Filling out online job applications, I noticed they often require graduation dates and won't let you proceed if you leave it blank. Allows them to quickly estimate your age.
Fully-automated forms for gathering that kind of data are common outside tech and starting to show up in tech at some larger companies, especially those not seen as "startup" (either current or former).
I know someone who tried to apply to a position at a large tech company and could not complete their initial forms; this person has a master's degree from a top-25 university, is soon to have a Ph.D., has studied at the London School of Economics... but left high school early to go straight to college. Date of high-school graduation was a mandatory field in their online form, and nobody at the company could come up with a way to bypass the use of that form (and entering false information, of course, is not permitted). This person may literally have to go back and get a GED after obtaining a Ph.D. in order to be able to fill out a job application.
> Surely they must remember which year they left high school to go to college? That's graduation, early or otherwise.
Graduation is when you are certified by the school as completing graduation requirements, and usually issued a diploma attesting to that fact. Leaving without doing so, even for higher education that doesn't require a high school diploma, is not graduation.
No, it's not. It was not "your high school studies are completed early, here is a diploma and good luck in college". It was just "I'm leaving for college now, bye". Which, to a form that wants a graduation date, is equivalent to dropping out.
Every company I applied to over the last 2 years requires this. This includes all the major tech companies and MBB. I used both their own internal application process and 3rd party. Maybe it was the specific roles I was applying for, but this has been a universal experience for me.
