Be Excellent To Each Other

The following is from an online job application I have just started to complete. What, pray tell, would happen if I dared tick 'Other'?

I think if I chose 'Other' I'd specify FUCK OFF YOU NOSY CUNTS.

I'd choose 'prefer not to say' on principle.

Yes I have a mate that refuses to specify his 'race' on principle, which is fair enough to me. I can't think of a single reason why they'd need to know this unless it was to discriminate one way or the other.

'Other' 'Maddie'.

I also do this. There is generally a seperate sheet with the application forms I have to fill in. I bin 'em.

Yes, I'm sticking to 'Prefer not to say', but I think CG expressed it better.
It's not even a helpful list. It asks for gender*, then asks what you're into. So if you tick 'male' and are straight, do you click 'heterosexual female' or 'heterosexual male'?



* prefer not to say, in case you're wondering. I've given my name, you can work it out from that

"Other"->"I FUCK DEAD DUCKS" would be appropriate, I feel.

"Other" "None - I'm So Ronery, So ronery, So ronery and sadry arone."

Please do this!

'Other'

'Despoiler of colostomy gashes'

I am a giant spider from Metabelis 3. All praise to the great one.

'I am just a head'

That'd do nicely

Yeah they always say they need to know to avoid discrimination.

Which is just self evidently pap.

I don't see why it's "self-evidently pap".

When you do the separate form that asks for race, sexual orientation, etc they get filed. Over time, this means the employer can build up a racial profile of applicants, "80% of our candidates are skinny white men" for example, if you do a NerdJob like me. Then the employer can look at the hiring history, "100% of hires are skinny white men". Sooner or later, if those figures go too far the wrong way, they start to wonder if they hiring manager in question has a bias. How else are HR departments supposed to keep tabs on subtle racial bias by management? Alternatively, they can be used to prove that the company isn't biased. "Only 5% of your workforce are women, you sexist pigs" -> "but only 5% of our applicants are women".

I see no problem with this, frankly. The separate form is always anonymous and separated from your application. I'm sure MyFinger knows more about this than me.

But what if only 5% of the workforce are women but 60% of the applicants women, and the women just happen to be genuinely less capable than the men? There are many adverts around my London home for council jobs that are actively recruiting from X, Y and Z parts of teh community - so is someone more likely to be given that job because they are afro-carribean and so fit in to the council's current recruitment job than I, purely on that fact, if we are both equally qualified and able to do the job?

'Reverse' discrimination always just sounded like another form of discrimination to me. If there were a way to hire people without sight of them, their name, place of birth or sex/sexuality/race/religion being given the world would be at least a fairer place, but I guess short of submitting censered job applications and tking interviews behind a giant scren, with voice changers where necessary, this is totally impractical.

They should be asking for height and eye colour too.

Why?

Yes, because the widespread discrimination against people with green eyes is one of the most serious problems facing us as a society.

I call them 'Bogey Lookers'.

Eye colour was an obscure reference to Union Army enlistment papers:
"This soldier has ____ eyes, ____ hair, ____ complexion, is ___ feet ___ inches high."
(Sorry)

I think it comes down to matters of relevancy of information gathered. Now, the original screenshot (from a public sector organisation) just seemed far too detailed for no gain, especially on matters as sensitive as sexual orientation.*

My take is that I think it's just as discriminatory to force people to classify themselves as being from a certain set in order to create a sense of 'balance' as it is openly discriminate.
I take people as individuals, not as representatives of a group.

HR might want to know who is seeing their job adverts, but I think anyone advertising in 'the Guardian' or 'Horse and Hounds' or whatever must have some idea of the self-selecting audience they are reaching.

*Unless it's just a cover for a pron shoot, natch.

There is no such thing as 'Positive' or 'Reverse' discrimination. If you favour one group, the other is going to suffer. Racial quotas are a stupid idea. If only 5% of applicants are non-white, then maybe you need to make your company more appealing, don't just favour the minority for the hell of it.

My understanding is that of course, that can happen -- numbers like that aren't automatic indicators something is wrong, but warning signs that HR need to make sure nothing is wrong. MyFinger probably knows more.

Not at my employer, I can tell you that for a fact. Both my name and the job I've applied for always appear on the 'Race enquiry form'. Anonymous data isn't a problem, but the objection here I think would be when it's not anonymous. Racial quotas are the most ludicrious thing ever. Always employ the BEST person for the job, and fuck off everything else. This might lead to a company full of white people, or full of black people, or (more likely) a mixture of both at a proportion relative to racial distribution in the general populace.

I'm not sure how I feel.

On the one hand, I totally accept that white affluent males have had a stranglehold on most high-paying jobs and positions of responsibility. I totally accept that unless something dramatic happens that forces that to change then it won't - not even because of prejudice necassarily, more because of inertia. I totally accept that that's a bad thing, that it's denying opportunities to huge chunks of the population who could potentially do the job better than the current incumbants.

On the other hand, I'm don't think that jamming people into jobs they're not ready/completely qualified for is the way to break into the old boys' network. Surely it's just setting those people up to fail?

