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Ruth Lyons, 59, was born on April 28, 1951. But after two and a half years of not even being able to get an interview for a job, she decided that her new "job application birthday" was going to be March 19, 1969 -- just as an experiment.

"They're asking for your Social Security number and date of birth on applications now, which I don't think they have a right to do unless they're hiring you,

and you don't have the option of not filling them in," she told HuffPost. "You either fill them in right, or you lie, and I'm all for lying."

Several of the nation's biggest employers, including Target, Kroger and Home Depot, require job applicants to disclose their date of birth in the online application, a practice that employment discrimination lawyers say seems a little fishy.

"It's not per se discrimination to ask for your date of birth or age or some other age-identifying information on a job application, but when there's a claim that EEOC's investigating, we're going to closely scrutinize what we see on the form," said Ray Peeler, a senior attorney at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "It definitely makes the EEOC look a little harder at what's going on."

Kroger's online application says that a candidate's birthday is used "to ensure compliance with laws and regulations governing the employment of minors or establishing age requirements for certain tasks," and that the age of anyone 21 years old or older "will not be seen by the hiring manager." Human resources representatives at Target and Home Depot told HuffPost an applicant's age is only used for the purpose of background checks after the person has been hired

Click here to Read More at the Huffington Post

Written by Laura Bassett

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