Sorry, that would be “path to crime”.
Because they’re not trying to force an action from the suspect. They’re just there observing.
Thank you. I was picturing undercover cops in a sting operation trying desperately to get a guy to add “I do solemnly swear I will…” to “knock over that liquor store.”
The EEOC couldn’t pose as an interviewee anyway, it’s only one position, and it will be filled by tomorrow.
As nice as the position would be, as I said, more money, better hours, etc… I’m thinking of declining if they do offer it to me. A boss that does something illegal or unethical in the interview will most likely be a boss from hell, in my opinion.
Although… my own office (!) and that greatbighuge nice-ass leather desk chair looks like heaven, considering that I stand on my feet for 8 full hours at my current job.
What to do, what to do?! I guess I’ll wait until they actually make the offer…
If they do offer and I don’t accept it, I’ll just let it go. If they don’t offer, the EEOC may get a call. Not because I’m a spiteful bitch, but because with my experience and abilities, I really feel that I’m qualified for this job. And the employer SHOULD be told that you just can’t ask these questions. And you can’t. It’s not about whether you discriminate based on the answers, it’s that you can’t ask them in the first place.
And, yeah, I probably posted this in the wrong place. :smack:
My company used to hire by committee. One manager, one lead, and two workers. Each of us had a list of “no no’s” in plain view right front of us. The job seeker could see it if he/she took the trouble. The managers didn’t like the method, the lead and workers (and interviewees) did.
Of the eight sessions I was involved in the results were always good, except that one of them (one of the better workers)(hi Robin :)) was a pot smoker and got nailed.
Peace,
mangeorge
You can accept and still report them. No reason not to.
My thought, re: “why we ask illegal or incredibly nosy questions” was this:
“We want to determine how desperate you are for this job, and how far up your bahonkus we can jam our noses before you’ll squeak. How badly can we screw around with you before you finally stand up on your hind legs and refuse to take any more? The further you get, the better your chances are of acquiring a position with our firm.”
I’ve been filling out job applications with school districts. These people want to know things no other job has EVER asked… my high school GPA, my college GPA, complete information on every job I’ve ever had, zodiac sign, penis length, sexual orientation, and whether or not I’m a leg or tit man. Well, not really, but durn close. I mean, come ON, folks, I’m NOT trying out for the FBI, here…
Not to mention that the company will undoubtedly be hiring for other jobs and holding other interviews.
That is a very interesting point that I think is worthy of its own thread. Here it is. If you are asked questions that lead you to believe that your employers are using the answers to discriminate, and yet you are hired, what are your damages? Do you have standing to lodge an EEOC complaint.
Hi
Australian here. That there are questions in job interviews that are LEGISLATED against (I assume we’re talking in the US?!) seems utterly bizairre to me. Of course, discriminating against people is a Bad Thing, and should be legislated against, but specific questions… isn’t that all a bit “Farenheit 451”?
Anyway, I wanted to play the devil’s advocate here. These threads often come up, and there’s never an employer side of the argument. I guess there are more employees then employers here so it follows.
As an employer, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to know the answers to a some of these “illegal” questions, as they WILL affect a person’s work performance. A parent with small children - their employment is always going to take a back seat to the welfare of their kids (and fair enough). By keeping that a “secret”, and then springing it on the employer (“my kid’s sick, I have to stay home and look after her”), is just rude.
And sure, it may affect your employability, but surely being honest and upfront sets a better tone for your employment, than trying to hide stuff? As an employer, I’d be looking for a way to get rid of an employee who hid such critical info from me at the interview stage.
Someone who told me up front, I’d judge them on their skills, and their having young kids WOULD affect my decision, but not necessarily in the negative. If I knew s/he did have kids, I may change the job spec to be more suitable for her: flexible hours, working from home, 30 hour week, whatever. For the right person, I’d gladly change the job spec, and pay the same wage - hell, for an ideal person, I’d double the wage. An employee is worth many times their wage to most companies.
I do agree that some things are less relevant (however, legislating against them must surely step on some kinda first amendment rights or some such?): sexual orientation, for example. From the links Duckster provided, accent is important for any job that involves a lot of phone work, for example. While I don’t care specifically where that person is from, the strength of their accent is of critical importance. And I would absolutely de-rate someone with a strong accent for some positions. That’s not discriminating based on race, but on suitability.
“How do you feel about working with gay or bisexual people?” seems like a reasonable question to me (though asking, “are you gay” is a little much, IMO). I happen to be gay, but not overtly so. If I had an overtly gay employee, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to let the prospective employee know, or at least hint at it with this question. Fact is, plenty of people really DO have a problem with gays, and I sure as hell don’t want to employ someone like that, who needs to interact with a current gay employee. Those people are not going to work well together (indeed, they may not be ABLE to work together!). That’s a suitability criteria, not discriminating them.
And I am not so sure that discrimination is always a bad thing (tho of course it’s terribly politically correct to say any INKLING of it MUST be bad). An eight month pregnant woman working a jackhammer on a building site is crazy, you most people here seem to be saying that she should be in with just as much chance as anyone else, and if an employer did not give her the job because of her preganancy, they’d be breaking the law! (ok, maybe someone could call “safety” on that one, but you get the idea).