(That's assuming that "reverse discrimination" as it's defined here actually exists as a widespread practice, and it's not just from the same "near-total fabrication" file as the Daily Mail's usual run of "Now They're Banning Christmas! / Nursery School Makes Children Sing Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep" It's-PC-Gone-Mad bullshit.)

On the other other hand, institutions like the police should fully and fairly represent the society they're given authority over. So I'm all for them actively recruiting from underrepresenteted minorities and giving those new recruits all the help they need to succeed and advance.

In summary: people are a problem.

I also have a problem with people who complain that things like the police aren't 50% white and 50% 'black/other', despite the fact this isn't proportional to the racial population of the UK.

But sadly, not everyone is as balanced and fair as you are, and these things are used to try and track if someone who is (racist/sexist/etc) is actively opposing the appointment of people.

The principle of gathering the information, I don't really have an issue with. It lets you identify issues like possible burgeoning descrimination within the hiring process, and that's a good thing. It also lets you improve your recruitment - if you can highlight that your job adverts aren't attracting a reasonable proportion of female applicants, why is that? You may wish to change the focus of your advertising to appeal to a more widespread audience.

Achieving quotas for the sake of quotas, I don't agree with, but I don't think it happens as much as people make out.

When I've been on interview panels, the initial sifting of CVs is anonymised anyway.

Have any of you been asked about your parents profession on a job interview?

last time it happened to me i asked what's the point? The interviewer said that i would deal with highly confidential stuff so they should know if i have any family member in position to use that stuff.

Bollocks i say. It's all about stupid elitism. I'm not ashamed to me a boring middle class guy, with parents with boring middle class jobs but its none of their business.

Applying for GCHQ gets you an application form that pretty much requires you to give the life history of all your ancestors back to when they first learned to use fire.

I agree that it's none of their business. If they felt that strongly they could ask you to sign a confidentiality agreement not to discuss things outside of work.

I have on application forms for the police, but not for the prisons.

Without telling me who that is, I'm going to guess that this is a public sector organisation (my less likely second guess would be a multinational private sector). If so they actually have a legal duty to report, in detail, their staff breakdown. They also must work very hard to ensure that their profile for ethnicity, disability etc matches the "community" in which they operate. They have to spend a lot of effort measuring all this and using processes which prevent discrimination. Anonymising applications, no years for education, just blocks of text based on detailed competencies and person specs, no dates on work history, large interview panels etc etc.

I don't buy the "they discriminate anyway" argument. In the current climate, any business worth its salt will just hire the best person or go under. Anyone going to that length to track all that data isn't about to shaft themselves by it revealing they discriminate! It's the firms not measuring all that stuff that are in danger of managers discriminating.

Positive (or however you want to refer to it) discrimination is a thorny topic indeed. I personally find it hard to justify. I agree with whoever said there are fundamental problems at a deeper level if you have to positively discriminate. Metropolitan Police is a case in point. They have major positive discrimination for BME but still struggle to attract applicants. Maybe there was something in that case that was recently settled out of court. No smoke without fire?

You and Gaywood are the sense talkers in this thread.

HAHHAAHHAHAHAH. Visit a law firm, eh.

"Ooooh, look at the chap with the year round tan. Why isn't he making the tea?".

Positive discrimination isn't a good thing, but measures which let you *see* when people are being negatively discriminatory are definitely a good thing,

Also, we need more female bisexuals in the workplace, so therefore their uptake of particular jobs needs to be measured.

Oi.

Of course, making comments like that gets you the Prime Ministership of Italy.

Craster's right.

DrG never talks sense.

I do this also. I also spent a year deliberately not directing anyone's attention to the ethnic bollocks section of the application form in several libraries, because fuck off.

My personal favourite is "White Other (Moomin)".

My eyes are both brown and green (not one of each). I'll look shitty bogeys at you if you keep it up.

I was stood next to one of the supervisors at work the other week when she binned a CV purely because she could smell fags on it. Seems a little absurd when half her department seem to be smokers.

An old client of mine once was discussing this sort of business with me. His summary "It's all to do with niggers".

I reflected that while he was making a broad and somewhat offensive generalisation, I was obliged to concede that the existance of different races was key to the issue on a number of levels.

That would be the offical secrets act...

But it is their business, if you are in a job that deals with the government or the armed services, they need to know exactly who you are before you get your clearance. They want to know who you socialse with and what your family back grounds are...

It is all about making you un blackmailabel.... Ie if you Dad was in a lot of debt and some one offered you a lot of money for 'secrets'. Your employer has to make sure you would not take the bribe.

The theory behind the Pink Form (being the humungous 40-odd page background check you need to get even basic level MoD clearance; I was supposed to do this once but never did, despite working for twelve weeks in a genuine security-required job role) isn't to make sure you're not a gay commie with a history of drinking and gambling problems. The idea is that once your employer knows you are a gay commie with drink/gambling problems, no-one can say, "oi, you, get me all those secret plans, or I'll tell your employer you're a gay/commie/alkie/gambler and you'll lose your job". Because the employer already knows, see.

And being able to sue someone after the event for breach of contract is not sufficient when talking about state secrets.

Not really, as the damage has already been done..

Prevention instead of punishment is better in this case..

That's....what I said. You may have missed the word 'not'.

I did miss the word not.... but I agree with you if that helps