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Ask HN: Does “choose not to identify” hurt your chances when applying online?

23 points by mock-possum ↗ HN
If you've been applying for jobs recently you're familiar with the ubiquitous final trivia round of filling in the application form: What's your gender, what's your race, are you a veteran, do you have a disability.

Most of the times, you're given the option to opt-out of providing that information - and I feel like I would like to opt out of regurgitating my stats but I'm curious about what impact that might have on my attractiveness as a candidate.

I've only ever participated in the hiring process at the interview level, not as a hiring manager / recruiter - does anyone have any insight to share into not just the ideal utility of those questions, but the actual practical implications of a non-answer from an applicant?

38 comments

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stcroixx
Yes of course. If the goal is to hire for attribute x and you decline to say whether you posses that, they will pass you over until they find what they're looking for.
mock-possum
If your goal is to hire for attribute "no disability" and I decline to say whether I possess that, then it's illegal to pass me over - same with attribute "is not a woman" or "is white." So unless you're suggesting that they ask these questions to enable them to practice illegal hiring discrimination, I'm not really sure this applies to my question.

Military service is the only one I can think of that's legal to take into consideration.

988747
One man's "illegal hiring discrimination" is another man's "social justice" /s
hw-guy
I was indoctrinated at Very Big Corporation back in the 80's that given a white and a black job applicant, the company's policy was to prefer the black one as long as they meet the minimal requirements for the job. This was presented in annual mandatory Affirmative Action training as offical company policy, and was supposedly a requirement for government contracts.

Never mind that it was a blatant violation not only of the Constitution, but of the letter of the very government policy that initiated Affirmative Action to begin with.

flangola7
What was the racial make-up of the company prior to the policy?
stcroixx
Illegal hiring discrimination is the norm from my perspective. There are departments that set targets for what they want the makeup of the company to look like. Hard if not impossible to enforce.
mock-possum
well that's fair, that is the sort of inside info that I'd like to know.

And actually, that means I was unfair about your first comment - I wouldn't want to work for a place that operates that way anyway, as another top level comment notes. I think I can safely discard secret illegal hiring practices as a concern when interviewing, which does solve my issue of whether to answer truthfully or simply opt-out of those questions.

aliqot
I try to think of it in the most charitable way possible: "in what ways can we accommodate this person's needs". Sometimes the ideal candidate can be unique in ways you'd not considered at first. It shows care to pay attention to those details and make them feel welcomed.
mcsniff
I answer the question using another question -- do I want to work at an organization who cares about that kind of stuff?

Are my "disabilities" being ranked against my abilities?

I get that everything can be a checkbox and "right fit", but if someone looks over me for not checking a diversity checkbox, I am happy to be not hired by them. Job applications and interviews are a 2 way street.

neaden
Companies over a certain size in the US, as well as ones that work with certain government contracts, have to report aggregate numbers about their applicants to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It is illegal for them to use this information for any hiring decisions or even to share the information with the people making the hiring decisions.
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samtho
But when it’s legal for them to decline moving forward because of “culture fit” it might as well be legal to discriminate based off of that criteria.
mancerayder
One company I know has HR specifically questioning and grilling hiring managers who turn down a 'diverse' candidate after an interview. That's a roundabout way to achieve the same.
HeyLaughingBoy
It's entirely possible that they had an anti-discrimination lawsuit filed against them and this is one of the things they agreed to do as part of a settlement.
mock-possum
yep, that's part of my worry as well, which is why I'm curious how this data is actually getting used.
dragonwriter
> Most of the times, you're given the option to opt-out of providing that information - and I feel like I would like to opt out of regurgitating my stats but I'm curious about what impact that might have on my attractiveness as a candidate.

The employer should (many will explicitly note that they do they do this, both to make people more comfortable answering and to mitigate lawsuit risk) separate the information from your application so that no one involved in the selection process will ever have access to it. While this is gathered for statistical purposes, its almost entirely stuff that would be bright-line violations of anti-discrimination law to use in the selection process.

runnerup
The question here isn't about what "should" happen or what is legal. It's a question I share -- for which types of companies will this hurt my chances of landing a job?

Surely there are some out there who abuse these responses. I'd personally prefer to put "decline to answer" for all race/veteran/disability questions. But I don't because I'm worried someone will notice that and think I'm a weirdo for doing it.

cuteboy19
I don't think there is Much harm in answering no on veteran/disability as those both are cases where a "yes" is low probability anyways. Race and gender is questionable though
munchbunny
Speaking from my own big tech hiring experience, as the hiring manager, and working with our recruiters from HR, if you do not belong to one of the "in demand" demographics, then it generally does not make a difference between providing the true value and declining to provide that information, because the positive identification of underrepresented groups was the part that made a difference.

