Personal information and job application

[carefreeeee]

I am applying for a job online, with a large employer.
At the end of the application form, there is an 'Equal opportunities monitoring page' asking for personal information such as DOB, religion, sexual orientation, marital status and whether I have any dependents. It is compulsory to fill this in otherwise the application will be rejected. There is no option of 'prefer not to say'.

As far as I am concerned, my marital status/sexual orientation and religion are all private and I do not wish to disclose them to an employer - even if it does allow them to monitor their equal opportunities policy. (Surely it is a form of discrimination to force people to disclose their personal information like this? Or at least it opens the door for them to be discriminated against on the basis of things that the employer wouldn't even have known about otherwise...)

It did state in the advert that applications from a specific religious group would be 'particularly welcomed' - which makes me think that the information will actually be used as part of the process and not just filed away somewhere.

Is this sort of thing standard now? In my current job there was such a form, but you could choose to either leave it blank, or tick 'prefer not to say' for a particular thing.

[mirime]

We have this where I work. It's voluntary and any received are kept separately from the application forms. The people doing the shortlisting and interviewing see them beforehand.

[mirime]

Stupid phone. Should say 'never see them beforehand'

[OhThatThingAgain]

Not standard in corporate world but very normal in the public sector.

This information will not be shared with the selection panel. It's not right on a personal level, but if you really want the job fill in the form with gritted teeth.

[mirime]

I can only speak for my organisation, but it makes no difference to your chances if you don't fill the form in. Most people don't complete them.

They are separated from the application form when they come in and have no identifying information on so can't be matched back up again.

[mirime]

Oops. Just seen yours is compulsory. Are they tick boxes or not? If not I'd be tempted to write 'prefer not to say'. If tick boxes a number of those must have a 'other' option you could choose?

[CurlyBlueberry]

mirime if they can't be matched back up, then how can the company monitor what happens to e.g. gay candidates? They might know 8 out of 10 candidates were gay but no idea if the job went to a gay person or not!

[carefreeeee]

Thanks for the replies.
It's all compulsory. For example, the options are:
a. Gay man or lesbian
b. Heterosexual man or woman
c. Bisexual man or woman

It won't allow submission without this.
They ask for NI number on the same page so it is definitely not anonymous.