An employer needs to run their business the best way they can, and people of all sorts discriminate. Expecting a redneck employer to employ you when you’re gay when there is someone NOT gay interviewed for the same position is just naieve. It’s unfortunate, it sucks, it’s unfair, but it’s just part of life. And life ain’t fair.
a
No, but at the FBI, you’d be working with adults. In a school district, you’re working with children, and they want to be careful.
They’re going to eventually fingerprint you, too (at least they do in Ohio). Like jacqui said, they gotta be extra careful.
I have recently being part of an interview team. For one candidate, I didn’t know how to pronounce their name, and asked them. Would you believe that turned out to be a bad question? If they have an ethnic name, or I seem to be confirming an ethnicity by asking about their name, that way lies dragons.
There are the actual published laws. Then there are the companies interpretations of them. Many (including myself) feel that companies have gone overboard trying to avoid lawsuits, and so there are a whole host of forbidden topics that may or may not really be forbidden, but they introduce the possibility of a lawsuit. Then there’s the people actually doing the interviewing, they need to be trained to do interviewing, and know the company’s interpretations of what questions are fair game.
Another anecdote: My wife is finishing her PhD program. Often the interviewers of potential new students are not familiar with the current norms here, as many of them are from other cultures with different mores. They’ve been told by HR, but yet they often ask questions that are outrageous by normal corporate standards. Is this accidental or unknowing?
Do you know if there is a right to lie in response to illegal questions in the US? I ask because here in Germany the advice to applicants is that they may lie with impunity in reponse to illegal questions (e.g. about union membership/political/religious affiliation), while lying in response to a legal and relevant question may be grounds for immediate termination later when the employer learns the truth.
[QUOTE=ReverseCowgirl]
A quibble here. In general, it is not illegal to ask a question at a job interview. It is illegal to discriminate based on the answer.
QUOTE]A nitpick of your quibble here. This is an **important ** distinction. You can ask any or all of these questions, but can’t use the information in making your decision. Of course by asking you are inviting a lawsuit, so you should definately stay away from them.
I was a manager for three years in my last job and had to deal with hiring.
I would write the job description/ad, and then I would do through the big pile of resumes. Some were just not qualified, and I eliminated them. Some were positives and I marked some with a ?. I then gave the ? and + to my two lead engineers and asked for their ratings. We then got together and talked about our results. I would call the top 3 at least, possibly more if there were a large group of qualified canidates. I would interview them, if they were decent I let the engineers each interview them separately, and I’d tell one to focus on technical questions, and another to focus to gathering their job interest and give them an idea on how the job worked. Neither of my engineers have any training in interviewing, and I had a couple of behavioral interviewing classes and my own experience of being interviewed 25 or so times. So I’m sure we may have asked some questions that would be deemed inappropriate. The positions I was trying to fill were technical and required a lot of training, so I would try to find people who were going to hang around and could do the work and not leave right after I finished training. This approach worked pretty well because the lead engineers had some say in the interview process and I could gauge how well they work with the people.
Mike
I would think that one could make a prima facie case that the information was to be used to make the decision. Isn’t that the whole purpose of an interview - to elicit information that will be used in making a hiring decision?
The point is that in any lawsuit you have to begin by proving that the question and answer did not form any part of your decision process. And if so, then why ask it? I wouldn’t rate your chances of convincing any court that it was just small talk that went completely out of your head when it came to picking the successful candidate.
Anyone interviewing job applicants should know better than to ask such questions, for their company’s own good. Even if it is only small talk.
I don’t think anyone here is saying that a pregnant woman should have as much chance as anyone else to use a jackhammer at a construction site. Clearly, some jobs will have requirements that need to be met (e.g., physical capability, bilingualism) if the employee is to perform their job successfully, and there is no reason why you can’t evaluate applicants on those merits. But there is a difference between saying
“So I see Martinez is your last name - is your family from Puerto Rico? I assume you speak Spanish then.”
and
“Applicants for this job must be fluent in Spanish as well as English, because we have many Spanish-speaking customers who feel more comfortable speaking in their native language.”
The first question gets you into trouble, because you are questioning the applicant’s heritage, while the second question is okay because it puts the emphasis on the applicant’s suitability for the job. See the difference?
It’s great that you as an employer wouldn’t discriminate against someone with family, but the truth is that some employers WOULD, and the applicant has no way of knowing which you would be in advance. If the ability to work long hours on irregular schedules is a must for the job, for example, you could simply say that that ability is a requirement and let the applicant decide whether that condition is acceptable. After all, you may think there was no way that a family person would want such a job, but perhaps they are desperate and would have no choice but to accept.
This and other comments strike me as excessively paranoid over potential lawsuits. One of the things you want to do in an interview is get a feel for the person you are considering hiring, otherwise we would all be basing our hiring decisions on written forms. One way to get to know the person is to engage in small talk that has nothing to do with the job in question. In the process it may come out that the applicant has kids or used to run marathons before he contracted AIDS. So far nothing illegal or even bad has happened. Only if you use that information directly in making your decision to hire, and that is a big, *big * difference.
Remember that most of these “illegal” questions can be determined in the first seconds of the interview before a word is spoken. Age, race, sex are pretty obvious. In some cases so are handicaps, religion, marital status. There is nothing wrong with knowing these facts. What’s wrong is using this information in the hiring decision (unless it happens to be pertinate to the job, e.g., the case of the pregnant jackhammer operator).
Again, there is an important distinction between “illegal questions” and making hiring decisions based on the kind of demographic data that these questions deal with.