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Illegal Interview Questions: Examples of illegal
interview questions

Posted on June 2nd, 2009 in

Typical Interview Questions and Answers

Jobs are a necessity for any individual. Some companies understand the necessity of a job to an individual and
therefore may engage in illegal behavior with the individual. There may be a number of reasons that the
company acts like this. For one, the company may be too apprehensive about the kind of individuals whom they
hire, and therefore may try to get as much information as they can from them.
This causes them to ask questions that are either illegal or completely irrelevant to the job.

This article disscusses and provides examples of illegal job

and suggested ways on how to

answer/handle these illegal questions.

Sample Illegal interview questions: Examples of illegal job interview
questions

Here are some of the illegal questions during a job interview that may be asked by the employers:

1. Place of Birth: The place of birth question is one of the most common questions asked, and may seem

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harmless, but the question is actually illegal, because with this question the interviewer can find out the ethnicity
of the interviewee.

2. Marriage: Asking whether a person is married or not may again seem to be a common question, but this
question too falls in the realms of the illegal. However, there have been cases where a person has been
discriminated against on the grounds that he or she is married. Therefore, one cannot ask this question.

3. Language: Again, these are some of the questions that seem mandatory and simple, but these are aimed at
finding out information about an employee, which may then be used to discriminate against him or her. Of
course, if the language is one of the most important aspects of the job, like you require a particular language to
speak in an area that you would have to go in the future on the

, it is mandatory to answer the question.

4. Pregnancy: As far as the interview goes, the interview cannot ask whether the woman plans to get pregnant
or not. This question is basically asked by the interviewer in a bid to ignore women who would take a maternity
leave in a while. This question is illegal.

5. Smoking or Drinking Alcohol: Agreed that smoking and drinking can cause problems in the work place, but
the fact stands that one cannot discriminate with a person because they consume a legal product. Legally
speaking, discriminating against a smoker would be equal to discriminating against someone who does not eat
meat.

6. Disability or Chronic Illness: These aspects are not related to the job and therefore should not be asked.
However, if the job requires the person to do some heavy duty

, it is legal to ask the questions related to the

person’s health and basic stamina.

7. Religions: The

cannot discriminate on the basis of religion. Therefore, they cannot ask any

questions based on religion.

Notice that most of the questions are of the harmless variety. But when asked together, they may give out
information that you were actually not supposed to give out.

These are just some of the aspects that should be remembered while taking an interview. Remember that taking
an interview is not only an aspect of your professional life but also your responsibility towards other
professionals.

How to handle and Answer the illegal job interview questions

Finally, the question that arises is, what does the interviewee do when he or she is asked this question? There are
3 ways to handle these questions:

1. Answer the question: The simplest answer to this query is to answer the question if you do not mind. Simply
put, refusing to answer these questions does stonewall you against many companies that would ask these
questions on a regular basis. So, if you do not mind to answer, just answer them.

2. Refuse to answer: Another option is to refuse to answer the question, which is not a good idea depending on
the company. Understand that a company asking this question knows that the question is illegal. Also, by not
answering the question, all you get is a chance to sue the company.

Alternately, if possible, you can answer not the question, but to answer to the intention behind the question. This
is the best way if you want to be on the safer side..

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