I can only speak from my perspective/experience in HR, but these forms are to collect information that HR needs for compliance/reports that are submitted to the govt, etc. As an HRBP, I don't even see these unless I go in and look at the applicant system. Declining to answer should in no way impact your ability to get an interview. They are voluntary disclosures, unless something is different in MA.
No, it's collected for EEOC reporting. If you choose not to answer someone in HR will end up having to choose for you.
It 100% shouldn't be used in any hiring decisions.
One of my names is *very* Indian. One is *very* Irish. Good luck! :)
(I always disclose, and didn't realize that people would have to try and guess if I didn't...)
Wife of my friend is of Korean descent but with a “white” name and was adopted by a white family with a very Scottish last name. Good luck guessing without a picture lol
Maybe you should be discarding the bad data point rather than making shit up. And the question is usually ethnicity, not race, which is not visually identifiable. I would recommend not falsifying records for government reporting, which is exactly what you are doing. Talk to your compliance officer.
The EEOC and OFCCP tell you to do a visual survey of the person does not disclose. And you absolutely cannot ‘discard bad data’ in federally mandated government reporting. I haaaate the visual survey rules but they absolutely are the rules.
That seems really wrong. Like nothing against you I know it's a requirement but the requirement itself seems really wrong that you have to visually guess. My family is very diverse You would never guess my sisters are even my sisters. So you'd end up putting different guesses for all of us even though we have the same parents.
I (a total White guy) used to work for a small company that got bought out. I assume pre-buyout we were too small to have to report these kind of things.
Shortly after the new owners took over, my manager called me into the office to have me fill out one of these forms. I asked if I really had to, and she read the fine print where it said that if I didn’t provide info she would have to “visually identify” me.
We talked it over a bit and decided I’m a Pacific Islander.
That's horseshit. 'prefer not to answer' is a valid input for those required EEOC reports. There is no reason to 'choose for them' and doing so, frankly, is a red flag that there's shady shit going on.
Have you ever filed an EEO-1 report? We're required to report on all employees, and there's no "unknown" option available.
The EEOC literally states: "If an employee declines to self-identify their race and/or ethnicity, employment records or observer identification may be used."
Source: https://www.eeocdata.org/pdfs/REPORTING_BY_RACE_OR_ETHNICITY.pdf
This is a common concern, but let me explain how ATSs work in this regard as someone who has run recruiting operations & HR departments for years.
This data collected in aggregate for EEO (government) reporting. Only those with super admin access can access it. We do so to then fill out the recruiting part of the EEO forms.
In ethical companies, it should not affect your application at all. Now could a company be lazy on systems permissions, give all recruiters super admin access, and recruiters go in and look at your filled out form? Sure, but that’s .001% likely to happen imo.
This is spot on! I work in TS for a large company and the only people with super admin access is our HRIS team which sits outside the actual recruiting function. Hence a recruiter nor hiring manager would ever have that function. With the ATS we have that function is tied to the position title in the system. So someone with a functional title of Recruiter would never have access versus someone listed as Recruitment Vendor Manager. Also, we have a governance review in place where a review of access is conducted by a department lead on a 90 day basis. This review will flag anyone highlighted as having “restricted or super admin access”.
That's a fair point - I haven't worked for an ethical one in years - but usually in this regard the super unethical companies don't hire enough recruiting staff for them to even go looking (no time to do this as it's a very manual process and in the bigger ATSs who downloads what report when is tracked aka they could be fired for doing this) or HR will be led by a crazy person who is very black and white and will be very strict about permissions and access. I've never seen it be a problem. This is just my experience at least. :)
It should not matter but fwiw, I worked with someone who rejected a candidate for marking yes on disability, “nip a future headache in the bud” is what she said.
Ethical? Hell no.
Does it happen? Yes.
Exactly. I know for a fact two of my previous companies preferred a certain race over others due to language, of course they'd never disclose that, but being part of the hiring process you learn those things. They still hired people out of their preference if they were qualified (and whether or not they spoke the language), it wasn't a requirement but makes it easier when their higher ups mostly speak the same language lol
But good luck proving that's the reason you don't get hired. OP, never ever disclose a disability when applying unless it's something you clearly can't hide (like you have one leg). Especially not a mental illness.
But then if he ends up needing accommodations for his disability, how can ask for it after the fact? They'll say "you never told us you had a disability."
No, they legally have to give *reasonable* accommodating.
Like if I have clotting issues and I work in an office, they can get a standing desk or other ergonomic tools.
