3 minute read
Posted by Emily Hill on 16 April 2024
Job interviews can be minefields for potential legal issues if employers aren’t cautious.
Understanding which questions are off-limits according to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines is crucial to conducting fair and effective interviews.
While personal small talk can be a natural part of the interview process, it’s important that any personal questions do not relate to protected characteristics or imply discrimination.
Here, we outline ten areas where interview questions can lead to discrimination and suggest legal alternatives to gather the necessary information without violating any laws.
– Illegal: Asking about an applicant’s race, skin colour, ethnicity or where they’re from.
– Legal alternative: Questions should focus solely on job qualifications and skills. If language skills are necessary, ask about specific language abilities relevant to job duties.
– Illegal: Enquiring about religious beliefs or holiday observances.
– Legal alternative: If weekend or holiday work is required, ask candidates if they are available to work on specific days without mentioning religious practices.
– Illegal: Asking candidates their age or when they graduated.
– Legal alternative: Ensure candidates meet legal age requirements for specific roles by asking if they are over the minimum age for employment (e.g., “Are you over the age of 18?”).
If age is a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ), such as needing to be over 21 to serve alcohol, it can be legally specified in the job posting and discussed in the interview. Navigating the complexities of interview questions isn’t just about avoiding legal pitfalls—it’s about ensuring a fair and equitable hiring process. By focusing on job-related questions and maintaining a professional standard, employers can gather the necessary information to make informed hiring decisions while respecting candidate rights.
– Illegal: Questions about marital status, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
– Legal alternative: Focus questions on job requirements, such as travel or overtime, without implying these are related to family or personal life.
– Illegal: Asking about pregnancy plans or family planning.
– Legal alternative: Discuss job expectations clearly, for example, “This job requires occasional overtime. Are you able to meet this requirement?”
– Illegal: Questions about the existence, nature, or severity of a disability.
– Legal alternative: Ask about the ability to perform specific job functions with or without reasonable accommodation.
– Illegal: Asking if a candidate is a citizen of the country.
– Legal alternative: Confirm work authorisation by asking, “Do you have the legal right to work in {country of employment}?”
– Illegal: Asking about arrest records.
– Legal alternative: It’s permissible to ask about convictions that are directly relevant to the job’s responsibilities, following state-specific guidelines.
– Illegal: Asking about credit status during an interview.
– Legal alternative: If credit history is relevant, it should be checked post-offer and in compliance with local laws.
– Illegal: Probing for health status or medical conditions.
– Legal alternative: Enquiries should be job-related and consistent for all candidates, such as asking about their ability to handle physically demanding work.
Discover how biases infiltrate many hiring processes and learn strategies to engineer a fair and unbiased recruitment process with our fair hiring guide here.
Subscribe for insights, debunks and what amounts to a free, up-to-date recruitment toolkit.
ThriveMap creates customised assessments for high volume roles, which take candidates through an online “day in the life” experience of work in your company. Our assessments have been proven to reduce staff turnover, reduce time to hire, and improve quality of hire.
Not sure what type of assessment is right for your business? Read our guide.
As the new UK National Hiring Strategy highlights, poor hiring decisions come at a significant cost. The strategy estimates that poor hiring decisions cost the UK economy £14.4 billion each year. Unemployment drains a further £61 billion, while inefficient recruitment processes and unfilled vacancies add nearly £150 million more. But the challenge facing employers isn’t […]
Continue reading
Most hiring teams optimise for speed. Time to hire.Application conversion.Assessment completion rates.Offer acceptance. These metrics are easy to measure and easy to improve. They also tell us very little about whether hiring actually worked. The real test of hiring success happens months later, when new employees decide whether to stay. Across early careers hiring, this […]
Continue reading
What 200,000+ candidate journeys reveal about how hiring performance changes across sectors Why do candidates complete nearly every assessment in some industries — but never even start them in others? At first glance, the explanation seems obvious. Different sectors have different candidates, different expectations, or different hiring challenges. But analysis of more than 200,000 pre-hire […]
Continue reading