Interviewing job applicants can be overwhelming. Someone who is new to interviewing and the hiring process has a pretty big learning curve to wrestle with. Sitting down to interview someone is not as easy as asking questions and getting the answers. It involves interpersonal finesse, intelligence in fact finding, and a good deal of patience. Plus, due to a variety of federal laws, there are actually off-limits areas of interviews that, if violated, could land companies in hot water.
Even some relatively innocuous questions may be considered off-limits. Here are some of the things that businesses can’t really ask about that interview, for several different legal reasons.
Identity Questions
One surprising off-limits question is someone’s arrest record. Don’t confuse this with convictions, as a conviction is usually mandatory on a job application. The arrest record is different, and those who are wrongfully arrested or end up with a clean record are not required to divulge whether or when police came to their door.
According to employment experts, businesses also cannot ask about a worker’s age. They also are not allowed to ask what country a job applicant is from, or whether English is that job applicant’s first language, though firms are permitted to ask about secondary language skills.
Lifestyle Questions
Some of these are more commonly known as taboo interview questions. Asking women if they plan to become pregnant, or asking workers if they are married, violates that idea that people’s personal lifestyle is private, and employers can’t game the system by discriminating against people who might have children in the future. In a much broader sense, companies are allowed to ask about a worker’s long-term commitment for a certain period of time.
According to this article from Business Insider, companies also can ask about religious holidays or a person’s religious affiliation.
Drinking and Drugs
Another off-limits area of questioning has to do with alcohol and illegal substances. Companies can test workers for various drugs, but there are a range of questions about alcohol and drug use that are legally tricky in interviews. The reason may surprise you: many of these are tied to Americans with Disabilities or ADA legislation, where alcoholics or drug addicts belong to a protected class of individuals vis-à-vis probing questions from potential employers.
Hiring managers should know about all of the above and more. They need to understand all of the lines that they must not cross in their good-faith attempts to find the right people to bring on board.
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