Outside the US it isn't rare to see people asking age and marital status (lots of CV's even have it on there), which to American's is a big no-no as it can land the company into trouble with the government. IIRC through it isn't technically illegal in the U.S., just dangerous grounds to be on and all companies train you to avoid those types of questions, or even questions like how many kids etc.
But, IBAN and copy of your passport, in a CV??? I can't believe it is not an outright scam.
Steer clear either way.
- Date of birth: Never been asked that, but they could guess from my graduation date, I suppose.
- Address: Never been asked that. Only if I live in the same city (or close to that). Why should I have to give them my address?
- Marital status: Never been asked that and would be a big red flag IMO. Could be illegal, don't know.
- Driving license: Usually an optional field in resume web forms. Not required unless some travel by car is expected (not my case).
Only full name, citizenship (if Spanish, EU, or residence permit, obviously), city of residence, email and phone (to contact me, obviously). As long as you're legal and speak medium level of Spanish and English, you're clear.
In Spain is expected to include a photo in your CV, but it's not already the case in the world with professional social networks like LinkedIn? Thus, they are going to see me in the recruiting or HR interview, so what's the point on not including it?
Once an employee, IBAN is asked before the first salary monthly payment (obviously) and a photocopy of his/her national ID (or passport) for their legal department.
So apart from blatant privacy issues - way too many hoops.
Scam either way, stay clear.
(the hiring dynamics described in this article are basically valid for all devs in the current market - pretty much everywhere - don't fall for anachronistic HR schemes: https://hiringengineersbook.com/post/trouble-hiring/)
The rest just looks sketchy from an identity theft perspective and is truly unnecessary at the early screening stages of hiring. Even if it’s legal wherever this company is located, I would hard pass on this.
Yes I know that happen in USA and also in UK.
Can someone from Netherlands say how is it there ?
Cheers !
See list (in Dutch though) https://www.easypersoneel.nl/files/bewaarrichtlijnen-persone...
You really don’t want to know the candidates age, marital status or citizenship as part of an interview process. Once you do, you’re open to discrimination lawsuits for your hiring practises. Avoid asking questions that reveals information about stuff that is protected from discrimination.
https://www.government.nl/topics/discrimination/prohibition-...
At least two of these questions are risky (if not outright illegal) to ask almost everywhere in the civilized world. Worse: there are countries where the phone number, address and the information on a passport may be enough to convince a bank that you've "signed" a sponsorship deal with an NGO, agreeing to deposit a (small) sum of money from an account with a known IBAN account every month.
If this is real and legit, whoever is managing the hiring process there has screwed up big time...
Can't comment on the legal situation, especially not without knowing the country.
The country is Netherlands.
May be they should of proof read there copy.
I can not edit anymore, it seems that the software disable that option after some time or other event has passed.
Fortunately we only sent this mail to a handful of people before we realized that this is not the right approach. In the end, what we really wanted to know was: "Are you allowed to work in the EU?" But then we realized why stop there? We improved our process to ensure candidates are only asked to share a minimum amount of data! Feel free to check it out: https://summitto.com/hiringprocess
As other commenters have already stated, most information we ask is standard and in ~70% of the cases already answered in CVs we receive anyway because most of our applicants come from Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium. We learned now that as we target a global audience those "standard" questions are not a worldwide standard.
Some of you were suspicious that we base our hiring decisions on this information.
Let me state this very clearly: this requested information was never used to evaluate applicants. Summitto evaluates you only on your coding skills, and nothing else. We point to the fact in our first mail to the author of this post: "Please note that if there is some personal information which you prefer not to share yet, that is ok!" Moreover, we clearly stated this again in a second mail to the author of this post as well.
Regarding the IBAN account number: this information is essential to reimburse any flight expenses and of course to pay your salary. For the US citizens in this thread: no, sharing your bank account number in the EU is not comparable to how it works in the US banking system. IBAN numbers are not private or easily exploitable data. Still, we have now scrapped this question from our first email.
Although we truly appreciate the author's criticism in this post regarding the threat of theoretically losing his/her privacy, we would like to point out the irony that by complaining without properly anonymizing the data he/she actually violated ours.
We value the privacy of all of our candidates. We encourage them to protect the data they send using PGP, so it is encrypted in transit and at rest. Any data which belongs to applicants which were not hired is deleted within 30 days after the last contact.
Hi XXXXX!
Thank you for reaching out to us, may I ask you how you found us and what peaks your interest in XXXXXX ? You have built some impressive tools, and I think we can offer you a set of great challenges in your daily work. You can find a brief intro to XXXX: https://XXXXX.XXX/onepager.pdf
I will briefly outline the steps of our hiring process so you have all necessary information and know what is going to happen. Luckily, it's not that complicated. As a startup, we can allow our hiring process to be a lot simpler and faster than what you will find at most big companies! We just want to evaluate a few core competences, the rest we can teach you.
Step 0: CV
Could you please share your CV, including:
- date of birth
- phone number
- physical address
- citizenship
- marital status
- IBAN
- Copy of your passport
After we collected all information we will start the evaluation process. Please note that if there is some personal information which you prefer not to share yet, that is ok! We hope that you can send this to us before the interview in step 2. Furthermore, any confidential information can be encrypted using my PGP key: https://XXXXX.XXX/pgp.asc
Step 1: Challenge We first give all of our candidates a challenge. This challenge is by far our most important means of evaluation, so your effort will be greatly appreciated. Instead of a whiteboard interview, we have chosen for our test to be more similar to the type of work that you will be doing at summitto on a daily basis. That way you know what is awaiting you and we know that you are up for the challenges ahead. Although most of our applicants have been able to finish their challenges in a weekend, we do not set a time limit on any of our challenges, and the time is not taken into account in our evaluation. For us, communicating well and achieving good results are more important than the speed at which you can achieve them. We prefer quality over quantity, same as in our daily business!
Step 2: Interview If the results of the challenge are promising, the interview will only be a formality in which you can talk to our team members during two to three interviews. This is really just a social check to see if we like each other and to see whether we can work together for many hours a day in the same room ;) but no more tests or coding required!
Step 3: offer You made it. The challenge looks great, we match on a personal level, and you've managed to excite us about your talent. We'll send you an offer as soon as possible, normally within a week, and we will discuss which items and equipment we can order to get you all settled in our office.
We're looking forward to working together with you!
Secure regards,