Silly Questions on Employment Application Forms: A Job Seeker’s Lament

Lately I’ve filled out a lot—I mean a lot —of job applications.  We all know that filling out an application is tedious and time-consuming, but also recognize the relevance of most of the information required.  There are some questions, however, that are irrelevant, intrusive, or just stupid.  For example:

My address history for the past 10 years 

Uh, guys, you have my name, my date of birth, my social security number, my employment history for over 10 years, my educational history, and my current address, phone number, and e-mail address.  I’m sure that’s enough information to identify me on a background check.  I also don’t think that my moving history says anything about my character.  It’s personal information, and really isn’t anyone else’s concern.

My salary history 

That is so not anyone else’s business, and I think it takes a lot of chutzpah to even ask the question.  Prior to placing the ad, the company already budgeted a salary range for the position in question, and they will pay me according to my experience and probably some intangibles.  I’ll accept it and take the job, or I won’t and I’ll move on.  There’s a lot of things that will make a salary acceptable; commute time, potential growth and promotion, the value of other benefits offered, desperation, and so on.  What I made in the past is, again, personal information, and really isn’t anyone else’s concern.

What I’ve been doing while I’ve been unemployed

Someday, I’m not going to play that question straight. I’m going to become frustrated, and tell them that I’ve been saving hungry orphaned kittens from even hungrier Somali pirates. I mean really, what do they think I’m going to say? “I’ve slept ‘till 3:00 pm, drank Mountain Dew by the liter while playing WoW for 10 hours at a time, and spent my unemployment checks on strippers and blow.”

Personality tests

This is particularly common when you apply for retail jobs. After telling them your life story—some of which wasn’t even their business in the first place—you’re asked 50-plus questions to assess your personality. There's no wrong answers; just answer honestly! Now, some things are fairly obvious; if you are a combative, misanthropic rule-breaker, you don’t want to answer honestly. (Just ask how I discovered that one.) But the answers to some questions aren’t obvious at all. I wonder how many times I would have got the job had they interviewed me in person, but was booted out of the running because I failed the personality test.

Drug testing 

Granted, I’m clean, but I’m ambivalent about drug tests.  On one hand, I know people who drink and yes, do drugs, and their indulgences don’t cripple their character or ability to function.  On the other hand, if you can’t—not won’t, can’t—stay sober long enough to clear a drug test, you have a real problem.

A friend pointed out that an exception to this would be someone who works in the medical or law fields, or is responsible for heavy machinery.  Okay, I’ll make an exception for them.  But store clerks—excuse me, customer service representatives?  Office monkeys?  Granted, a jacked-up office monkey could potentially fling around a lot of poop—literal poop, not the usual metaphorical poop commonly flung by many office monkeys, especially the middle-management types, but still…