Excessive personal info requested on applications
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2019
Location: Earth
Posts: 26
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Excessive personal info requested on applications
I have noticed that agencies such as career.aero aka Interpersonal and more than a few airlines are in the habit of requesting, on first contact, such sensitive data as passport scans, date of birth, full residential address, even mugshots!
This is extremely foreign to every other industry that I have worked in. It seems excessively intrusive, a major risk from an identity theft point of view and completely out of line with EU data protection rules.
I would understand generic questions such as whether or not the candidate has a passport valid for at least another X months, whether they have the right to work in EU/wherever, whether they are within a certain height range as appropriate to certain cockpits, etc. After telephone screening and if invited for a personal interview, then the candidate can bring the requested documents and those can be checked. Eventually when making an offer copies would be obtained as necessary.
Why is it not done like this?
I'm not even getting into the ads that blatantly ask for minimum / maximum ages, etc.
This is extremely foreign to every other industry that I have worked in. It seems excessively intrusive, a major risk from an identity theft point of view and completely out of line with EU data protection rules.
I would understand generic questions such as whether or not the candidate has a passport valid for at least another X months, whether they have the right to work in EU/wherever, whether they are within a certain height range as appropriate to certain cockpits, etc. After telephone screening and if invited for a personal interview, then the candidate can bring the requested documents and those can be checked. Eventually when making an offer copies would be obtained as necessary.
Why is it not done like this?
I'm not even getting into the ads that blatantly ask for minimum / maximum ages, etc.
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Amantido
Posts: 866
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
They are not the only one.
I was offered a job by an operator in their office when I visited them which I kindly rejected. They took the GDPR matter very seriously and the Director of Flight Ops handed me all the copies of my certificates and documents and made personally sure all were erased from their database. And I was invited to apply to them again in future.
The most "instrusive" so far have been British operators with questions about my ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation and a few weird questions I had never been asked before.
I was offered a job by an operator in their office when I visited them which I kindly rejected. They took the GDPR matter very seriously and the Director of Flight Ops handed me all the copies of my certificates and documents and made personally sure all were erased from their database. And I was invited to apply to them again in future.
The most "instrusive" so far have been British operators with questions about my ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation and a few weird questions I had never been asked before.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2019
Location: Earth
Posts: 26
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
The most "instrusive" so far have been British operators with questions about my ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation and a few weird questions I had never been asked before.
Anyway, I would just like to know if anyone knows whether there is a clearly valid reason for demanding things like copies of personal IDs, intimate details such as where one has completed their primary / secondary education, and headshots.
I'll leave this thread open for a week or so and if no compelling reasons have been put forward I'll start reporting the cases I have come across to the relevant data protection agencies (career.aero is just one instance amongst others, though perhaps the most blatant. Being Germans they should know a lot better).
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Up there
Posts: 77
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
In german speaking countries it is absolutely normal to state your adress and name the schools you‘ve been in. So maxbe it also depends on which company you‘re going to send your application to and where they are HQed. English speaking countries are a 180° different here, but therefore they like to know much more personal info like you guys mentioned above. (Which I think is crazy.)
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: UK
Posts: 225
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
The most "instrusive" so far have been British operators with questions about my ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation and a few weird questions I had never been asked before.
I ask this as if you're not a Brit I can totally understand why these questions are awkward and intrusive. However, under UK law, and to the best of my knowledge, these questions are asked and then kept totally separate to all other data the company holds about you. Doing this means that should any discrimination then be raised by you for any racism, sexual, religion etc the company can check your original submission. These same very questions also prevent the organisation from the possibility of hiring people in a discriminatory manor. It is quite intrusive, i'll give it that. But it's been about in the UK for years.
Join Date: May 2017
Location: Europe
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
As far as i know you need to give written consent to interpersonal to keep your data, if you revoke your consent they remove your data from their records. I did exactly that...
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: UK
Posts: 225
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2019
Location: Earth
Posts: 26
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Even if it was in the books that does not necessarily make it legal post-GDPR. I would have to check the Regulation again (I am quite familiar with it but not the part dealing with especially sensitive data since we just don't handle any), but I really don't think those forms are still kosher. Besides, they never helped anyway save perhaps as an arse covering exercise.