Hiring is broken

I'm getting sick of the invasive questions

"Gender?

Sex at birth?

Are you trans?

Are you gay? Bi?

Ever been depressed?

Abuse alcohol? Drugs?

Ever been arrested?

Ever been in the military?

Well what about your spouse?

Ever work for the government?

That degree you mentioned, we can't ask your age but uh, when did you earn that bad boy, huh?"

NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE POSITION.

This is 100% occuring in the USA. Where I live and work.

Most of these questions are illegal in my country, thank fuck
- thank fuck
  
  No, thank the government and the people who voted.
- If you're in the USA, these questions are legal to ask.
  
  Some are illegal (when did you graduate), but is asked very often anyways. Often times marked as required on Workday Job applications.
- OP is full of shit. See my response.
  
  https://old.lemmy.world/comment/15656902
  
  Those questions are begging for discrimination lawsuits. Despite being heavily involved in onboarding at two companies, I'm not sure which of those are legal to ask because no one asks.
Gender?

Present.

Sex at birth?

No, my first time was well over a decade later.

Are you trans?

Transtabular, from your position.

Are you gay? Bi?

I prefer professionalism to gaiety during interviews. This meeting isn't over yet.

Ever been depressed?

Not in the button sense, no.

Abuse alcohol? Drugs?

Neither physically nor emotionally. No, thank you, not now.

Ever been arrested?

Have you been?

Ever been in the military?

Even if I was, you're not getting veteran's benefits through me.

Well what about your spouse?

Even if they were, you're not getting veteran's benefits through them.

Ever work for the government?

Why, are you paying public service rates?

That degree you mentioned, we can’t ask your age but uh, when did you earn that bad boy, huh?

I think it was sometime around when I graduated from college.
- Bro, your answer is being filtered out by an algorithm, even before it gets the chance to be appreciated by some hr drone.
Gender?

Sex at birth?

Are you trans?

Are you gay? Bi?

Ever been depressed?

Abuse alcohol? Drugs?

Ever been arrested?

Ever been in the military?

Well what about your spouse?

Ever work for the government?

That degree you mentioned, we can't ask your age but uh, when did you earn that bad boy, huh?

I'm just trying to get an egg loan! There's people in line behind me!
- I’m getting scam calls about my extended egg warranty.
Where are you that has questions like these?

5 of those questions aren't asked in the US.
- I am in the US.
  
  Those questions are 100% asked.
  
  Source: over 1000 job applications this year so far.
- Aren't asked for now. I'm pretty sure in certain states will become mandatory...
Right out of college, I went through an eight hour long hiring process complete with a proctored exam, three different interviews, a psychological screening, and a meeting with the CEO. All for an entry level position that paid $25k. By the end of the day, I was the only candidate left to be considered and they didn't give me an offer.

I got a call and a quick phone interview two days later from a small independent IT company that quoted me $30k on the spot. I said I was considering a second position and - over the phone - the guy raises it to $35k. Took the deal. Started a week later.

Two months after that, I got a postcard in the mail saying I was no longer being considered for the first job.

This was in 2006 and its only gotten worse since.
Ah fuck it, yes to everything! Yolo!
What is the "correct" answer for the ever worked in the government/military ones?
- The truth. Depending on the context they will either report how many military veterans they employ (so just tabulation that goes to a checkbox if they bid for a government contract), or it involves military benefits in some manner, which will quickly come back to haunt you if you 'lied' on application docs.
Almost none of that is asked on an application except the degree date. All of the above would be a fucking nightmare for HR. You really think employers are dumb enough to ask questions that could lead to discrimination lawsuits?!

After you are hired, the forms ask:

Gender and race (you forgot race!): Employers need this for mandatory Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) reporting.

Alcohol and drugs: Only for a very few positions, government, security and the like. Perhaps you were filling out a Form 4473 to buy a gun and got confused?