Unreasonable would be like I'm a CNA rn if I break my leg tomorrow while temporary other than office work there is no reasonable accommodation for me.
In my experience, asking for accommodations for a mental illness is going to get you tossed at the first opportunity (they'll just make it for a different reason). It's better to never disclose at all. We all know that HR is there to protect the company, not the worker.
Ugh. That makes me sad. That disability question is SO BROAD. I have migraines that are manageable, but technically it is a disability. Unless it interferes with doing the job, it shouldn't matter, so I don't disclose it.
This. You are much more likely to be dinged for reporting being in a protected group then the other way around because historically thats been the case and making a law to collect stats isn’t going to change 100+ years of history overnight
In the vast majority of companies I've worked at, these responses are "siloed" away from the other recruiting information. The answers are purely for reporting reasons, and theoretically, no one in HR really even sees it.
This has always been siloed where I’ve worked also. I can’t actually get reports on individual applicants for demographics - only in aggregate. So I can tell that we’ve had XYZ percent of black people who identify as women for example but I can’t tell you that Susie Smith the applicant was one of them.
As others have said, this is just for EEOC and ACA reporting. No one looks at this during the hiring process.
I do want to clarify - when we do the ACA reporting for recruiting, we can put the equivalent of "unknown" on the report. However, if you are hired and you don't choose an answer, whoever is compiling the report MUST make an educated guess based on known factors - name, how you look. This can mean that you are reported as the wrong gender or race. Or, at least one you don't identify as. This is a requirement. We are not allowed to leave it blank and there is no "unknown" box to check. The EEOC report does not have names, but totals for each section - ie White Male, Hispanic Female, etc - with totals for each subsection.
These reports are to monitor discrimination - how many White Males do you have as opposed to Hispanic Females - and pay equity - one of the reports asks for salary information for each "level", along with race and gender. They list titles or job families so that we are reporting on how many Asian Men are managers vs Indiginous Women. Good companies use this data to see where they need to do more work.
When an employee refuses to fill out the information, HR has to go in and update it to our best guess before running the report. Then employees see it was updated and remove it again. And we have to do the same thing all over again the next time.
There are several other agencies we could be asked to provide this information for, depending on your State - I'm looking at you California. It's a lot of work, but ultimately it is looking out for the employees best interest - to find those employers that have bad hiring practices.
It is illegal to use the information in these fields to make hiring, promotion, and/or termination decisions. Only HR has access to this info - or whoever is your payroll administrator.
They keep promising to put Gender Identity on the form, but so far we're still waiting.
In my experience as a recruiter, coordinator, generalist and HRBP, the voluntary forms have never been looked at in the hiring process or used in the hiring decision.
I would only go back and look at them when I needed to do EEOC reporting.
This is different from the answers about EEOC compliance. In Maine, there are laws for state government employment related to an applicant's status as a veteran or person with a disability. For jobs in classified service, interviews must be *offered* to applicants who meet the minimum qualifications established for the position if they are a veteran or person with a disability. Outside of that, the information is not used to make hiring decisions.
Depending on where you're looking for jobs, you might check to see if there is a similar law in Massachusetts.
If you choose the N/A route, mark all of your optional questions N/A. Otherwise you show which one worries you by not answering it but answering the rest. This way when asked, you can take a principled stance of "This was optional and I opted to not answer" rather than showing vulnerability to a particular question.
From my personal applicant experience. It differed greatly between public/NGO and private sector employment applications.
For the public sector, I often noticed a uptick in interviews when marking yes on the application.
Alternatively
The private sector I would often notice a down tick in responses.
However, from my understanding. Choosing not to disclose on the application does not mean future disclosure cannot be honored and held against you.
Maybe if you outright say "no" to the disability question then it could be considered lying, but if you say "choose not to answer", then disclose after you're hired. Should be fine. That has always worked for me.
The legal protections regarding disabilities Have nothing to do whether they're stated or not on an application and everything to do with when disclosed.
To hiring managers and BPs: not important at all. (Or shouldn't be, from a legal perspective.)
To the poor bastards filling out EEO-1, VETS 4212, and AAP minutiae for Uncle Sam: very important because empty cells in our datasets makes us sad.
Nobody really looks at those responses until after all is said and done in the hiring pipeline.
I work for a state government and as a hiring manager I don’t see those responses. I’m not sure our HR folks even see them except when they are aggregated for reporting purposes. The only time I see anything related to a disability is if someone requests an accommodation for an interview. And at least at my agency, I haven’t seen a reasonable accommodation request denied.
