55 Illegal Questions to Avoid Asking in a Job Interview

Many job candidates may have encountered various discriminatory questions. Questions such as "Are you married?" and "How old are you?" may seem harmless, but they are actually illegal to ask during an interview. It is important for candidates to be aware of these illegal questions and for employers to avoid asking. 

Employers should avoid asking illegal interview questions to prevent hiring discrimination. Hiring discrimination cast several negative effects on both employees and employers. In addition to the legal consequence and fine, it has a disastrous effect on a company’s public relations and its internal morale.

Questions that will be constituted as illegal for the employer to ask are often questions whose relevance cannot be justified by the description and requirements of the job. For instance, the question, are you religious, carries a discriminatory undertone against one’s religion, which, as a result, is a determining factor for hiring discrimination.

Protected by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), candidates must not be asked certain questions that can be constituted as discriminatory during the interview process.

Legal Consequences

Employers who are reported will have to undergo a series of investigations by EEOC, and if found guilty, they must incur a legal fine ranging from 50,000 dollars all the way up to 300,000, according to the size of the company.

EEOC Guidelines

By defining a set of protected characteristics, illegal interview questions posted by employers are subjected to the effect of the EEOC guidelines. Employers must be cautious about the topics of the interview questions when conducting interviews, and they are prohibited from discriminating against the candidates’ age, race, gender, sex, religion national origin, physical or mental disability.

In the following list, we have concluded 15 different subjects of questions that employers cannot ask during a hiring interview.

• Age
• Race / Ethnicity
• Gender / Gender Identity/ Sexual Orientation
• Address
• Pregnancy
• Unemployment Status
• Credit Checks
• Religion
• Arrest Record/ Conviction
• Physical Disability
• Mental Disability
• Marital Status
• Citizenship
• Political Affiliation
• Height / Weight

Although there are some topics that are just too discriminatory and insensitive to ask without breaching the law, there are questions where the executions and its context dictate the legitimacy of the questions. Therefore, we have collected a list of topics in which there will be two ways of asking questions of the subject both legally and illegally.

Age

Address

Country of Origin/ Citizenship

Gender/ Gender Identity/ Sexual Orientation

Disability

Medical Questions/ Medical Examination

Marital Status/Pregnancy/Family

Race/Ethnicity/Color

Religion

Height/Weight

Financial Information

Unemployment Status

Background or Credit Checks

Arrest Record/Conviction

Although EEOC has been a long-standing standard for discriminatory or even illegal questions asked in an interview, there are certain questions that are not explicitly enlisted by the agency but can easily be considered discriminatory since these illegal questions might be in violation with other EEOC principles for their connotations. Here is a list of questions that employers should ask in an interview.

Availability

• Legal:
  • Can you travel to work?
  • What are your means of transportation?
    

• Illegal:
  • Can you work on a Sunday? (Religion)
  • Are you available for the night shift? (If only asked to certain demography)
    

Education

• Legal:
  • What is your major in university?
  • Do you have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent?
    

• Illegal:
  • When did you graduate? (Age)
  • Are you in debt with student loans? (Financial Information)
    

Emergency Contacts

• Legal:
  (Questions regarding emergency contact can only be asked once the employment is confirmed)
  

• Illegal:
  • What is your emergency contact?
  • Is your partner in your emergency contact?
    

Military Service

• Legal:
  • What experience that you acquired during your service can be beneficial for the job?
  • What lessons that you learned during service can be translated into your professional capacity?
    

• Illegal:
  • Why were you discharged?
  • Have you been in any military service apart from your service in the U.S army?
    

Personal Information

• Legal:
  • Have you worked under different names in a professional environment?
  • Do you have any personal references?
    

• Illegal:
  • Do you plan on having kids in the near future? (Marital)
  • Are you a child of immigrants? (Citizenship)
    

Non-Professional Organizations

• Legal:
  • Are you a member of IEEE?
  • Are you CPA certified?
    

• Illegal:
  • Are you a member of the local golf club?
  • Were you in a fraternity?
    

Relatives

• Legal:
  • Do you have any relatives that work for us?
  • Do you have any relatives that work for our competitors?
    

• Illegal:
  • What is your cousin’s name?
  • What is the name of your brother that works for our competitor?

Key Takeaways

The quality of employees hired is as good as the employers’ questions in the interview. Yet, employers must pay attention to the legal guidelines behind the questions they ask, to avoid any legal consequences. In addition to the examples of illegal interview questions above, here are our tips for employers who hope to avoid any illegal interview questions.

• Focus on the Requirements: Relevance plays a big part in the context of your interview questions, and therefore interview questions should be precisely and cohesively tailored to the description of the job itself to avoid the possible occurrence of illegal questions.
  

• Prepare Your Questions: Review EEOC guidelines or consult HR professionals before conducting the interview. Design a set of questions that professionally and legally addresses the hiring specifications. Sometimes, there are different ways of asking the questions that are not objectively discriminatory.
  

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— Originally written by Jun Mao —