I mean, we can snark about recruiters being bad at what they do and not understanding people's qualifications, but this is different. Recruiters being merely bad isn't illegal. Until the point where they ask "hey, before we proceed, can you tell us if you're a member of a protected class?"
Nitpick: You can't /be/ a member of a protected class.
Protected classes are attributes that you can't discriminate against. Being black doesn't make you in a protected class, ethnicity is a protected class.
True, that is an important clarification. I hope nobody's reading what I said as "there are certain people you are not allowed to not hire", but given the last few days on HN, of course someone's reading it that way. Oh well.
My point was that the recruiter could not make it any more obvious that they are discriminating.
One of the first things I learned about interviewing is that you just don't ask questions related to protected classes, because you could not possibly benefit from getting the answer. How could someone whose entire job is about hiring not know this?