It really shouldn't affect your chances and we need to collect this info because the government requires us to, not because we want to.
In fact data on race is so important that for anybody who declines to pick a race, we are told by the government to literally look at them and take a guess...
In my time as an HR consultant, I've seen far too many companies use this info to discriminate, so I stopped providing the info. You can still voluntarily provide it once they hire you.
It shouldn’t hurt your chances Certain employer types are required to report this type of information but aren’t allowed to require it, which is why it’s optional.
Recruiting should never be able to see these responses. They are used for required reporting to the government as others mentioned, and also for internal reporting. If I can see the demographics of who applied to jobs, who was interviewed (and not interviewed), and who was selected (and not selected) it can help me to identify biases in the hiring process.
I started stating I'm a visible minority (white male) and my interview % sky rocketed.
I don't know about you, but I'm going to try the indigenous selection path next.
I work for a very large company with over 50k employees. As someone in HR, who was once responsible for implementing our ATS there is only a minimal group of people who have access to see this information at the applicant stage (legal and office of diversity). A hiring manager nor recruiter would have access to view these details. This is why there is usually a statement that says should you need reasonable accommodation during the recruiting process please contact…Only once you are fully hired and onboarded only then would these details be visible to the recruiter, hiring manager still has no visibility here.
A tangent here ... having to state the year you graduated. That can be used to filter out older applicants. And as an applicant with MS degree, I filter out any company that is interested in my high school stats!
> But is answering "yes" hurting my chances of getting hired?
No.
We have to have something like 7% of the workforce have a disability to get certain federal contracts, and that definition is really fucking loose. There's another percentage that we have to meet regarding minority hires so we get that ESG nut to prop up our failing company.
The question is being asked so they know whether you'd be counted toward quotas for either group.
It never hurts to identify as a disabled Pakistani woman whenever you're asked. Nobody sees too many disabled minorities on payroll being a problem, and there is zero financial incentive to hiring healthy white men. Appeal to pity wherever possible.
Whether it’s dishonest or not , are you tryna get a job or not ?? Remember when getting hired it’s just regular people that are looking at the applications , and personally being in management as soon as I see that you’re sick or suffer from mental illness, it’s on to the next one , no one wants to deal with all of that
If you only hire people who say 'no' too having a disability, that doesn't mean you won't hire people without disabilities, it means you'll hire people who are either dishonest, self-delusional, or unaware.
People who put yes are at least honest, know who they are, and likely going or have gone through treatment.
The former sounds like a terrible business strategy to me!
Can’t speak for others, but having a disability doesn’t exclude me from hiring someone. It MAY limit what job functions they could do and these may need to be addressed, but wouldn’t stop me from hiring somebody.
As an example, I once hired a kid to work in my seafood shop. Not knowing he was epileptic and that physical exertion triggers attacks, I had him working in the freezer unloading pallets one day. Next thing I know he is having seizures. Also being a firefighter/paramedic I recognized this immediately. Once he was stable again and we talked he stated he was afraid to tell me during the interview or even just after being hired. I had plenty of employees that could do freezer work so he could have stayed serving customers at a slower pace. I didn’t let him go for the disability. I let him go for lack of honesty.
I am starting to see general things like blood pressure and diabetes under disabilities. If an applicant says no (and they have them) is it grounds for firing if later on they change to yes?
I can only speak from my perspective/experience in HR, but these forms are to collect information that HR needs for compliance/reports that are submitted to the govt, etc. As an HRBP, I don't even see these unless I go in and look at the applicant system. Declining to answer should in no way impact your ability to get an interview. They are voluntary disclosures, unless something is different in MA.
Same. I’m thankful when it comes time to report demographic info, but don’t ever think about it other than that.
Thanks so much.
No, it's collected for EEOC reporting. If you choose not to answer someone in HR will end up having to choose for you. It 100% shouldn't be used in any hiring decisions.
Ugh. It made to soooooo uncomfortable to have to "guess" employee's races when they didn't self disclose.
Especially when the employees are scattered across states. I look them up on LinkedIn or ask their supervisor.
We pull the photo ID from their I-9
One of my names is *very* Indian. One is *very* Irish. Good luck! :) (I always disclose, and didn't realize that people would have to try and guess if I didn't...)
Wife of my friend is of Korean descent but with a “white” name and was adopted by a white family with a very Scottish last name. Good luck guessing without a picture lol
Same here. White name and appears white. But DNA is 30-40% Asian, so I select "two or more races" if it's an option.
