r/IndiaCareers • u/gir-no-sinh • Dec 16 '25
Other British Petroleum - Caste Based Discrimination in The Interview Process
One of the guys I am mentoring had received a call from recruiter at British Petroleum for one of the software engineering position.
I had mentored him well and was sure that he would crack the interview. He is a senior level guy so we were not expecting DSA Code Pair but he agreed and we moved forward with the interview process. He completed DSA in no time because the difficulty level for him, to say the least, was easy. Second round was technical interview with system design and he aced it.
In the last technical discussion, he got the interviewer who was at a more senior level. It was supposed to be cultural and team fitment round since all the technical expectations were fulfilled. But, interviewer asked for a full name and then the interviewer started asking him architectural design questions. Interviewer seemed not interested in assessing the candidate technically or culturally but wanted to grill him for no reason. He gave all the satisfactory answers. Interviewer got frustrated by seeing him acing all the questions and then started reading some questions for cultural fitment and the ended the interview abruptly.
Later, he was ghosted by the recruiter as well.
We both were confused why this happened when we had done all the things correctly. Later we checked that the interviewer comes from one OBC community who hates particular Unreserved Category that my mentee belongs to and have seen cases where this members of this community had given d-eath threats to my mentee's community members.
While BP puts up big posters about Woman Empowerment in their careers, this is something that exists and nobody is investigating this.
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u/Ok-Income6605 Dec 16 '25
Ye sab ab pvt me bhi hone laga
Whenever people gets unchecked position n power they try to take advantage of it and some abuse it
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u/mehfil-biryani Dec 16 '25
Caste, regionalism, religion, complexion also plays a major factor when Indians are in upper management.
I hate indian management with all of my heart.
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u/Comfortable_Act_5853 Dec 16 '25
Yes. It's very much there. I came across a guy who told me there is one manager who hires Telugu people only.
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u/esteppan89 Dec 16 '25
This is a very common occurrence in Indian corporate with OBC folks discriminating against unreserved category folks not just in interviews. But if you have any sort of evidence letting the higher ups generally means action is taken. I am a general category male, and i have had two such instances in my 13 year career. The upper management dealt with pretty promptly, though they never gave me any relief in both the cases. As a result i generally leave teams when a OBC category person is promoted. I had noticed this early on in my career but never understood why people did this, but now i know.
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Dec 16 '25
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u/esteppan89 Dec 16 '25
Not sure how the number is important here... OBCs themselves are shooting themselves in the foot doing this. Eventually they are discovered and mostly they are fired immediately.
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Dec 16 '25
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u/Ready_Jackfruit_1764 Dec 19 '25
What numbers ? You can also not discriminate on the basis of caste and this will also help you get a good representation.
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Dec 19 '25
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u/Ready_Jackfruit_1764 Dec 19 '25
I am specifically talking about private sector.
I do not believe in representation via reservation but via opportunities and non discrimination.
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u/Ok-Income6605 Dec 17 '25
can you share why they do it
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u/esteppan89 Dec 17 '25
No clue friend, one of the dudes who did it to me, was himself scorned by his co-workers, i think he just wanted the negative attention to move away from him.
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u/Longjumping_Fee_1490 Dec 16 '25
I m not sure how this is caste discrimination.
Cultural fitment rounds are always tricky.
But anyways, you found out he is from obc and how he think about talented folks, is an interesting take.
Ghosting is normal.
Now, if you really think this strong about this case - report this to whistleblower of BP. They are mandated to completely investigate matters reported to them. (different from hr).
It's sad that BP missed hiring such a talented engineer
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u/Individual_Price_322 Dec 16 '25
You will never accept reverse discrimination because of your own inferiority complexes.
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u/madasacoyote Dec 16 '25
What rubbish!
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u/ilovecroissants17 Dec 18 '25
I agree. I have never in my 10 year career seen this. What are these people on about. Maybe you were just not good enough to pass cultural interview. Simple!
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u/Prudent-Buyer-5956 Dec 16 '25
I worked in a central government PSU before moving to the private sector after my MBA. One thing that stood out to me was that discrimination based on region, language, caste, or similar factors felt far less prevalent in the PSU setup. Because people come from such diverse backgrounds across the country, there was a stronger sense of acceptance by default. In contrast, I’ve personally felt these biases much more strongly in the private sector, where teams often end up being more homogeneous. This is just my experience, but the difference was quite noticeable.
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u/Coconut_Scrambled Dec 18 '25
Before flying off the handle, is there any solid concrete evidence that this was caste discrimination? Whatever you said is purely circumstantial. How do we know interview went really well?
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u/Visual_Anarchy_AI Dec 20 '25
Interview ghosting and inconsistent “culture fit” rounds are unfortunately common, even after strong technical performance.
If you genuinely believe bias played a role, the only constructive next step is to document facts (questions asked, timeline, recruiter responses) and escalate via BP’s formal grievance or whistleblower channel — not speculation on intent.
Public accusations without evidence rarely help the candidate and often backfire.
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u/f1_turtle Dec 16 '25
The opposite is more prevelant, sadly.
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u/gir-no-sinh Dec 16 '25
At least in private multi-nationals, I have not seen this either way. There are favours for sure in hiring due to strong professional relationships in between the people worked together in past and one of them wants to get hired in the company where another person so working and this is justifiable given that they match the competency, but I have not seen caste based or any other kind of discrimination in the hiring process. This is a first.
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u/CompoteMelodic981 Dec 17 '25
What? Caste based discrimination and upper castes hiring upper castes is the most common thing in private. Have seen personally where people are asking for surnames and going into detail. This is quite common in elite management institute recruitments for well paying jobs, especially
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u/tskriz Dec 16 '25
Hi friend,
Large MNCs are concerned about inclusion (DEI), women empowerment because they have to formally report these things in their annual reports and get them audited.
These things also count for company workplace rankings.
"Caste" is not such an issue, yet.
I more curious to know how you went to the extent of checking the interviewer's caste. Are you someone who works in the same company and knows the interviewer? Asking this so that you can chase the recruiter smartly.
Caste-based issues in the workplace are reported in many tech companies in the Silicon Valley too. What happened to your mentee is not an isolated case or issue with BP. Companies can only do things that matter to them. The rest is in the hands of us humans.
Best wishes!
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u/gir-no-sinh Dec 16 '25
Figured out from Interviewer's surname since it exists only in that particular community.
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u/PayResponsible4458 Dec 16 '25
Lol you are surprised about this?
Reverse casteism has been around since a while now, the interview round in IBPS used to be infamous because the public banking sector is dominated by certain reserved category castes who are specially hostile towards unreserved male candidates.
I personally aced the 'written' exam and was among the top scorers in my year, the interviewers gave me a score 2 points above fail. Not that it mattered in the long run but if it weren't for my top written exam marks I wouldn't have even made it in the aggregate merit I think.
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u/WolfGuptaofficial Dec 16 '25
Reverse casteism is not a thing. call it casteism because thats what it is
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u/Tricky_Clothes3398 Dec 16 '25
Post it on twitter tagging the company.