Unusual application form

[donquixotedelamancha]

Would appreciate some thoughts from anyone with HR expertise. I'm filling in a teaching application form which is strangely amateurish/chatty in tone. Two uncommon questions stand out:

-Age.
-Reasons for leaving past jobs.

Is this normal in other professions?

Reasons for leaving past jobs is a perfectly normal and common question. Not sure about age though; I've been asked my date of birth in some but not all.

An application should not be asking your age as the potential is then greater for discrimination. I'm surprised that this is on the form

Reason for leaving past jobs is very normal in my industry.
Age is very unusual these days.

I thought it illegal to ask age? Due to potential for age discrimination?

Your age is OK to ask if its just used for monitoring purposes but should be not revealed to anyone shortlisting and reason for leaving job is standard

I don't think it's illegal to ask someone's age. But it's not common these days because they're not allowed to use it as a factor to decide whether you get the job (hence no need to ask) If you think it might go against you you could try leaving it blank

Age / DOB should not form part of the main application but it can be asked, and used for monitoring purposes.
Reason for leaving last position is standard.

It'a not illegal to ask your age, just illegal to discriminate against you because of your age.

Even if they don't ask your age, they can make a pretty accurate guess from the date you took your school exams....

Age / DOB should not form part of the main application but it can be asked, and used for monitoring purposes.

It's very explicitly in the main form and passed on for shortlisting- it's about the 5th question.

The monitoring part is... quite specific. It gives the impression of being mandatory, though I filled it in with 'rather not say for all of it'- I don't usually do this.

SAHM who hasn't worked in years here...feeling VERY old reading this post, as both questions were totally normal back in my day, when dinosaurs apparently roamed the earth

We don't ask for date of birth until a formal employment offer is made. You can usually work it out by education dates though tbh..

I’ve never seen this on a CV. I work in the City. We would never be allowed to ask someone’s age, ever. You don’t have to put the dates of your school/university either.

Found this on the Government website:

Asking for a date of birth
You can only ask for someone’s date of birth on an application form if they must be a certain age to do the job, eg selling alcohol.

You can ask someone their date of birth on a separate equality monitoring form. You shouldn’t let the person selecting or interviewing candidates see this form.

(I’m not in HR)

But for teaching, you have to go through vetting and barring- how do you know you have the correct "Rebecca Jones" if you don't have their Dob?

Reason for leaving last job is normal.
Answer the age/dob question ‘N/A’

But for teaching, you have to go through vetting and barring- how do you know you have the correct "Rebecca Jones" if you don't have their Dob?

I assume they would only vet once the job was offered and accepted and the offer would be based on the vetting process being clear.

haba you don’t need dob at application stage
OP are you sure you want to work somewhere that is so unaware of employment legislation??

Is it a religious school?

Hana You can't get someone from the info they give on an application form. They'd need to fill in a separate form and sign it.

But I can't see a reason to care about being asked a DOB as it's completely impossible to hide roughly how old you are from when you did school exams and the dates of previous jobs.

That should have read vet not get

Candlelights. This is not always true. I did a degree in my 30s and when applying for hundreds of jobs after redundancy in my 50s I only started to get interviews after I removed everything from before my degree. It backfired a couple of times though as the interviewers were visibly surprised when introduced myself - I think my grey hair took them aback.

Were you able to do that though machine? Didn't they ask for education prior to a degree? And jobs before you were 30?

I think I've usually been asked to list all previous jobs and in some cases education from the age of 11

It is not illegal to ask. It’s illegal to discriminate based on age. Public secdont ask nowadays but I’m sure lots of smaller private organisations do.
Reason for leaving is on every application I’ve ever seen. I want to know if someone has left under a cloud, has been dismissed or fell out with their employer. It might not stop them getting the job but it warrants a discussion.