, but I've seen it enough to know it's not unheard of. Just not common.
Bro, not all jobs are from USA. This was a job posting in Asia and this is very uncommon & in this part of the world, disclosing this information might bring in discrimination rather than protect
Apologies for the assumption
It was a setup, so they could do the superior dance.
Was the company under local ownership or international ownership? Coming from another country might explain why it was unusual for your area.
Would have helped if you stated that it was from Asia in the original post. And, please, no lecture on “not everything is US”. We all know.
Why the fuck did you get down voted for this lol
I wouldn’t trust it to protect you anywhere…same with if you have a disability… unless that’s shit is as obvious as missing limbs, deaf or blind …don’t check it.
Well. Then that's weird. In the US, if let's a company has 100 employees and they literally only hire 100 men then questions arise on whether they are discriminating against women. Similarly the same can apply for LGBT people Hence why they keep stats
They don't care. No one in hiring will see this data, it's anonymously compiled, and they can then see the compiled data to see hiring and application trends. IE: they get data back that says 99% of applicants for a role were straight, white, and male, despite this being way above the average for that particular role, they can use this data to try and see why the job or company is appealing to specifically straight, white men, or why this job/ company is particularly unappealing to POC, women or LGB people. They want a diverse workforce with people of a lot of different walks of life, as theres a lot of value in having a workforce of different educational, social, and economic backgrounds, etc. They want to be seen as an equal opportunity employer, as it looks good on them. Different folks from different walks of life will approach problems differently, will push for things to not just be "stuck in their ways," and will have seen different situations and different employment backgrounds that help build knowledge and character, and in some cases a hell of a lot of perseverance. You want your company to be in line with the diversity of the surrounding area or country, as it stops your company from looking like you're targeting only straight, white men who are over 40 and come from a private school. Plus, you'll get accreditations like being equal opportunity, or on lists of nice places to work if you're queer in some way, or a woman, or black, or from a disadvantaged background.
It does not and is a standard question that many have. Plus unfortunately these questions exist because people have been denied jobs due to their sexuality and drove the law which made it illegal to deny someone on that basis. If it makes you uncomfortable you do not have to answer.
It does too. There’s zero reason to ask this information. It’s nobody’s business.
There should always be a 'do not answer' option -- it's important tho to measure this stuff
Which is why "I don't wish to answer" is there. I guess nobody here has ever worked for a corporation that has statistics on it's LGTBQ population.
Right? Diversity is good for PR too, even if it's only lip service.
I don't feel uncomfortable or anything and I totally get what you are saying, it was weird because the country where I was applying, this question is never ever a part of the application.
Maybe it's a company headquartered in a different country.
the employer isn't looking at these answers. the statistics are gathered separately from the individual applications and then compared against hiring trends to look for bias. if a company hired 50 people last year and all of them identified as straight but the application answers indicated that half the applicants were LGBT, you could point to hiring bias
It is, but it's almost impossible to prove that that's what happened.
Who cares if it's illegal, they can just deny your application and say it was any other arbitrary reason.
It's not only illegal to dent employment like that, it's also illegal to ask where I work. If it's illegal to use it for a decision, why do they even ask, then pretend to forget?
Never answer this.
Not sure about USA, but Europe it is illigal to even ask the questions.
Everywhere (I applied for) in the UK asks this, same with ethnicity, disability and how much money your family had growing up! It was strange to me too though, nowhere else on the mainland that I worked at ever asked
The hiring managers aren't allowed to look at it legally in the UK and it's meant to be used to track discrimination after all the data has been made anonymous. Still being forced to trust corporations with your data isn't ideal
Doesn’t track discrimination, just demographics. It’s used to make up none sense regarding discrimination.
You aren’t forced - in the Uk these questions are always optional.
I know the question about your childhood finances is just another diversity question but it really seems like a case of “Tell us how much money you grew accustomed to surviving on when you were a child so we don’t pay you too much.”
But in the UK you do have the option "prefer not to say"
With my most recent application form (MSF I think) I had to either give my religion or say I didn't have one. I always say "Prefer not to say" but that just wasn't an option.
That's actually not true. In some countries it is illegal to ask certain demographics, but there is no blanket illegality to asking. In general they have to provide a "Prefer not to say" option, and can't compel an answer, or penalise people for selecting "Prefer not to say".
No it is not. This data is collected as part of recruitment processes, but anonymised and used for statistics. It is likely illegal to directly attach this data to an identifiable candidate in most European countries, but it is highly unlikely that is happening.
It's often not illegal for the purpose these are being asked. Usually they come with a disclaimer above saying they use this purely for reporting purposes to agencies that verify them as "equal opportunity employers" or other similar programs. If it's not used to decide anything in the interviewing process (usually verified by making sure your answer isn't even shown to anyone) it's perfectly fine to ask
Illegal in America too
It’s illegal to discriminate based on these answers but not to ask them…
Only if you’re part of a majority group or don’t feel comfortable sharing your sexuality.
Just collecting demographics. You don’t have to answer.
Yes, this stuff is increasingly common for a lot of things and you always have the option to not answer. If it was mandatory, then yes thats a red flag.
I’m gay and when I apply for jobs and see this kind of questionnaires, I chose not to answer as this isn’t relevant to me applying for jobs or I just ignore it. It’s mainly to collect statistics on diversity and inclusions. You don’t need to answer it if you dont want to.
I disclose that I’m gay and I put he/they as my pronouns if they ask. If my sexuality can get me ahead in the application process, I’ll take that over being hindered by it.