I never got to see the responses myself, but the recruiters from HR could. That said, if a hiring manager wants to bias their hiring based on this information, they'll figure out at some point before making a decision, whether or not you provided it. Your resume, your name, your educational background, your accent, etc. all passively shed information, so I would often find the answers without wanting to or trying to find them.

xupybd
If the company is trying to add diversity to a team they might be looking to fill more spots of x gender, race or disability. If you don't fit that gap then it probably doesn't matter if answer or not. Not that they will pass you up if you don't fill that criteria. Imagine if your company is getting bad press because you have a 90% male work force. There will be pressure to hire any good non male candidates.
bruceb
One could argue one should mark it as it shows of all applicants a certain % are of X attribute, so hiring applicant of X isn't unusual as maybe they made up a large or even super majority of applicants.
halfnormalform
Like an EEO questionnaire? It probably doesn't matter. No one who is making a hiring decision is supposed to see that information, and it only gets used for reporting purposes (so they can prove they aren't discriminating against anyone).

I'd be very surprised if any legitimate recruitment tool exposed that information to anyone evaluating you.

71a54xd
I always say I'm gender neutral / gay and since I'm tan always check that I'm hispanic.
cuteboy19
It does not hurt if you are white/asian. It's treated essentially the same as them. It might hurt you otherwise though
logicalmonster
> Does “choose not to identify” hurt your chances when applying online?

The real answer is probably "it depends".

I'm sure many recruiters/HR try and be as unbiased as humans can be and don't take demographic info into account for hiring.

I'm sure there are racist people out there that really don't prefer to hire a black person, for example.

And at the same time, I'm sure there are "woke" recruiters and HR that really don't prefer to hire a white man if there's a woman or POC available.

I'm sure there are some people in companies out there that practice ethnic nepotism and do everything they can to promote hiring their countrymen over others.

You could probably test this to some extent by applying to jobs with identical resumes with different male/female names that sound white, asian, black, latino, indian, etc and see what the response rates among different types of companies are.

What I think is crazy is that this information is part of the hiring process at all: particularly questions asking you who you prefer fucking. That asking who you prefer fucking is close to the standard in corporate America is crazy to me.

mock-possum
I have never in almost twenty years in the web industry had anyone ask about my sexuality. Never ever - not as part of application, not during interview, in fact hardly even casually among coworkers after I’ve got the job. It’s been my experience that no one cares who you fuck, as long as you get your work done.

If asking who I prefer fucking is close to standard experience in America, then apparently I have had a wildly nonstandard experience.

logicalmonster
Have you applied for a job in the US lately?

In many cases, half of the application is relevant such as asking for your contact details and resume.

In many cases, the other half of the application is irrelevant and might ask for information such as your race, ethnicity, whether or not you're Hispanic, pronouns, disabilities, sexual preferences, etc.

mock-possum
have you? all I've been doing for the past three months has been applying for jobs online. I consistently see race, gender, disability and veteran status - I have never once seen sexual preference.
logicalmonster
To be fair, I think peoples' experience with this varies (perhaps depending on which industry they're applying to work in as well as location), but I'm not the only one reporting this. Here's a few recent threads.

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/yoilsu/workplace_i...

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/10qd9dv/why_must_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/w7u7de/when...

mock-possum
man I'm really pretty skeptical - in your own personal experience, let's say you've applied to 100 jobs, how many of those would you expect to explicitly ask you about your sexuality?
logicalmonster
Questions about sexuality are less common than the race and disability questions, but I've seen it often enough to be noticeable, maybe around 30% of jobs I've come across. That said, I think it varies based on industry and location. Some people might never see it and some people might see it all of the time. But there's enough people reporting seeing it through some of the threads I posted to make this credible.

That being said, my personal preference is for jobs to focus on stuff relevant to work. Race has no bearing on your resume or skills, neither does gender, neither does sexuality. A disability might have some relevance to a job, but it should not be relevant at the job application stage, and workers are already legally protected for reasonable accommodations once they get a job, so there's no point in asking that on an application anyway. At best, it's a waste of time, and at worst, it invites potential discrimination for disabled job seekers.

A job application should essentially be 3 fields: name, contact info, and a file upload for the resume. Actually, that can just be boiled down to one field because a resume should already have those things.