Why would a Graduate job application form be asking about main earners job/for when the applicant was age 14 ?

[bizzey]

DS has sent me a photo of the question.
Various job levels to choose from or unemployed on job seekers allowance.
None of it applies to me as I was on carers allowance and income support when he was 14.
(Carer full time for my dad)

Just wondering if anyone has come across this before.
Thanks.

Diversity monitoring

It is for social mobility

Ohh it is a required question with *. so has to be filled.

This.

It's becoming more common as a question.

I said to him maybe a Diversity thing.

Will he be disadvantaged if he puts down long time unemployed?

It’s so they don’t only give jobs to the comfortable middle classes. They will be assessing their own ability to attract talent from across the entire range of society.

Yes it indicates their Social Mobility as they start gcse years

No he won’t be disadvantaged part of the reason these questions are asked is to ensure that people from such backgrounds aren’t disadvantaged in the application process.

Thank you .
I didn't register that 14 was start of GCSE stage.

I suppose I am just a bit over sensitive on my employment history !

There was a documentary on bbc recently ‘how to crack the glass ceiling’ I think it was in the second episode where they explain this if you want to know more

Thank you.
I will look that up.

Tell him to out down long term carer it's for widening participation/social mobility.
It does the opposite generally it means he's more likely to get a interview

Apparently your parents' job at age 14 has significance on your success later in life. Not sure how or why but it is to do with social mobility monitoring and not a trick question. In fact there may be some positive bias towards candidates where there weren't 2 FT working parents/professionals. No idea what the link is as I can see many poor outcomes from kids with ostensibly high MC upbringings and brilliance from others who have had a tough road...

I recently applied for a civil service role recently and it asked this question. It said it would be used for monitoring purposes but not seen by those doing the shortlisting or interviews.

I answered that question this week and I'm 46 years old. It's related to diversity and I think it won't do him any harm to put that down

If they’re doing anything other than separating it from the application, and using it only for monitoring they’re majorly fucking up.

They will do things like compare whether the average person from a less privileged background is more or less likely to be employed, and then more or less likely to progress in a firm. But it’s vanishingly unlikely that the data will ever be attached to an individual or affect them personally.

I find the fact that the question is being asked to be utterly bonkers

i suppose you can lie but what if you don’t want to share the information? Or the subject of the question doesn’t want to share it?

It's also asked on socio-economic surveys and is looking at social mobility.

He’d probably be advantaged.

Basically employers are under pressure to ensure not all their staff come from the same middle class background.

These questions also help employers work out if their advertising is working ie if all the applicants are kids of lawyers they aren’t getting a wide enough range of talent and should probably change their advertising

I recruit for the civil service regularly, this is asked if all applicants for stats purposes, it's anonymously and interviewers will not see it. It also has no bearing on whether someone is interviewed or not. It's just so they can say 27% of successful applicants came from X background. Look at areas where they could be doing more and target recruitment campaigns differently etc

A diversity thing and yeah really really common. Sometimes they will also ask your parents highest level of education.