Why am I being asked so many questions about my parents on a job application?

[DetOliviaBenson]

I'm applying for a civil service job, (Home Office). Why am I being asked so many questions about my parents?

Things like "What is the highest level of qualifications achieved by your parent(s) by the time you were 18?"

And, "If the highest income earner in your household was employed when you were aged 14, how many people worked for their employer?"

(See screenshot below).

I'm a middle aged woman! What does what my parents did when I was a child have anything to do with my job application? Yes I can "prefer to not answer", which I will be doing. But it's so bloody intrusive! What does my dad working as a mechanic and my mum working as a cleaner have to do with me a woman with adult children herself, have to do with the job I want to do now?

It's not for for the actual application - it's for diversity monitoring. Hiring managers don't get to see it.

Diversity - they need to prove they hire from diverse backgrounds

Diversity monitoring.

Only HR will see it and you will only be a statistic

Sounds like a finance job and the history will help them evaluate likelihood of committing fraud, NOT saying its accurate, just saying I have seen similar for that reason.

It's a measure of social mobility as well as staff diversity. Opt out if you prefer, but as a hiring manager in CS I've never seen any of the EDI data from candidates so it'll remain confidential.

It's for an admin role in immigration.

If you think this is a lot of questions just wait until you get to your vetting paperwork!

(As PPs have said, these questions are for HR diversity data only and the hiring manager etc won’t see them.)

The I agree, its for woke purposes.

Does anyone not think it's really intrusive? I understand asking disability status and sexuality, sex etc. I've never come across it before on an equality and diversity form. Feel like they'll be asking what colour my knickers are and what did I have for my tea last night, next.

They're trying to find out how bad their class-based inclusion currently is and/or whether what they're doing to improve it is working.

Perhaps this will explain the context OP

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/social-mobility-commission

I can understand it for vetting paperwork, certain jobs need to not hire people from certain lifestyles etc. But this is just for "diversity" it's also asking me if I've ever had free school meals! Do they not think people's lives can change in any way from when they were 14?

Thank you!

That is literally the point. They want to gather the data that shows that someone who came from a lower socioeconomic background is now in a position to apply for a job like this.

@DetOliviaBenson

Of course they think people,'s lives change but unless the data is there how will they know?

I'm not sure how it's more intrusive than asking your sexuality.

The thing is that certain institutions do have a problem recruiting from working class backgrounds, and it's difficult for them to work out how bad the problem is and whether they're making any progress without asking questions.

That said, it's not actually going to do you personally any good to answer these questions, so if you don't want to then you don't have to.

If you look particularly at the employers’ tooolkit you’ll see the significance of each of the questions explained.

This goea towards positove action . So if they are not getting any applicants throught or even applying from x backgrounds, why is that? Maybe reword ads, do outreach sessions, train sifters and interviewers on bias etc. It's so more people have equality of opportunity. Sifters do not see these.

Yes, let's make sure that the public sector keeps on employing the same kinds of people forever more.

It's because in some workplaces, people with certain backgrounds are more likely to be hired than others (usually wealthy/ middle class etc). This sort of bias has to be kept out of the civil service, for obvious reasons.

Asking if you had free school meals is an indicator of your social background, and to put it bluntly, it's a good indicator of whether they are hiring people who came from working class/ lower income backgrounds as well as their private school cronies.

You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but it is good that they monitor these things because it ensure more equal opportunities.

I only got annoyed at these when some companies did not provide "did not grew up in UK" option. Some of these questions are simply not applicable to people growing up abroad like FSM or private elementary school

Every so often they'll look at all this monitoring paperwork, and they will see how many of the people they offered jobs to that year were on free school meals/ lower income backgrounds.

If for example, only 2 out of 100 people they hired that year were from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, then they know that there might well be a bias there to hiring people from wealthier backgrounds.

That's a problem because of equal opportunities, but especially for the civil service, because it doesn't accurately represent our population - we don't want 98% of people working in the civil service to be from wealthy backgrounds because it results in bias.

They will do the same thing with race, religion, sexuality etc.

But this is just for "diversity" it's also asking me if I've ever had free school meals! Do they not think people's lives can change in any way from when they were 14?

Free school meals and levels of parental education and qualifications are actually really good socio-economic indicators on a statistical level.

It's not about the individual and there's no need to take it personally.

For the civil service it's a standard set of questions regardless of the role. It's all diversity number stats

It's to find out how many employees have parents who were university educated, middle class, professionals. For so many years this was very much what the Civil Service was but having employees from a range of backgrounds is much better.

It's a standard question from admin all the way up to SCS.