Arrested and convicted of a crime: Imagine an employee getting raped and the employer having to say, "We had no idea!" I've been arrested shitloads of times, no convictions, no problem. Also, I'm betting you can say "no" for misdemeanor convictions, no one gives a shit unless the job requires a security clearance. And if you think standard hiring invades your privacy, oh boy.

Military: Various laws to protect vets require the employer to know this for benefits, accommodations, etc., same for spouse. Also an EEO thing.

Government work: Never seen this, but I imagine it's like any employer, "Ever worked for us before?"

You made some of that up out of thin air and didn't understand the rest. And here ya got 61 upvotes from people taking all that at face value. Be better.

SOURCE: Worked IT for an employment firm with 200 employers. Designed and posted hiring forms, hiring data and onboarding at two places. Learned more about hiring than I ever wanted to know.
- You really think employers are dumb enough to ask questions that could lead to discrimination lawsuits?!
  
  Yes
- You really think employers are dumb enough to ask questions that could lead to discrimination lawsuits?!
  
  Yes.
- I made none of that up.
  
  Ridiculous.
  
  I'm not here to convince anyone; simply stating verifiable facts.
  
  Not here to spoon feed you.
- I've been asked all these questions in my job search in the last 6 months. The questions I imagine you're skeptical about like have you ever been depressed or abused drugs do come up often. Not in the initial application but in the required personality test.

entry level job; salary range $30,000 - $150,000 depending on qualifications and experience; 10 yrs experience required; high school diploma required, Phd preferred

apply today!

Sorry we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates (You’re not the VP’s son).
- 1 month later, the exact same job posting is listed again
Phd preferred

Weird way to spell required
My last job had close to that range. There is a hiring range is typically 50-70% of the maximum. Below 50% is the developmental range for laddering underqualified internal hires. Over 70% is for very experienced, overqualified candidates. Generally employers won't go more than 85% of max because they need a couple years of cushion for salary increases. If they hire at max they know the candidate is going to be back on the market in a year.
- It almost seems like it would be better to quote only the range at which they intend to actually hire, rather than dangling the best case maximum you could ever potentially earn at the absolute pinnacle of your tenure in the position. But maybe other smarter-than-me people expect the top number to mean that?
(We will always offer you pay on the lower end of the scale)
High school diploma is barely an entry barrier, completely reasonable IMO for anything other than a factory button-pusher.
- "High school diploma required; PhD preferred" translates to "we're only reading this application if you have a PhD or we get no other applicants".
- You missed the point

I once saw an ad looking to hire someone with a BA that knew 3 computer programming languages for $8 an hour.

I know JavaScript, TypeScript, and ECMAScript.
I know word, excel, powerpoint

/s

(but then again macros are a thing)
I know JavaScript! JS! ECMAScript 5! ECMAScript 6!

The fact that the majority of us are essentially forced to participate in the capitalist market means that we will always be at the mercy of greasy, compliant, ass-sucking 'bosses.'

We don't have any freedom with work unless we have the freedom not to work.

We don't have any freedom with work unless we have the freedom not to work.

What are you talking about? We have the freedom to not work and die cold and hungry in the streets just like the founding fathers intended!

Capitalism is slavery with extra steps.
- We don't have that freedom either. We have the freedom to be constantly harassed or imprisoned for not having a paid residence.
- Like gdog said, no, you don't actually. Being homeless is illegal in a ton of places.
- Survival takes effort, whether that means working in an office or in a hunter gatherer tribe

I've also noticed “competitive” seems to mean “just above what they believe the competition's minimum is”, and together they and their competition drive the wages down.

"Our company develops AI. It has many uses and should substitute for human labor whenever possible."

"USE OF AI BY APPLICANTS IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED!"

As funny as it is when presented that way, it does make sense. After all if a company is using AI wherever possible, and yet hiring a person, then presumably it's because they want that person to do things they don't want to be using AI for.
- OTOH assuming the hiring process is competent at assessing job fitness, an applicant who gets through it using AI should be fit to do the job with AI.

