It's actually worse than the headline leads you to believe. These are questions POTENTIAL employers can't ask you. The headline says 'employers'. Bad headline writing. But what else is new. Probably happened because it's against the law to ask a potential page designer if they know how to write a headline that accurately leads into the article.
Reminds me of my recruiting days at a large US corporation. Due to affirmative action policies in the company, we were required to indicate the race of the applicant on the interview summary form. However, we weren’t allowed to ask the applicant what his race actually was.
“You’re forced to spend your time and effort interviewing someone who isn’t qualified for the job in the first place.”
As a manager with HR experience, I can tell you that there are more than a few ways to navigate these questions.
You can ask people for their date of birth - INSTEAD of their age.
Contrary to the news article, you ARE allowed to ask people how they wish to be addressed (i.e., Mrs., Miss, etc...) so long as you also ask the men this question. You can mention your spouse and kids to illicit comments from the interviewee about their spouse and kids!
You explain the job (with a written task analysis) and then ask them if they are 100% sure they can perform the job - have them sign a statement agreeing to the job requirements! If they fail to meet those - they can be terminated for falsifying their application!
There are MANY ways to get around all of these issues! Besides, resumes’ and first impressions handle 95% of all the less-than capable applicants - IF you have the right person running the HR department! I was running a security company and we had 80% new-hire retention. In the security field this is AMAZING!
Problem is that you are starting to find more and more HR personnel that are more interested in “helping people get jobs” than helping the company get good employees! Several of these “college graduates” don’t realize that good employees help the company keep the HR person employed! DUH!
It’s been a long long time since I applied for a real job (I did an interview for an opinion column job, but that is a contractor job, not an employee/employer job).
I just took a job as a Halloween Haunt monster at a local theme park. Last night we got to do all the paperwork. My daughter is also working, and at some point she said “I’m so sick of my name”, because of all the papers we had to fill out. I said “I guess this is your first real-life introduction into how intrusive your government is”.
For all the questions employers can’t ask you, there are way too many things they are REQUIRED to ask you in order to hire you — mostly to see if they are meeting quotas, following some anti-discrimination law, or whether they qualify for some tax break or another.
She was also incensed by the list of things she is not allowed to do as part of her job, because she is not 18.
The list isn’t really accurate. For example, it says they can ask if you are over 18; in fact, they can ask if you are under 40. At least, they do that with the forms, because they have to tell the government that information so they can prove they aren’t discriminating against people over 40.
Also, they asked for birthday, so I don’t see how they couldn’t know how old you were.
I see that the article makes a distinction between what can be asked before a job is offered, and what can be asked after a job is offered.
As part of filling out my paperwork in order to ACCEPT a job offer, I had to answer questions about most of the things they said couldn’t be asked. They asked about marital status, age, whether i had old injuries, etc.
A good book, I would recommend to any one looking or planning to look for a job, that explains the games HR plays, the mistakes canidates make and how to avoid them in job interviewing is: “What does somebody have to do to get a job around here? 44 insider secrets that will get you hired” by Cynthia Shapiro.
It lays out many of the myths/traps, on both sides, of the hiring process and how one can avoid the traps, be a more successful interviewee and improve one’s chances of getting hired.
Questions about marital status are prohibited. Employers might be tempted to ask this question to find out if your relationship could have a negative impact on your work.
I was once asked this question by a woman interviewer. And I thought she was probably asking because she wanted to enhance her own marital prospects. Even though I was single, which I figured was the answer she was looking for, I wasn't that interested in her company or her at that point, so I said that I wasn't sure she could ask that.
Even though it may be illegal for the interviewer to ask certain questions, it's not clear that interviewees really have the option of not answering them.
1. pay for it without taxes, and
2. rescind some other law on the books
these laws which handcuff employers must go away!!!
Do you know how embarrassing this protected status is for me? I'm only 43, for Heaven's sake!
There are ways of finding out each of those questions.
For instance, many employers are very cautious of hiring young women. For the simple fact that when/if they have kids, they will not work as many hours as a man.