Greenhouse Recruiting's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) feature set allows your organization to customize demographic questions that are included in custom demographic question sets.
Using Inclusion offerings like the pipeline by demographic report, your organization can collect and report on custom applicant demographic data to assess and improve your DE&I goals.
To learn more about data and reporting as it relates to DE&I research, please click here.
Note: Neither the standard demographic question nor the custom demographic question set replace the standard EEOC questions for companies that are required by law to report on candidate demographic data.
Please consult with your company’s own legal counsel before enabling this question set, as there are risks inherent to collecting demographic data where it is not required to do so, and Greenhouse disclaims any legal responsibility for the wording of the questions themselves.
In addition, Greenhouse will not be responsible for any liability that may arise out of your use of this question set.
Create a custom demographic question
Custom demographic questions are created from the Custom Demographic Question Sets panel on the Inclusion Tools page. To add a new question, click the name of any created custom demographic question set.
From the Edit Custom Demographic Questions page for the question set, navigate to the Custom Questions panel and click Add Custom Question at the bottom of the page.
In the provided panel, input a question and answer options (to add additional answer options, click + Add Option). Please see the below section on how to add a self-describe answer option for a custom demographic question. Use the Question Type dropdown to define if candidates can provide one response only (single select), or if candidates can choose to select several responses for the question (multi select).
When you are finished, click Done to add the custom question to your list of demographic questions. To reaffirm the addition/change, click Save.
Note: Custom demographic questions can be configured with either multi select or single select responses.
Note: After creating your custom demographic question sets, don't forget to add them to your job posts.
Add a self-describe option for custom demographic question
Self-describe answer options allow applicants to define their demographic details in their own words. When creating custom demographic questions, you can insert this option by selecting + Add Option to Self-Describe.
Allows candidate to self-describe will appear under the answer option field to indicate that the response will be a self-describe option.
Note: Be sure to give the self-describe answer option field a name that communicates to the applicant a text field will appear when selected.
When you have finished creating the question, click Done to add the custom question to your list of demographic questions. To reaffirm the addition/change, click Save.
Make custom demographic question required
To make a custom demographic question required, check the box next to Mark as required.
Marking a custom demographic question as required will automatically add an answer choice for I don't wish to answer. Use the provided dropdown to select the language in which you would like this option to appear. The following languages are supported:
- English
- Italian
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Haitian Creole
- Hmong
- Japanese
- Korean
- Russian
- Vietnamese
- Chinese
Note: The I don't wish to answer option cannot be edited or removed.
Repeat this process on each custom demographic question you wish to make required.
If at least one custom demographic question in a set is marked as required, the External Description for the question set also will become required. We recommend using this field to explain to candidates why it is important for your company to collect the requested information and how you plan to use it.
To add or edit the description, scroll to the top of the Edit Custom Demographic Questions page and click into the External Description field. Greenhouse imposes a minimum character limit of 100 characters to encourage your team to add a thoughtful description.
Questions marked as required will be required on the Candidate Survey and/or the job post based on your organization's custom demographic question settings.
Add custom demographic questions to a job post
After creating your custom demographic questions, follow the steps outlined in this guide to add your configured custom demographic question sets to a job post to ensure candidates have the option to complete the question set when applying.
Note: If custom demographic questions aren't added to your job posts, applicants won't see the question sets when completing their applications which may result in inaccurate reporting. Click here to learn more.
Add custom demographic questions to candidate surveys
To include your demographic questions with your candidate surveys, make sure to first configure the Candidate Survey your organization.
Then, make sure the toggle is set to On on the Configure Inclusion tools page.
Note: If a candidate has already completed the standard demographic question set in a job post, they won't receive the question set with the candidate survey.
Best practices: Custom demographic question management
Editing custom demographic questions
When editing custom demographic questions, special care must be taken when it comes to editing answer options. Changing answer options will affect the historical integrity of previous responses in the Pipeline by Demographic report.
For instance, if 50 applicants select Woman as a response to a question but later that answer option is changed to Prefer not to say, the Pipeline by Demographic report will incorrectly display this historical data and associate it with an inaccurate answer choice.
If your edits to an answer option does not change the underlying assumption of the answer option (i.e. spelling and/or grammar), you should edit the answer directly.
If your edits will change the intended meaning or underlying assumption of the answer option (i.e. changing an answer option from Man to Woman), it is encouraged to first remove the answer option. This will preserve historical responses that selected this answer option for later reporting.
With the answer option's historical data preserved, you can add a new answer option if necessary. When you have finished creating the question, click Done to add the custom question to your list of demographic questions.
To reaffirm the addition/change, click Save.
Using demographic questions with the Job Board and Harvest API
Job Board API
When using custom demographic questions, customers and partners utilizing the Greenhouse Recruiting Job Board API will need to confirm the query parameters questions and/or demographic_questions in the GET: Retrieve a job endpoint have been set to true to receive demographic data.
If a job post has demographic questions enabled, you or your developer team can add the query parameters =true to the end of the endpoint above to confirm demographic data is returned.
Harvest API
By default, for customers and partners using Greenhouse Harvest API, the following four endpoints can be utilized to return demographic question sets:
- https://developers.greenhouse.io/harvest.html#get-list-job-posts
- https://developers.greenhouse.io/harvest.html#get-retrieve-job-post
- https://developers.greenhouse.io/harvest.html#get-list-job-posts-for-job
- https://developers.greenhouse.io/harvest.html#get-retrieve-job-post-for-job
To obtain the custom demographic question set, add the query parameter ?full_content=true to the end of the four endpoints above.
Adding this query parameter will return the entire demographic question set (introduction, job post, pay transparency, and conclusion) in either the content field (for external posts) or the internal_content field (for internal posts).