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?

They are not judging you.

The diversity form will be separated out from the application and not seen by the interviewing team, and stored as anonymised data.

Tiresome to fill in but I do not want our civil service to be all middle class white private school educated men from wealthy backgrounds.

This is very standard now and I think an excellent indicator of an organisation wishing to have a diverse workforce, especially as it's publicly funded.

FWIW i have had similar in the last three roles I have had.

I see others have helpfully posted the reasons why, but to provide some (imo interesting) context - often when required to diversify the workforce, the CS only really looked at ethnicity. Meaning that rather than employ just white middle class Oxbridge male grads, they employed black middle class male Oxbridge grads. Which is hardly diversifying the experience of CS senior managers and policy makers. (This lack of diversity has been cited as one reason for the shit show that was the UK's Covid response - no one thought about the impact of lockdown on victims of DV for several months for example.)

Hence now, to put it crudely, they are trying to include more people from working class and more deprived backgrounds.

It'll continue when you're in the CS. There are a huge number of social mobility schemes which I can't apply for as my parents were in professional jobs (albeit not with degrees).

Just today it was a request for certain people (lower socio economic background) to assist on interview panels to ensure it's not all privately educated / wealthy background type senior civil servants making decisions on appointments.

Last week it was "catapult mentoring" if you've got a lower socio economic background. At times training or mentoring has been aimed at age, ethnicity, LGBT, women, disability, people with caring responsibilities etc

It's not a bad thing. If you want to join the CS, you'll see more of it throughout your career!

I have no idea how many people worked in the company that my dad was employed at when I was 14 😂
I'm not even sure of the company name.
In fact that might have been the era when he was a civilian worker at the local USAF air base. How many people were employed by the US Air Force? An awful lot I should imagine.
Why 14? Have they not changed this question since 1947 when the school leaving age was still 14.

I think the problem with such narrow questioning is though, just because I didn't get FSM as a child doesn't mean I didn't come from a working class background. If they really want to know this data, their questions don't have enough options.

With respect OP, the questions have been devised by expert statisticians and sociologists as part of a national initiative, they haven’t just been shoved on there by a junior HR assistant.

I think the problem with such narrow questioning is though, just because I didn't get FSM as a child doesn't mean I didn't come from a working class background. If they really want to know this data, their questions don't have enough options.

Well there's a balance isn't there. They could ask you tons and tons of questions to try and ascertain where you exactly fit in the grand social hierarchy (that doesn't actually exist!), or they can use a couple of questions that will broadly categorise most people reasonably well. Yes there'll be some anomalies - the FSM kid who went to med school, became a consultant with a lucrative private practice and married a privately educated barrister may well end up in the CS's quota for 'deprived'. But it's a reasonable enough - and can be measured and evaluated.

FSM have only ever been for the most deprived children, being eligible for FSM puts children firmly in the bottom percentiles of income.

Diversity...when I worked for them, at the end of every staff survey th3y appeared.

I never answer any of these types of questions on any forms.

That's the whole point of it- it's about social mobility ie how your life can change.

It's to monitor social mobility only a few people will this info.

Well nothing is perfect but you could always write to the equality, diversity and inclusion/ HR departments and put forward a suggestion if you have better ideas.

It’s to do with diversity and social mobility I think.

I think it's a good thing. I'm in the CS, I have both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and a professional role. However at 14 I was on FSM and the main earner was on long term benefits. Even though my life now is pretty middle class I still have a different outlook on many things to colleagues who grew up middle class, and that's the kind of diverse thinking that we need in the CS.