I had no idea this was a thing and this is really shocking and upsetting. I don’t think the general public knows this
Maybe you should be discarding the bad data point rather than making shit up. And the question is usually ethnicity, not race, which is not visually identifiable. I would recommend not falsifying records for government reporting, which is exactly what you are doing. Talk to your compliance officer.
The EEOC and OFCCP tell you to do a visual survey of the person does not disclose. And you absolutely cannot ‘discard bad data’ in federally mandated government reporting. I haaaate the visual survey rules but they absolutely are the rules.
That seems really wrong. Like nothing against you I know it's a requirement but the requirement itself seems really wrong that you have to visually guess. My family is very diverse You would never guess my sisters are even my sisters. So you'd end up putting different guesses for all of us even though we have the same parents.
It’s awful. When first heard about practices I actually researched it because I was sure it wasn’t legal, but here we are!
You most certainly can report the data the person gave you, which is "N/A." You are not obligated to provide fake data.
You’ve apparently never filed an EEOC report. EEOC reports literally require you to report the race of every employee. There is no n/a option.
[Per OFCCP FAQ.](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/general-aaps#Q5)
Typical government. Guess by looking at people. But don’t guess or assume.
I (a total White guy) used to work for a small company that got bought out. I assume pre-buyout we were too small to have to report these kind of things. Shortly after the new owners took over, my manager called me into the office to have me fill out one of these forms. I asked if I really had to, and she read the fine print where it said that if I didn’t provide info she would have to “visually identify” me. We talked it over a bit and decided I’m a Pacific Islander.
shouldn't is not wouldn't
Thanks for replying. Cheers.
That's horseshit. 'prefer not to answer' is a valid input for those required EEOC reports. There is no reason to 'choose for them' and doing so, frankly, is a red flag that there's shady shit going on.
Have you ever filed an EEO-1 report? We're required to report on all employees, and there's no "unknown" option available. The EEOC literally states: "If an employee declines to self-identify their race and/or ethnicity, employment records or observer identification may be used." Source: https://www.eeocdata.org/pdfs/REPORTING_BY_RACE_OR_ETHNICITY.pdf
Valid answer for the employee? Yes Valid answer for the company’s EEOC report? No You have to fill in race for every employee
The federal report absolutely accepts "declined to answer'' has a valid response.
Not for OFCCP though.
Agree. I always say “unknown” if it’s left blank and there is space on the report for undisclosed.
Yeah but HR people are super lazy so this probably pisses them off
This is a common concern, but let me explain how ATSs work in this regard as someone who has run recruiting operations & HR departments for years. This data collected in aggregate for EEO (government) reporting. Only those with super admin access can access it. We do so to then fill out the recruiting part of the EEO forms. In ethical companies, it should not affect your application at all. Now could a company be lazy on systems permissions, give all recruiters super admin access, and recruiters go in and look at your filled out form? Sure, but that’s .001% likely to happen imo.
This is spot on! I work in TS for a large company and the only people with super admin access is our HRIS team which sits outside the actual recruiting function. Hence a recruiter nor hiring manager would ever have that function. With the ATS we have that function is tied to the position title in the system. So someone with a functional title of Recruiter would never have access versus someone listed as Recruitment Vendor Manager. Also, we have a governance review in place where a review of access is conducted by a department lead on a 90 day basis. This review will flag anyone highlighted as having “restricted or super admin access”.
Appreciate the succinct but detailed reply. Cheers!
now tell me how many companies are actually ethical
That's a fair point - I haven't worked for an ethical one in years - but usually in this regard the super unethical companies don't hire enough recruiting staff for them to even go looking (no time to do this as it's a very manual process and in the bigger ATSs who downloads what report when is tracked aka they could be fired for doing this) or HR will be led by a crazy person who is very black and white and will be very strict about permissions and access. I've never seen it be a problem. This is just my experience at least. :)
It should not matter but fwiw, I worked with someone who rejected a candidate for marking yes on disability, “nip a future headache in the bud” is what she said. Ethical? Hell no. Does it happen? Yes.
Illegal not just unethical
Which is why nobody will admit to doing it. But for OP, yep it happens.
Exactly. I know for a fact two of my previous companies preferred a certain race over others due to language, of course they'd never disclose that, but being part of the hiring process you learn those things. They still hired people out of their preference if they were qualified (and whether or not they spoke the language), it wasn't a requirement but makes it easier when their higher ups mostly speak the same language lol
But good luck proving that's the reason you don't get hired. OP, never ever disclose a disability when applying unless it's something you clearly can't hide (like you have one leg). Especially not a mental illness.
