Ask Slashdot: How Have You Handled Illegal Interview Topics?

kodiaktau writes "Salary.com profiles 14 questions that interviewers may or may not ask during the interview process such as the standards of age, gender and sexual orientation. They also profile several lesser known illegal or border line questions like height/weight, military background, country of origin and family status. With the recent flap over companies asking potential employees for passwords during the interview process it is important to know and review your legal rights before entering the interview. Have you been confronted with borderline or illegal interview questions in the past? How have you responded to those questions?"

Comments

Discrimination

[Mattygfunk1]

Why is Slashdot STILL posting "articles" with 15 pages containing two or three sentences per page?

Even then, the link is to the last page. Here's a slightly better page.

Anyway, on-topic, do you really want to work for a company that requires you to know your legal status prior to a job interview? Discrimination is disgusting, and as much as it may hurt, you're better off being knocked back for the job than having it present 40 hours a week.

People need to feed their families, but degrading one's self respect by accepting work where it happens is only inviting more trouble.

As a business owner

[unassimilatible]

This article is just the sort of government intrusion that makes me never want to hire anyone. Freedom of contract used to mean something in this country. No more. So I'll answer my own phones.

As Peter Schiff has said, hiring someone in the United States is one of the most expensive and riskiest things a business owner can do.

I'm sure you'll all mod this "-1, I disagree with you," but I am speaking very honestly. Keep throwing taxes and regulations at something, and you'll get less of it. Like jobs.

Re:As a business owner

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Yes because the thing you need to know about someone is if they're a homosexual Muslim from Norway to do a job.

Please.

Re:As a business owner

[Sebastopol]

"I'm sure you'll all mod this "-1, I disagree with you," but I am speaking very honestly. Keep throwing taxes and regulations at something, and you'll get less of it. Like jobs."

There is so much fail in that logic, it boggles the mind. Regulation and taxes have been increasing for a 100+ years and the economy has boomed exponentially. Granted, most of the boom in the 2000's was due to UNREGULATED BANKERS, but your statement is almost 100% ignorant of history.

Re:As a business owner

[Sprouticus]

It is a shame that these laws have to be in place. It is a shame that people were so vile and disgusting that they decided to discriminate based upon age or marital status or a host of other reasons. But they did, so now YOU have to deal with is. Suck it up and deal. Dont get mad at the government, get mad at the morons who decided to abuse their power as employer.

The thing about people like you that shocks me no matter how many times I see them post is that you don't seem to realize that most of these regulations were created for a REASON. People don't (usually) make laws in a vacuum. I would be more than happy to discuss how we can regulate BETTER and SMARTER, but to imply that regulations are evil in and of themselves is to ignore the entire first 150 years of the industrial revolution.

Re:As a business owner

[billcopc]

Ahem! As a business owner too, I'm glad there are regulations in place to level the playing field for everyone. If not being legally allowed to discriminate based on irrelevant information causes your business to suffer, you were doing it wrong in the first place, and I'm quite happy to replace you in the market. I work with people on 5 continents, and all are at the top of their game. If you base your staffing decisions on whoever seems "whitest" or worships the same imaginary friend in the sky, you are severely limiting your ability to compete in the global market.

Hiring is expensive because it is a serious relationship that must not be taken lightly. If it were any cheaper, there would be absolutely no job security because bosses like you could hire and fire people on a whim. Do you really expect an employee to perform well if they're under constant threat of losing their job ? You need to look beyond the tip of your nose and realize you need them as much as they need you.

Re:As a business owner

[JosephTX]

I don't see how "sexual orientation" or "marital status" are important questions. Then again, I'm one of those crazy people who don't see how "what's your facebook password?" is a relevant question either. Being told you can't discriminate based on private details must be a horrible intrusion on your freedoms. Also, what Schiff failed to mention is that the US is ranked #4 in the world in ease of doing business (after Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand) according to the World Bank. I can't imagine why, what with our unique tax system that lets multi-billion-dollar companies pay a smaller percentage in taxes than their bottom-line employees, or our largely ineffective regulatory agencies which are constantly being neutered by Congress.

Re:As a business owner

[ChrisMaple]

I take it you've never worked with an obsessive Christian who's always asking you to pray with him. Or an extremist from either end of the political spectrum who sarcastically criticizes anyone who disagrees with him.

Small businesses are frequently marginal affairs, and it only takes one bad employee to sour the work environment, cause the good people to quit, and destroy the lifetime investment of the owner. It isn't bigotry to be sensitive to the sensibilities of people who already work for you, and reject a newcomer who'd destroy the existing balance. It is bigotry to yell "BIGOT" when an employer can see that someone won't fit in.

--
Just because you have air flowing between your ears doesn't mean you have an open mind.

Re:As a business owner

[slimjim8094]

No. You're wrong. The whole point of this is that you don't need to know anything about somebody's family status, sexuality, national origin, and so on in order to get to know somebody beyond the basics. Education, interests, experience, general conversation...

