Astrology in hiring: what a chart cannot tell you about a candidate

The question is not hypothetical

We build astrology software, so we get asked whether it can be pointed at job applicants — sometimes half in jest, sometimes not at all. The question deserves a straight answer, because this idea has a longer history in hiring than people assume.

Screening methods that feel like insight and turn out to be noise have been mainstream in recruitment before. Handwriting analysis was widely used in French hiring for decades, on the strength of nothing. And consulting astrologers is not confined to the fringe: the best-documented case in American public life is the Reagan White House, where an astrologer was consulted on the timing of presidential events for years — something that only became public when the chief of staff published his memoir.

So “nobody would actually do that” is not an argument. Someone would. And the person it lands on is a candidate who never finds out why the answer was no.

Why this is a legal problem, not a taste problem

We are a software project, not lawyers, and nothing here is legal advice. But the shape of the difficulty is not subtle.

A birth date is a very good proxy for age. In the United States, age is a protected characteristic in employment for workers over forty under the ADEA, and collecting birth dates during selection is a well-known way to invite a claim you cannot easily defend — the reason most application forms avoid asking.

In the EU and the UK, birth data is personal data under the GDPR: processing it to evaluate a candidate needs a lawful basis and a purpose you are willing to write down. “We assessed his leadership potential from his Sun sign” is a sentence no employer wants read back to them. Selection criteria that correlate with a protected characteristic also raise indirect discrimination questions on their own.

And a practical point that has nothing to do with regulators: a rejected candidate who learns the reason will tell people. That story travels further than any job ad.

What a chart actually describes

Set the law aside for a moment, because the method itself does not support the use either.

Both halves of what we build describe inclinations — how someone tends to approach things, what they lean on, where their attention goes by default. The Formula of the Soul is explicitly probabilistic in its own sources: it points and warns, and the choosing stays with the person. Neither half describes competence, reliability, or how someone will behave under a specific manager on a specific team. Those are observable facts about a working adult, and the way to learn them is to observe.

There is also an awkward structural detail. The formula does not use the birth place at all, so everyone born on the same day shares one. A screening criterion that treats a whole day's worth of humans identically is not a screening criterion.

What we did about it in the product

This is not a position we adopted for a web page. Our reading texts are checked automatically against a list of forbidden word stems — diagnoses, addiction, death, wealth, verdicts of any kind — and the build fails if one appears. It exists so that a reading describes a person to themselves without ever pronouncing on them.

A chart is a mirror you hold up for yourself. Handed to someone with power over your income, it stops being a mirror.

So what is it good for

Curiosity, mostly, and the useful kind. Reading your own chart is a way of looking at familiar habits from an unfamiliar angle, and people do find the exercise clarifying.

Reading somebody else's is fine too, and it is most of what actually happens: people build charts for a partner, a parent, a friend, and send the reading over as a present. Teams compare charts for the same reason they enjoy personality quizzes — it is a conversation, not an assessment. None of that is what this page is about.

The line is not whose chart it is. The line is whether the chart is about to decide something for someone who did not ask. Sending your sister her reading costs her nothing. Reading a candidate's chart before you decide whether he eats next month is a different act, and we will not make it easier.

More: what the Formula of the Soul is, how it differs from a natal chart, glossary.