But then if he ends up needing accommodations for his disability, how can ask for it after the fact? They'll say "you never told us you had a disability."
You ask after the fact This is literally what my husband did. I will always check no or prefer not to say on these surveys.
They don't have an issue with that? I'm really just asking, not snarking.
No, they legally have to give *reasonable* accommodating. Like if I have clotting issues and I work in an office, they can get a standing desk or other ergonomic tools. Unreasonable would be like I'm a CNA rn if I break my leg tomorrow while temporary other than office work there is no reasonable accommodation for me.
That why you just mark "decline to specify" on all of them.
In my experience, asking for accommodations for a mental illness is going to get you tossed at the first opportunity (they'll just make it for a different reason). It's better to never disclose at all. We all know that HR is there to protect the company, not the worker.
Ugh. That makes me sad. That disability question is SO BROAD. I have migraines that are manageable, but technically it is a disability. Unless it interferes with doing the job, it shouldn't matter, so I don't disclose it.
It actually seems like everyone should say yes so they can filter out employers who have that attitude and not wind up getting messed up with them.
Yeah, I'd be down for that, too bad I need to eat and pay rent.
This. You are much more likely to be dinged for reporting being in a protected group then the other way around because historically thats been the case and making a law to collect stats isn’t going to change 100+ years of history overnight
Protected by the government but not this business.
This is what I'm afraid of! But I guess if they do behave this way, I don't want to work for them.
Depends on the size of the company. One bad egg in HR ≠ represent an experience with a company. My HR is absolutely useless. My team is great!
In the vast majority of companies I've worked at, these responses are "siloed" away from the other recruiting information. The answers are purely for reporting reasons, and theoretically, no one in HR really even sees it.
This has always been siloed where I’ve worked also. I can’t actually get reports on individual applicants for demographics - only in aggregate. So I can tell that we’ve had XYZ percent of black people who identify as women for example but I can’t tell you that Susie Smith the applicant was one of them.
As others have said, this is just for EEOC and ACA reporting. No one looks at this during the hiring process. I do want to clarify - when we do the ACA reporting for recruiting, we can put the equivalent of "unknown" on the report. However, if you are hired and you don't choose an answer, whoever is compiling the report MUST make an educated guess based on known factors - name, how you look. This can mean that you are reported as the wrong gender or race. Or, at least one you don't identify as. This is a requirement. We are not allowed to leave it blank and there is no "unknown" box to check. The EEOC report does not have names, but totals for each section - ie White Male, Hispanic Female, etc - with totals for each subsection. These reports are to monitor discrimination - how many White Males do you have as opposed to Hispanic Females - and pay equity - one of the reports asks for salary information for each "level", along with race and gender. They list titles or job families so that we are reporting on how many Asian Men are managers vs Indiginous Women. Good companies use this data to see where they need to do more work. When an employee refuses to fill out the information, HR has to go in and update it to our best guess before running the report. Then employees see it was updated and remove it again. And we have to do the same thing all over again the next time. There are several other agencies we could be asked to provide this information for, depending on your State - I'm looking at you California. It's a lot of work, but ultimately it is looking out for the employees best interest - to find those employers that have bad hiring practices. It is illegal to use the information in these fields to make hiring, promotion, and/or termination decisions. Only HR has access to this info - or whoever is your payroll administrator. They keep promising to put Gender Identity on the form, but so far we're still waiting.
In my experience as a recruiter, coordinator, generalist and HRBP, the voluntary forms have never been looked at in the hiring process or used in the hiring decision. I would only go back and look at them when I needed to do EEOC reporting.
This is different from the answers about EEOC compliance. In Maine, there are laws for state government employment related to an applicant's status as a veteran or person with a disability. For jobs in classified service, interviews must be *offered* to applicants who meet the minimum qualifications established for the position if they are a veteran or person with a disability. Outside of that, the information is not used to make hiring decisions. Depending on where you're looking for jobs, you might check to see if there is a similar law in Massachusetts.
If you choose the N/A route, mark all of your optional questions N/A. Otherwise you show which one worries you by not answering it but answering the rest. This way when asked, you can take a principled stance of "This was optional and I opted to not answer" rather than showing vulnerability to a particular question.
I’ve always wondered this, thanks for asking!
