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Comment by erosenbe0 | Hacker News Reader

If not mentioned or on the resume, explicitly asking whether a candidate has contributed to OSS or has done side projects outside of work is extremely inappropriate. The answer may be, "No, I attend temple nightly after going to occupational therapy for my disability and taking care of my children." Then you will have to document this for HR because you done gone messed up.

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That answer is not proportionate to the question, and the question is totally fine.

You can ask a candidate "have you worked with React before". You can ask a candidate "It's not on your resume, but do you have security certifications". You can ask them "do you have any OSS projects you contribute to or like".

Those are all reasonable questions.

The imagined answer you mention "may" happen for any question. You didn't mess up if you ask "do you know React?" and the candidate answers "my last job used Vue, and I didn't have time to learn it on my own due to having 2 religions, 6 disabilities, and 12 kids, so no".

Asking a candidate for work-related experience is not "extremely inappropriate", and your imagined answer is not realistic.

Exactly. I've always been told in hiring/legal meetings that it's ok if the candidate voluntarily discloses information about their religion/race/family status, you just can't go looking for it, and you probably shouldn't follow up about it.

Essentially, as long as your question has a reasonable answer that doesn't involve bringing up any of the protected attributes, it's fine.

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