There was an article about staffing agencies spamming LLM generated CVs to companies to saturate the market and convince companies that hiring is impossibly hard

Hell even without that hiring is really really hard. Im the IT manager for my company and I'm looking to hire for some level 1 help desk type positions. They don't need to be super experienced, but they do need to know things like "what is group policy" or "how would you troubleshoot this hypothetical issue". Basically they should be able to pass the Comptia A+ test, even if they dont actually have it.

My God I got over 600 applications within a business week! The vast majority of those applicants were from people with no experience, lots of experience in a different field!

Like I was getting these applicants from people who have 15 years of plumbing or machining experience. Or people who clearly haven't been able to hold down a job (if you bounce from minimum wage job to minimum wage job every other month, that's a bad look). Or on the other end of the spectrum, I was getting people with decades of sysadmin experience applying too.

I had to start having HR filter the top and bottom out of the stack so I could actually see useful data.
- One of the best ones I ever got was an ‘engineer’ who described driving around in his van ‘fixing things’ applying for a machine learning engineer position.
- I wonder if a staffing agency might have spammed you with LLM generated CVs.

We need to have 4 years expirenece on techology version {current_year}

Real conversation, not exaggerated. Actually slightly toned down:

"We offer a competitive salary! It's $number!"

"I have 2 offers 10% higher, from a shipping company and a finance company, in the same city"

"We don't compete with the finance and shipping sectors"

"And 15% higher in one of the consultancies"

"We don't compete with consultancies either"

(I think I'm going to put Reigninh Monarch of Norway on my CV. I just don't compete with King Harald.)

LOL I hope you told them "Dude you ARE competing with those companies for my skills, so are you in or not?" It's really that simple.

At one interview they asked a software question I wasn't really sure of, so at the end of my answer I asked how they would do it and this one guy said, "I'm not the one being interviewed." I kept my mouth shut because I really like everybody else I had talked to, but I wanted to go all Jules and say, "Oh yes you are, Brett, yes you are!"
- Haha, that's the attitude :)
  
  I did say, in a nice way, that "they are your competitors either way".
  
  And yeah, companies treating interviews as a one-way evaluation is a red flag.
  
  There was this book that was hype around 2010, called "Are you smart enough to work at Google?". It was full of interview questions and brainteasers that I strongly suspected I'd find interesting, but I couldn't get over the title. I wanted to scream "Fuck you, book! Is Google smart enough to hire ME?!"
  
  We are, as a profession, systematically manipulated via these interview processes to feel stupid and inferior to drive down wages. I'd rather come off as slightly too arrogant now and then, rather than submit to that.

Had a job interview once where they asked me how much I was expecting to make. I told them and they responded with "Yeah, I think we can do that." Then when they called me to offer me the job they had lowered it by a few bucks an hour. I took it because I had to at the time. They knew that people are desperate and this was their strategy with everyone. Fucking scum.

LPT:

"What are you expecting to make?"

Correct answer: Your real target (based on your own market research for the position) +15%.

Why? Because they're going to target your acceptable range at -10%, and make the offer right around there.

Then, you can come back and say "I might be able to make that work, as long as X, Y and / or Z are part of the package" where XYZ is anything from remote work to reimbursement for commute mileage.

If they say no to the added XYZ and you're desperate, well go ahead and accept, because you've just earned yourself +5% of what you were targeting. If they say yes, well, even better.

Don't go higher than 15% - this could kill the offer entirely if you misjudge the interview. 15% seems to be the sweet spot in my experience, based on a 30 year career.

A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.

Poor people always land the most competitive salaries…

The salary competes with the bills

I'm just glad I never had to put up with corpo shit like that. I only work for smaller businesses with like at max 20 people. Pay is usually a bit worse at the start, but it's easier to ask for raises down the line and at least I'm treated like a human, not a number in lexware.

And by competitive, we mean it will make you compete for the last scraps at the food bank.

i wonder if family structures will change to be closer to that of India as children are forced to stay with their parents longer and longer

Hiring is working as intended*

Fuck that! I just hired two people and during the screener I told them the base and comp plan so we don't all waste our time in a mutual ruined-orgasm masturbation session.