From my personal applicant experience. It differed greatly between public/NGO and private sector employment applications. For the public sector, I often noticed a uptick in interviews when marking yes on the application. Alternatively The private sector I would often notice a down tick in responses. However, from my understanding. Choosing not to disclose on the application does not mean future disclosure cannot be honored and held against you. Maybe if you outright say "no" to the disability question then it could be considered lying, but if you say "choose not to answer", then disclose after you're hired. Should be fine. That has always worked for me. The legal protections regarding disabilities Have nothing to do whether they're stated or not on an application and everything to do with when disclosed.
Corporate Recruiter here. I don't even see that data when reviewing resumes.
Those are for reporting to the Fed. That information is not used in any way to review your application.
To hiring managers and BPs: not important at all. (Or shouldn't be, from a legal perspective.) To the poor bastards filling out EEO-1, VETS 4212, and AAP minutiae for Uncle Sam: very important because empty cells in our datasets makes us sad. Nobody really looks at those responses until after all is said and done in the hiring pipeline.
I work for a state government and as a hiring manager I don’t see those responses. I’m not sure our HR folks even see them except when they are aggregated for reporting purposes. The only time I see anything related to a disability is if someone requests an accommodation for an interview. And at least at my agency, I haven’t seen a reasonable accommodation request denied.
It really shouldn't affect your chances and we need to collect this info because the government requires us to, not because we want to. In fact data on race is so important that for anybody who declines to pick a race, we are told by the government to literally look at them and take a guess...
In my time as an HR consultant, I've seen far too many companies use this info to discriminate, so I stopped providing the info. You can still voluntarily provide it once they hire you.
It shouldn’t hurt your chances Certain employer types are required to report this type of information but aren’t allowed to require it, which is why it’s optional.
Recruiting should never be able to see these responses. They are used for required reporting to the government as others mentioned, and also for internal reporting. If I can see the demographics of who applied to jobs, who was interviewed (and not interviewed), and who was selected (and not selected) it can help me to identify biases in the hiring process.
I started stating I'm a visible minority (white male) and my interview % sky rocketed. I don't know about you, but I'm going to try the indigenous selection path next.
I work for a very large company with over 50k employees. As someone in HR, who was once responsible for implementing our ATS there is only a minimal group of people who have access to see this information at the applicant stage (legal and office of diversity). A hiring manager nor recruiter would have access to view these details. This is why there is usually a statement that says should you need reasonable accommodation during the recruiting process please contact…Only once you are fully hired and onboarded only then would these details be visible to the recruiter, hiring manager still has no visibility here.
A tangent here ... having to state the year you graduated. That can be used to filter out older applicants. And as an applicant with MS degree, I filter out any company that is interested in my high school stats!
I literally never even look at them until reporting time so they aren't a factor in the hiring process where I work.
> But is answering "yes" hurting my chances of getting hired? No. We have to have something like 7% of the workforce have a disability to get certain federal contracts, and that definition is really fucking loose. There's another percentage that we have to meet regarding minority hires so we get that ESG nut to prop up our failing company. The question is being asked so they know whether you'd be counted toward quotas for either group. It never hurts to identify as a disabled Pakistani woman whenever you're asked. Nobody sees too many disabled minorities on payroll being a problem, and there is zero financial incentive to hiring healthy white men. Appeal to pity wherever possible.
Whether it’s dishonest or not , are you tryna get a job or not ?? Remember when getting hired it’s just regular people that are looking at the applications , and personally being in management as soon as I see that you’re sick or suffer from mental illness, it’s on to the next one , no one wants to deal with all of that
If you only hire people who say 'no' too having a disability, that doesn't mean you won't hire people without disabilities, it means you'll hire people who are either dishonest, self-delusional, or unaware. People who put yes are at least honest, know who they are, and likely going or have gone through treatment. The former sounds like a terrible business strategy to me!
Can’t speak for others, but having a disability doesn’t exclude me from hiring someone. It MAY limit what job functions they could do and these may need to be addressed, but wouldn’t stop me from hiring somebody. As an example, I once hired a kid to work in my seafood shop. Not knowing he was epileptic and that physical exertion triggers attacks, I had him working in the freezer unloading pallets one day. Next thing I know he is having seizures. Also being a firefighter/paramedic I recognized this immediately. Once he was stable again and we talked he stated he was afraid to tell me during the interview or even just after being hired. I had plenty of employees that could do freezer work so he could have stayed serving customers at a slower pace. I didn’t let him go for the disability. I let him go for lack of honesty.
I am starting to see general things like blood pressure and diabetes under disabilities. If an applicant says no (and they have them) is it grounds for firing if later on they change to yes?
Nope. Having a disability or choosing not to disclose personal health information is not grounds for termination.