Ask HN: Can companies ask for private info before any interview/offer?

In the US at least, asking for DOB and marital status could potentially put the company in hot water.

The rest just looks sketchy from an identity theft perspective and is truly unnecessary at the early screening stages of hiring. Even if it’s legal wherever this company is located, I would hard pass on this.

I would quickly pass on this, sounds more like an identity theft method disguised as a job posting. IBAN is linked to your bank account if I understand it correctly, so that's a big no.

Outside the US it isn't rare to see people asking age and marital status (lots of CV's even have it on there), which to American's is a big no-no as it can land the company into trouble with the government. IIRC through it isn't technically illegal in the U.S., just dangerous grounds to be on and all companies train you to avoid those types of questions, or even questions like how many kids etc.

Looks phishy. Too much information, some of those really should be irrelevant, and others at least have a reason given why they need them. (I.e. there's cases where I could see why they want a proof of citizenship early, but they'd need to say that then. I guess many CVs have phone number and address normally, but those also can be queried once needed. etc.).

Can't comment on the legal situation, especially not without knowing the country.

I think it's just a test, knowing that the company is summitto . Are you able to say no and reply properly?

A lot of that info was traditionally included in CVs in Spain (dob, phone# and address, citizenship, marital status and even driver permit situation, and a photo). These days it is increasingly rarer, and if a company asks it for a tech position it would definitely be a big red flag.

But, IBAN and copy of your passport, in a CV??? I can't believe it is not an outright scam.

Steer clear either way.

This is identity theft. If it were real they wouldn't need your passport, date of birth or IBAN until they'd already hired you.

>> may I ask you how you found us and what peaks your interest in XXXXXX ?

May be they should of proof read there copy.

IANAL. In EU it is too much information upfront which puts this possibly legit company in a dark area of GDPR and equality laws. Phone number and eligibility to work in EU is fine. The company may eventually ask remaining once you accept an offer. Still scanning a passport is a fishy practice if they can verify it when you visit them on site.

I never saw an employer asking for IBAN. Feels shady to me.

Even if they would be a legitimate company they would need to understand that in this market they are not buying but selling.

So apart from blatant privacy issues - way too many hoops.

Scam either way, stay clear.

(the hiring dynamics described in this article are basically valid for all devs in the current market - pretty much everywhere - don't fall for anachronistic HR schemes: https://hiringengineersbook.com/post/trouble-hiring/)

So many red flags there. Run away.

Frankly, this is the kind of email that makes me reach out to them over some other means of communication to tell them that I've received a suspicious email which makes me believe their email server has been hacked.

At least two of these questions are risky (if not outright illegal) to ask almost everywhere in the civilized world. Worse: there are countries where the phone number, address and the information on a passport may be enough to convince a bank that you've "signed" a sponsorship deal with an NGO, agreeing to deposit a (small) sum of money from an account with a known IBAN account every month.

If this is real and legit, whoever is managing the hiring process there has screwed up big time...

This is a scam. Don't do this.

what a fucking joke. jeez some people have zero scruples

Please don't ever give a person a copy of your passport as part of a job application. You are being scammed.

I concur with the others. I'd be shocked if this wasn't some kind of identity theft scheme.

You left the company name above BTW.

This is not how we wanted to be featured on Hacker News but here it is. First of all let me start by saying: yes, we are legally required to ask all those questions in the Netherlands at a certain point, and to delete all of the data if we don't hire you. Do we have to ask all of this information in the first mail? No! In fact, our only goal was to have an efficient hiring process. Improving privacy is our company's mission, so we took the author of this post very serious, even before we came across this. Although we always made clear this information is optional and can be shared at later stages as well, we did not realize that it could be interpreted by our candidates as if he/she might get rejected if they refuse to share information. We do not want anyone to feel pressured. We therefore went back to the drawing board and changed our procedure.

Fortunately we only sent this mail to a handful of people before we realized that this is not the right approach. In the end, what we really wanted to know was: "Are you allowed to work in the EU?" But then we realized why stop there? We improved our process to ensure candidates are only asked to share a minimum amount of data! Feel free to check it out: https://summitto.com/hiringprocess

As other commenters have already stated, most information we ask is standard and in ~70% of the cases already answered in CVs we receive anyway because most of our applicants come from Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium. We learned now that as we target a global audience those "standard" questions are not a worldwide standard.

Some of you were suspicious that we base our hiring decisions on this information.

Let me state this very clearly: this requested information was never used to evaluate applicants. Summitto evaluates you only on your coding skills, and nothing else. We point to the fact in our first mail to the author of this post: "Please note that if there is some personal information which you prefer not to share yet, that is ok!" Moreover, we clearly stated this again in a second mail to the author of this post as well.

Regarding the IBAN account number: this information is essential to reimburse any flight expenses and of course to pay your salary. For the US citizens in this thread: no, sharing your bank account number in the EU is not comparable to how it works in the US banking system. IBAN numbers are not private or easily exploitable data. Still, we have now scrapped this question from our first email.

Although we truly appreciate the author's criticism in this post regarding the threat of theoretically losing his/her privacy, we would like to point out the irony that by complaining without properly anonymizing the data he/she actually violated ours.

We value the privacy of all of our candidates. We encourage them to protect the data they send using PGP, so it is encrypted in transit and at rest. Any data which belongs to applicants which were not hired is deleted within 30 days after the last contact.

That also became the law in Massachusetts in 2018.

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/learn-more-details-abou...

Same with New York as of November of 2017, I believe.

The problem with this attitude is that withholding that information could be seen as a sign that you’re a problematic employee. Even if the company really doesn’t care, an applicant has no way of knowing that. So by not answering the questions you could be eliminating yourself from the job right away.

It’s easy to be pithy and say “well that’s not a place you want to work anyway”, but that’s counter to the reality that many places don’t have a lot of employment options, and people simply need every chance they can get to find a job on merits as opposed to artificial elimination criteria that some incompetent low level HR person came up with.

Of course you can't sue them and get enough money to retire on. They didn't destroy your life, they had a misconfigured form on their damn website.

Send them an email, "I recently used your website and it appeared that several demographic questions did not have "Prefer Not To Say"/"No Answer" options, which I am used to seeing. I think these are fair to people who do not wish to provide that information at that time, and have understood opt-out options might even be required by anti-discrimination law. I wanted to let you know about this concern and hope you can fix it."

Do it from a throwaway email if you are particularly paranoid.

It is perfectly legal to ask. It's illegal to base hiring decisions on that info though.

Idk. Personally, you even said it yourself above, that just seems like it was honest/genuine “small talk.” It could have totally been just that and nothing more. I wouldn’t jump right to “invasion of privacy” if someone asked me that. To me, those don’t seem like invasive questions. Same thing I’d imagine to hear from any random stranger at a work event, for example. Pretty basic boilerplate “get to know ya/small talk” questions, besides the ol’ “so, this weather huh?!” Haha Maybe I’m just being optimistic that not everyone in tech is evil, with an agenda? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