Job applications and asexuality

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The last time I filled in a job application form there was also what is known as a "recrutiment monitering" form attached. On this form you tick the correct boxes so people can know your age/gender/religion/ethinic origin/ sexual orientation...what?
You get four choices:
Bisexual
Lesbian or gay
Hetrosexual
Not Disclosed

In the end I ticked not disclosed. I consider myself asexual and I know there's plenty of us.
Should there be an asexual box?

Are people even allowed to put that on employment forms? That could indicate that they would hire people based on sexuality.

IMO there shouldn't be any questions about things like religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation when applying for a job, it is none of their business.

Well, they say it's for statistics. You're not obliged to fill in it, but it doesn't bother me to say what my religion is and so on. The sexual orientation is the only question I find intrusive, so I don't bother answering it. As I said I couldn't anyway.

I see. Although what they say and what they actually mean can be two different things. I see.

Yeah, I absolutly agree with you. Unfortunalty, there's no way to prove that potential employers have discriminated unless they make their prejudice crystal clear. But, moslty it's easy for them to come up with an acceptable excuse e.g. not having enough experience (I've had that one, despite having 3 years professional experience + 5 paid, relevant experience).

Agreed. It is a bad thing they do. It is a smart way to see if someone is pregnant/wants kids/has kids. That way your business won't suffer due to them having time off due to children.

Yeah, they should have an asexual option on a lot of these forms. I'm pretty asexual, but I just check off heterosexual, because that's the next closest thing for me. The selection also wouldn't be complete without pansexual, paraphile, pedophile, and bestiality. They could also have a special option for intersexuals, since they can't technically be either heterosexual or homosexual, because they're somewhere in between both genders.

My inclination would be to write in: My sex life is none of your damn business. But that wouldn't get you the job. If jobs weren't so scarce, I would advise you to look for employment that respects your right to privacy. Under these less than auspicious circumstances, I would do whatever is most likely to land you the job, which would be to check anything other than heterosexual or undisclosed.

Yeah...so they say.

I'm tempted sometime to say I'm a black female and see if I get called pronto for an interview.

Thank you. I already I have the job. I was just thinking back.

If you suspect what you witnessed was a backhanded approach for affirmative action, my guess is that you are right.

I had the same thing happen to me when I was graduating from library school. A group of us, including a black classmate, attended the job fair at the state library convention being held. The way it worked was that you filled out one very detailed application, then you were assigned a number, and you merely submitted your number for the jobs you were interested in, and the prospective employer would attach whether they were interested to your number.

Well, several of my white classmates and I got very discouraged by the rejections. So, as an experiment, we got our black classmate's number, and submitted his number just to see what the reaction would be. Would you believe that every single employer that rejected us was frantically eager to talk to him? Several went so far as to attach personal notes begging for the opportunity just to interview him. As for the rest of us--well--we had to find jobs the old-fashioned way, which meant lots of rejection.

I applied for a job a while back which had questions about sexuality. I declined to answer the question because I see absolutely no reason why they need to know it.

They should not ask about a persons sexuality. It is complete arrogance on their part.

Those questions are optional and of course you don't have to answer.

That sounds illegal to me. I'd check "not disclosed" for all.

Even if I felt like sharing I don't even feel like any of those options for sexuality describe me.

So they say, but I've seen places that don't even interview hire a predominantly all minority crew without interviews.

How do they know (short of gleaning from the name on the application)?