If you think you need to know something protected in order to hire someone, you're doing it wrong - at best. At worst it means you're (consciously or subconsciously) going to not offer someone a job because of their sexuality or something, which isn't OK. You should want to prevent even the possibility of that, so if you hire someone more qualified, the guy you didn't can't sue you alleging that you discriminated against him.

Re:Citizenship

[Anonymous Coward]

Though apparently it is just fine to get hired as non-US citizen by the DoD.

On November 25, 2008, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates signed a memorandum authorizing the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force to implement a new non-citizen recruiting pilot program for the United States Armed Forces. Titled âoeMilitary Accessions Vital to the National Interestâ (MAVNI), the new pilot program allows certain non-citizens who are legally present in the United States to join the military and apply immediately for US citizenship without first obtaining lawful permanent residence.

http://www.visalawyerblog.com/2009/02/fast_citizenship_the_armys_new.html

"service guarantees citizenship!" (Starship Troopers)

Say what?????

[luis_a_espinal]

Try hiring someone in Germany. Or better yet, try firing them. No wonder the German economy is doing so poorly compared to the United States.

What? Germany's growth is at 2.9% Unemployment is at 5.9% Youth ( Now, we in the US have the following: 8.3% unemployment rate. As of July 2011, the youth unemployment rate was 18%. The debt % of its GPD is at 103.3%

Where the US leads Germany is in GDP per capita (Germany: $37,935. US: $48,147) and in America's post-HS education (in particular with grad-level education) and R&D. Where the US and Germany seem to meet is the rising level of incoming inequality.

But considering all other indicators (growth, unemployment debt/GDP ratios), your comment is completely off the mark. As an American, I wish we had those numbers.

Re:Say what?????

[luis_a_espinal]

I would argue that GDP per capita is more important than unemployment in terms of economic indicators. To see why this is the case, consider the following policy - raise taxes by around 2% GDP and use the money to hire all the unemployed people to dig holes and fill them back in at minimum wage. This will drive unemployment to zero and have a small (and probably negative) impact on GDP. If people truly consider unemployment to be more important than GDP, you would expect for this to be a very popular policy. But it obviously isn't (or else you would hear about serious politicans suggesting it) so people obviously care more about GDP.

Exactly. It isn't (which is a shame, for there is nothing in capitalism or free market ideas that would preclude such a policy.)

Also, it's not like we are comparing the American GDP vs, say, the one from my country of origin (Nicaragua, the 2nd poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with an annual $3,185 GDP per capita, 6.6% the US GPD/capita, a whooping 93% differential.) The German per capita GDP is about 78% that of the US, a 22% differential.

Then you have to consider the price of the common basket of goods, and other quality indicators like overall health, health coverage, public transportation and infrastructure, the widespread use of technology (where Japan knocks the shit out of Germany and/or the US for example.)

With those things combined, the GDP/capita difference between the US and Germany is/might not be as significant as it might be. I would argue that having a greater GDP per capita is important only if, say, the difference is half an order of magnitude or more (and/or combined with severe income/social inequality as found in, say, Latin America.)

The reality, a sad reality, is that we are the most powerful and richest country in the world, and yet we are lagging in every indicator (except military might and academic research) compared to other developed countries with smaller GDP per capita and we have the greatest economic disparity of any developed nation. This status quo is unacceptable.

Re:Say what?????

[Alioth]

When we consider German GDP per capita versus US GDP per capita, we must remember that the average German works a 35 hour week and has 6 weeks paid vacation, vs the average American who works a 40 hour week and has only 2 weeks paid vacation. Germans nominally have a 1610 hour work year, vs a 2000 hour work year for the aveage American. 37935/1610 = avg. $23.56 per hour, while the US is only slightly higher per hour, $24.07. I suspect the Germans have a far higher quality of life for their money.

nonsense alert!

[fireylord]

Fail, dude. Just fail. Ever hire in Europe? There is a lot more red tape to go through. Europeans have mandatory vacation time, and they will take it.

It's not just that we will take their vacation it just because it's been _earned_. It's actually legally required. Something called a work life balance

Overtime pay goes up exponentially.

Want to cite some sources for this nonsense rhetoric?

And they actually enforce this as opposed to burying it in some court docket.

So you think that laws to protect citizens of a country and their rights should not actually be enforced?

Firing is worse.

So you think that citizens should have zero rights to actally know they have a job for longer than the 5 minutes you can be bothered to pay them?

Don't forget that you have to pay a lot more taxes (think 60% VAT for starters.)

You think that anywhere in the EU there is a sales tax of 60%? What the hell have you been smoking?

Stop disparaging the US until you get a clue.

Stop disparaging the system in other countries until _you_ get a clue

Re:Maybe you need a longer time sample

[jasontheking]

every country has a rick santorum. Not every country has a large group of people that tolerate having a rick santorum being a serious contender for president.

Re:Maybe you need a longer time sample

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather live in a place where most people are not the products of public schools.

I'd rather live in a place where most people are not the products of "public is always bad, private is always good" propaganda.