(Off-topic)

I was surprised to learn that in Northern Ireland, you are legally required to ask candidates whether they are Catholic or Protestant. If they decline answering, you must make an educated guess and document that. The goal is to ensure you are not hiring all Catholics or all Protestants.

Northern Ireland is in a unique situation. The Troubles were horrible. I can’t imagine having to write regulations to put a society back together. I should not judge the wisdom of this approach. It is just so different from what I am used to in the U.S., that it is hard not to be confounded.

What’s interesting is that of the other developed countries, the US actually sounds the closest to this. No other country that I know of (maybe Canada?) will ask you to describe your “race” when applying to university for example

Heh. That’s true. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if we had to ask about race. I guess each country/culture has to address its particular fault lines. Like I said, I don’t envy folks drafting laws to try to rebuild civil society.

Canada doesn’t do this either

It may sound crazy but I’ve seen something similar happen at a startup I used to work at. The founders (Muslim) very clearly preferred to hire people of similar backgrounds. All their recruiting efforts were focused on Muslims and they went so far as to hire clearly incompetent developers over much more qualified applicants simply because they were Muslim. I’m talking about hiring someone fresh out of school vs someone with years of experience simply because the new grad was Muslim. One guy on my team dared to speak up about it and was accused of being racist. He had to do cultural sensitivity training as a result.

Why didn't you report this? It's open-shut unlawful.

Someone did, HR (one person) said he was just being paranoid & racist lmao

Where was the company located?

New York

Was this in the US?

Yes

Believe me, it felt made up as it was happening.