Most United States employers are required to collect Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) data under federal law. While Recruitee provides built-in tools to help you gather and manage this information, your organization retains ultimate responsibility for compliance. Even if you are not legally required to collect EEO data, these features allow you to measure and track diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts throughout your hiring pipeline.
Note: We strongly recommend consulting with legal counsel before enabling these features to ensure you fully comply with all regional laws and regulations.
Enable EEO compliance
To begin collecting candidate demographics, you must first enable EEO compliance at the company level. Once active, you can toggle it on for individual job listings.
Note: You must have High-level data access permissions enabled in your user profile to edit EEO settings.
1. Navigate to Settings > General > Company settings > EEO.
2. Toggle the switch next to Enable EEO compliance.
3. Select your organization's federal status:
Federal contractor or subcontractor: This automatically configures standard self-identification questions covering gender, race or ethnicity, veteran status, and disability status.
Non-federal contractor or subcontractor: This configures questions covering gender, race or ethnicity, and veteran status.
Tip: You can update your company status at any time in Settings > General > Company settings > EEO under the Company status section.
Collect candidate EEO data
Once EEO compliance is enabled for a job, candidates can complete the self-identification questions depending on how they enter your pipeline:
Applied via Careers Site: Candidates fill out the self-identification questionnaire directly within your job application form.
Applied via Indeed/Indeed EasyApply, LinkedIn, or custom API integrations: The system automatically sends an EEO data collection email to the candidate 24 hours after they apply.
Sourced, referred, or added manually: Recruiter must send the EEO data collection email manually.
Send EEO questions manually
To request self-identification details from a sourced or manually added candidate:
1. Open the candidate's profile in a job with EEO enabled.
2. Click on their current EEO status badge.
3. Select Send via Email.
Enable EEO on individual jobs
Enable EEO tracking for specific positions to start collecting demographic data from new applicants.
1. Go to the Jobs section and click Edit next to your chosen job.
2. In the left-hand menu, select Application form.
3. Scroll down to the EEO section and toggle the switch next to EEO compliance.
4. Select the appropriate EEO category for the job and click Save in the top-right corner.
Manage EEO in bulk
You can quickly enable or disable EEO tracking for multiple jobs at once from your main dashboard.
1. Navigate to the Jobs section and switch to the table layout.
2. Select the jobs you want to update by clicking the checkboxes next to their titles.
3. Click More in the top menu bar and select Manage EEO compliance.
4. Choose your action:
Enable EEO: Select your target EEO category and click Enable for X jobs to confirm.
Disable EEO: Click Disable for X jobs to turn off data collection for the selected positions.
Manage report data retention and exports
EEO data is highly sensitive and kept strictly anonymous. It is stored separately from individual candidate files and can only be accessed via aggregate CSV reports.
Define data retention limits
To remain compliant with privacy regulations like the GDPR, you can customize how long EEO records persist after a candidate's profile is deleted:
Go to Settings > General > Company settings > EEO.
Define your target retention period in the EEO report data retention period field.
If you set the retention period to 0, deleting a candidate profile will immediately delete their associated EEO survey data from your database.
Export EEO reports
Admins with high-level data permissions can export compiled data at any time.
Go to Settings > General > Company settings > EEO.
Click Export to CSV in the EEO Report field to download the raw data spreadsheet.