Do I Have to Provide my Social Security Number?
Question: "I have applied for a job and the hiring organization wants my social security number on the application. Is this legal?"
Answer: I am not an attorney, so keep that in mind. Asking for the social security number on an application is legal in most states, but it is an extremely bad practice. (Some states prohibit private employers from collecting this information for fear of identity theft.) Depending upon the state in which you reside, laws are different regarding supplying this information, and I cannot keep up with all of them.
I would not provide this information on a job application. Keep in mind, though, that on many job applications, you are signing to provide permission to check references, do background checks, allow criminal record checks, and affirming that everything you have provided on the application is the truth. If you do not supply the social security number on the application, you will likely have to make another trip to the company to fill it in, if the employer wants to offer you a job.
With all of the new laws about guarding employee and applicant information security, no client with whom I work, asks for this information until the person is hired any more. No one wants to be responsible for guarding this information for the year that it would be accessible in a file.
It might cost you the employment opportunity, but I would write "SSN available upon job offer" in that space. They will need the SSN if they do background checks, so you will need to provide it for the background checks if they make an offer. I would prefer to keep that number safe until hired, but it is not always possible.
I currently have a PT job and have been looking for extra work. Everyone, esp. the national companies, require you to apply online. And you cannot apply without providing you SSN to be stored in their data banks for god knows how long. It doesn’t matter what the laws are. I believe if not hired they must dispose of your information in a short period of time. But lets take WalMart for example. The first question they ask you is for your SSN. How many time a day do you think WalMart gets hacked? Dell themselves said they get hacked “5,000 times a day”. I promise I don’t say this for dramatic effect, its true! Do we really need to trust all these random companies, national or not, to have the skilled workers on hand to protect our information? I’ve worked in Networking and IT management AND studied Databases. I would never trust these guys myself.
Mark, if I were job hunting, I would state: available at interview. Very few employers do background checks on all applicants, and you’re right, they don’t need it when you apply. What does anyone else think? As a former HR Director and HR Consultant and writer, the truth is that I don’t want to be responsible for caretaking possible identity theft data. What’s the norm these days?
Actually, if you attempt to apply to one of these companies online, you are required by the process to enter a SSN. Some will accept 9’s or 0’s, but some will just kick you out of the system. In a recent attempt to register with a staffing firm, I phoned to ask why they needed my number and if it was possible to give it only when hired. They replied that it is required and suggested that I come in rather than apply online. When I expressed reservations about giving the number at all until hired, they told me they probably “wouldn’t be a good fit” for me.
So, it seems that I can give my SSN or look elsewhere. I wonder if this is more prevalent in an employers market. They can obviously afford to call the shots and I cannot.