What's free school meals got to do with applying for jobs?

[Auburngal]

Unemployed and looking for work. A few online forms for positions have asked me about did I get free meals at school and what job category the chief income earner at home when I was in my early teens.

Why do they ask these questions? I know people who had free school meals and have a Masters degree and another person, their DF was a vet and she works at Costa p/t. Though the person working at Costa has had a lot of health issues in her late teens - mid 20s so education was messed up.

It's used as a measure of social mobility and whether they're reaching candidates from different backgrounds with their recruitment.

This.

We have to fill out stuff like this at work “when you were 14 what was the role of the main earner in your household?”

This. Especially if they have been running programmes to eg give work tasters to oder pupils in deprived areas.

Is it part of the (supposedly) anonymous DEI type survey at the end?

It's to make sure they're looking at a wide enough target audience. So if they realise out of 50 applications, only 1 was on free school meals they should be looking at what they can do better to attract candidates from more diverse, lower income backgrounds.

It's part of ours (I'm HR in tech) and the numbers come up twice a year in DEI reviews for who we're hiring. Same as on ethnicity etc. We actually seem to be fairly on par for the industry, but if we weren't we'd probably look at working job specs differently so they're more accessible and focus on more varied colleges/unis for recruitment.

Social mobility as others have said.

What happens if I refuse to answer questions about this and ethnicity? As these questions are optional for many. Would get rejected if didn't answer this or say prefer not to say?

My name gives it away what religion I am.

"Prefer not to say" is always an option, or you can leave the questions blank. It should have no impact on your application.

You should not be forced to answer these questions, and they are usually evaluated separately from the rest of the form (as they are to measure the companies diversity reach, not you suitability). The only way they should be ever used is as positive discrimination, so a borderline candidate might be given the benefit of the doubt.

The best organisations for diversity use "blind recruitment" where the name is removed (as are things such as dates (age discrimination), school and University, and names of employers). Although personally it's not as "blind" as all that for internal candidates.

How does a name give away a religion? It may be a name associated with a religion but doesn't confirm you are that religion.

Nothing will happen if you don't fill it in. As above it is for them to ensure they are reaching a wider section of the population when advertising their roles to be inclusive. It doesn't mean they want people from those sections to get the job just the ability to apply for them and then from the wider pool hire on merit and bear in mind the background they achieved from.

The only way they should be ever used is as positive discrimination, so a borderline candidate might be given the benefit of the doubt.

Positive discrimination is illegal in the UK.

Typically this data is stored separately from the applicant's experience, career history etc and is never seen by the hiring manager(s) at all. It's just analysed in the aggregate so the organisation can see the diversity of their hiring pool and whether they have bias in their hiring pipeline.

If positive discrimination is illegal. How come the current store manager at my last job (who bullied me) every single colleague that was recruited under him are the same religion as him? They did interview people from different religions too.

An illegal thing can happen without the people doing the illegal thing being caught.

Do you mean new applicants have to give this info?

You don't have to answer ...

A woman with a last name of Kaur or a man with a last name of Singh is Sikh. It was a commandment of a Sikh prophet that women should add the name 'princess' (Kaur) and men should add 'warrior' (Singh) to their names.
Khan, Raza, Mohammed indicate Muslim.
Patel, Begum are Hindu.
All three generally indicate South Asian origin.

A lot of Irish names indicate Catholic heritage.

Abramovitch, Weiss, Feldman, Silverman and Epstein indicate Jewish heritage.

Names are very revealing.

Begum does not indicate Hinduism whatsoever. It is Muslim.

And I mean who doesn't understand how strongly names can indicate religion?!

The name Muhammad Shah might well be someone who is erm atheist but it obviously does indicate a particular faith background. To pretend otherwise is naive !

I find not answering questions asked usually means you don't get an interview.

I've never answered the questions how much is your current salary and what are your salary expectations because I'm happy to negotiate.

Those company never actually let you know the salary range for the job on offer.

Funny enough, I've never been invited to interview despite being qualified, and in some cases overqualified.

It's for diversity monitoring and you don't have to answer. As the hiring manager I can't see this information. However, HR can look at the overall data to understand if we are attracting applicants from a wide range of backgrounds. The form should explain that this information is kept separate from the application.and provide an option not to answer.

If it is at the very end of of the application that section will be removed before the application details are sent to the recruiting manager. If it is a good online system that data will collected anonymously (if not some poor soul will have to input it) and it will be aggregated so the company can review diversity in it's recruitment process and, hopefully, learn from it.

In an ideal world it will stop industries being run by predominantly white men from private schools.

Unfortunately some of the equal opportunity measures we have had opened things up to white/brown/black men and women but they were still from private school affluent backgrounds so it didn't do much for equality - see the Conservative party cabinet and shadow cabinet. The questions you are being asked is to make sure this bias doesn't prevail.

Just to be clear, none of this means people without the relevant qualifications are being appointed.

These questions don't get seen by the people hiring. It makes no difference to whether you get invited to interview or not. Questions about your salary expectations are entirely different.

My friend's surname is one of the South Asian names you refer to. Another has a Jewish sounding surname.

They are both white British C of E. Their name does not indicate their religion.

Another Sikh friend has married a white Brit and has an Anglo name. It does not indicate her religion. This is why noone should ever assume a name indicates a religion.

Their statement of religion should they chose to state it is what indicates their religion.

I agree. I was explaining why someone might believe their surname reveals their religion.

So all that guff about the information not being used for selection is lies then ?

David Baddiel (nice Jewish name) is an avowed atheist.

Personally I can't think of something more insulting than divining someones entire life story from a single surname. I guess I am not as gifted as some people here.

If only we had some sort of accepted pithy wisdom about how the clothes do not make the man. May something about don't assume from the cover what the book will be about ?

Perhaps we could put it out there for the MN massive ? Prize of a Dyson Airwrap and uncancelled cheque for the winner. Penis beaker for the runner up ?