This guide describes how these questions work on US applications in general. It is not legal advice, and individual employers’ forms vary.
What the questions are
A self-identification section usually asks some or all of these:
- Gender.
- Whether you are Hispanic or Latino, and your race.
- Veteran status, including whether you are a “protected veteran”.
- Disability, usually on a separate standard government form.
Every one of them has an option along the lines of “I don’t wish to answer”.
Why employers ask
Mostly because US law has them report on it. Private employers with 100 or more employees, and many federal contractors, send a yearly report to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the EEO-1 report) that counts their workforce by gender and race or ethnicity. Federal contractors must also invite applicants to say whether they have a disability or are a protected veteran, and measure their hiring against national goals. The answers you give feed those numbers.
Who sees your answers
These answers are meant to be kept confidential and apart from your application. The standard disability form says so directly: the people deciding whether to hire you will not see it. Using any of these answers to decide on an application would be illegal discrimination.
That is the rule. Whether you trust a particular employer to follow it is your judgement, and it is a perfectly good reason to choose not to answer.
The disability question
The disability form defines disability broadly. Its list of examples ranges from diabetes, asthma and cancer to depression, ADHD and autism, so many people who would not describe themselves as disabled are covered by it. The answers are yes, no, or “I don’t wish to answer”.
Saying yes does not ask for anything. If you need an adjustment to apply or to do the job, that is a separate request, and you can make it whether or not you answered this form.
The veteran question
“Protected veteran” is a legal category with four groups: disabled veterans, recently separated veterans (usually within three years of leaving service), active-duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and Armed Forces service medal veterans. If you served but are not in any of these groups, the form usually has an option for that too.
Should you answer?
Either choice is fine, and neither should affect your application.
- Reasons people answer: it helps employers measure whether their hiring is fair, and it counts towards goals some of them have to meet.
- Reasons people decline: privacy, not trusting how the data will be handled, or simply not wanting to.
Outside the United States, many employers ask similar monitoring questions, and they are almost always optional there too.
How Draftloop handles these questions
Draftloop treats every one of these answers as yours alone to give. Each question is opt-in in your profile: if you have chosen to answer it there, Draftloop uses your answer; if you have left it blank, it leaves the question for you and marks it. It never guesses, never fills one in from anything else it knows about you, and never lets its answer-writer draft one.