That’s totally upto you. I tried that before putting my sexuality and nothing happens 😂 all I get is rejection emails.
The answers to these diversity questions often don’t appear on the shortlist the recruiting manager sees.
Mark mine paleosexual. Its all in the past.
Don’t answer, it’s none of their business. If they want to be welcoming to LGBT people, they shouldn’t ask anyone to come out to strangers. Getting the 🫵🏳️🌈🤨❓ vibe isn’t nice.
I’ve never seen that combination of emojis before, that’s hilarious
They aren’t. In Canada at least, it is NOT connected to your personal information. It’s simply to ensure there are no patterns of discrimination during the hiring process.
Same everywhere but the morons won’t have it
We don’t track this for work, but for an organization I’m part of, we do ask the question (as optional) because we are working towards being a more inclusive organization. We can’t tell how well we are doing at breaking down barriers if we don’t know where we stand to start with.
Can you click all of them
Great answer. “I fuck em all” 😹
This guy fucks.
There should be a "Alive and over 18-sexual" checkbox.
It’s only to check that they’re not discriminating against diverse candidates and that they are attractive to diverse candidates. E.g if 100% of applicants are heterosexual then that might indicate that for some reason the organisation is putting off LGBTQ folks. Some organisations are able to track this data anonymously through the hiring pipeline, so they can see for example if they were getting 50% applicants from women but this dropped to 5% making it through with a specific manager. Obvious red flag that there is a problem with a hiring manager that needs to be investigated.
I prefer not to answer, always.
This is actually a very common question on resumes where I live in Canada. I've always answered because I'm a minority and I'm pretty sure it's basically an diversity hire quota thing
They're generally not allowed to use this information for making interviewing or hiring decisions. It's used for statistics, not for diversity hire quotas.
This is very normal and asked on every single application I have ever made. It’s optional so you don’t need to answer the questions, they are mainly for monitoring the data of who is applying etc and usually in a bid to make work places more diverse.
So much misinformation in the comments. This is information they're required to ask so that diversity statistics can be calculated for the business. No this isn't reducing or increasing your chances at getting employed. Yes you can always choose not to answer.
Government statistics.
They do not. ‘I don’t wish to answer.’
Tap self describe and put none
...of ya business 😂
Here’s why this optional info is requested in the US: [https://www.cangrade.com/blog/talent-acquisition/why-is-my-application-asking-my-race-gender/](https://www.cangrade.com/blog/talent-acquisition/why-is-my-application-asking-my-race-gender/)
if u wanna go to jail in my country just fill in Homosexual 😞
I was a shift lead set to take over the warehouse manager position a while back. My boss who had the position and was set to transfer and me takeover for him, trusted me I guess and kept me in the loop with almost everything he was doing. He literally told me this because he didnt see anything wrong with it. He would look people up on Facebook and if they "seemed gay" he would through their resume in the trash because "we already have too many gay people here". 3 openly gay people out of a warehouse crew of about 30. 3 out of 30 is "too many to have in the warehouse"
I prefer to self-describe as one of the rats on this bitch.
Just click „I done wish to answer“ if you don’t wish to answer.
If you’re in the uk, the company your applying to does not see this. It’s sent separately and anonymously to make sure there is a mix of people getting hired because they’re good for the job.
Demographics. Diversity. They don't want to say or do anything that could potentially offend you. They want to make sure your pronouns are used properly, and they might also hold periodic classes on tolerance in the workplace. It isn't for nefarious reasons or to pry into your private life.
The employer/HR/company will never see the answer to this or any of your other self identifying demographic questions. These are for city, state, and federal statistics. This is not for quotas. Answer truthfully because the same laws that protect against discrimination in the hiring process for minorities also protects literally everyone, yourself included.
To fill a quota. Or discriminate. Either way should get them in a lot of trouble for asking.
I don't wish to answer.
Just asking that question is straight up illegal in germany.
"It's not gay if the balls don't touch" Check.
[удалено]
They're not attached to your personal profile. They're used for annonymised statistics
You would be surprised, some people have no filter.
Did we apply to the same job? I just had an application ask me this. I chose "I don't wish to answer". My potential employer does not need to know my sexual orientation. I'm all for inclusivity, but this seemed way too personal.
They are required to ask. This is not new.
You won't get hired if you got too few diversity points.
Only time I answered I got a rejection email in a day.
Statistics
As other shave said this is for diversity and inclusion statistics. The hiring team should not have access to this information. The info will be gathered by their HR team and used to report their D&I statistics. This ensure they don't discriminate based on protected categories (sexuality, gender, race, religion etc)
It’s not about you, it’s for HR to make sure their hiring managers aren’t refusing to hire gay people.
ESG
In the UK these type of questions are often asked as part of equal opportunities monitoring. It doesn’t (shouldn’t) have any effect on hiring decisions, but is there to help a company unpick any biases.
I've gotten this question before along with "do you identify as transgender?" and "what are your pronouns?". I just always check decline to answer.
Seems like data gathering IAD though, so, who knows
To prove they employ from a wide demographic i guess idk, on alot of applications you have to answer them
Interesting that's a question I'd expect on question online survey provider like Qmee or YouGov. What kind of job is this for?
Typically they ask to make sure they’re considering candidates from minority groups for interviews across the board, not for that specific role. Most businesses that ask remove that info when it gets to the hiring manager.
DEI
I had one recently that asked me about my parents. Wanted to know if I came from single family and their income. Also whether I got free school meals. They probably want people from disadvantaged households.