Forrester, Race and Religion

I was browsing Forrester’s website, planning to do a nice article about “Research the researcher”, when I came across their career page and decided it was interesting enough to have its own post.

Take a peek at Forrester’s career page

Standard job application, right?
Click on “Apply for this Position”. Now scroll down. At the bottom of the form it reads:

Voluntary Equal Opportunity Questionnaire
Forrester Research, Inc. provides equal employment opportunity for all qualified individuals without discrimation because of race, color, religion or creed, national orgin, age, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, genetic information, disability, medical condition, ancestry, active military or veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. We invite you to complete the optional self-identification fields below for compliance with government regulations and record-keeping guidelines.

Hmmmm…

Of course, the “amusing” thing is that the Gender and Race fields are Mandatory (which kind of contradicts the meaning of “Voluntary”, doesn’t it?)

The first question that pops to mind is: Why the hell do they have it in there at all?!?
Have Forrester found that analysts from a certain race are better than others?
If so, please share your findings with us (let’s call it “Forrester Wave 2010 on Race”)
Seriously, guys.. join the 21st century…

Ok. enough poking fun at them. I’m sure it was an honest mistake and they’ll fix it..

From time to time I do get asked these silly questions, usually at government offices.
The question I like best is “What’s your religion”.
To which I reply in great delight “The fourth largest religion in the UK”

Let me explain…

In 2001, a campaign was organized advising people to record their religion as “Jedi” or “Jedi Knight” (from the Star Wars movie) on the national census.
Funny enough, a lot of people did claim the Jedi as their religion (mainly as a protest against the inclusion of the religion question on the census form and to poke fun at the government).
390,127 people (almost 0.8%) stated their religion as Jedi on their Census forms, surpassing Sikhism, Judaism, and Buddhism, and making it the fourth largest reported religion in the country.
By the way: In New Zealand 1.5% marked “Jedi” as their religion, Australia (0.37%) and 21,000 Canadians put down their religion as Jedi Knight.

Enjoy your weekend.. and I’ll see you on the dark side…