Things an employer cannot ask during an interview...

[Paul Watson]

peterchen wrote:

Hiring Gender B would allow the new employee to demand separate restrooms, which requires major changes to the plumbing, or for which you would need to move to a new office.

I am flabbergasted you and Nish seem to live in countries that don't already demand separate facilities irrespective of employee makeup. Here in Ireland a building has to have facilities for both genders and for the disabled. Same back home in South Africa. Do these companies that only have male toilets only have male clients that visit? What happens when a female client visits?

peterchen wrote:

Your area of business benefits from long-term / lifelong employment, but the place already looks like a geriatric ward. To give your company a future, you decide to hire young people.

Weak argument.

peterchen wrote:

You run a bar catering to 25-35 year old male singles.

You'll find this sorts itself out without recourse to filtering CVs.

peterchen wrote:

You are hiring pilots.

Eh? Which gender is incapable of piloting a vehicle?

peterchen wrote:

Your best clients are men-hating lesbians.

:rolleyes: Come on peterchen.

peterchen wrote:

Your company, parent company or your contry has regulations that give older people better benefits, or limits your ability to fire them.

So hire young people and fire them before they get too old? :laugh:

regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa

Shog9 wrote:

And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...

[Paul Watson]

I know what you are saying and I want to agree but I've seen it in practice and unlike us rational folk there are nutters who filter based on the sex written down in a CV or the sex the name implies. Give people a chance, don't let them be excluded before they get through the door. Even the nutters will find themselves pleasently surprised when their preconcieved notion about a genders ability to do a job is shattered by a stunning interviewee. The law is meant to give the person a chance and eeks out a measure against bias.

regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa

Shog9 wrote:

And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...

[Paul Watson]

That isn't hiring based on age. That is hiring based on diversity, which the law allows. So if an old guy comes in and you want fresh new ideas you find out if he has any and if he doesn't then you don't hire him. Not because he is old.

regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa

Shog9 wrote:

And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...

[El Corazon]

peterchen wrote:

Purely by chance, you are currently employing only Gender A. Hiring Gender B would allow the new employee to demand separate restrooms, which requires major changes to the plumbing, or for which you would need to move to a new office.

I work in a hanger built in the early 50's. We have men and women's restrooms.

peterchen wrote:

Your area of business benefits from long-term / lifelong employment, but the place already looks like a geriatric ward. To give your company a future, you decide to hire young people.

hire co-op through the university, although age may be higher than 20's the vast majority of applicants will be in their 20's and 30's no need to ask.

peterchen wrote:

You run a bar catering to 25-35 year old male singles. Your best clients are men-hating lesbians.

hire on looks, not age, if you can't tell he/she is over 40, it's not worth asking, so don't ask it. I wasn't hired for wearing a tie to an interview, all the interviewers were in t-shirts and hawaiian shirts. If they don't fit in, they don't fit in, but if you have to ask, then no one else will know either.

peterchen wrote:

You are hiring pilots.

If they pass the physical, again, you don't care, don't ask. I am not sure if you are saying pilots can't be women, young or old here, but none are the case. Most commercial pilots are older because of the required flight hours before hire. It takes a long time to get those hours.

peterchen wrote:

Your company, parent company or your contry has regulations that give older people better benefits, or limits your ability to fire them.

never heard of such a situation. But again, if you have to ask, that's an HR issue. The primary interview should be on "doing the work." HR and security can still "not hire" an employee even if they pass the interview for a variety of reasons, just as the employee does not have to accept the job, the company doesn't have to accept the applicant. Age is on the application, but the application is not usually part of the interview process here unless it is a transfer within the company. HR has to know, but I do not.

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and t

[El Corazon]

Paul Watson wrote:

I am flabbergasted you and Nish seem to live in countries that don't already demand separate facilities irrespective of employee makeup.

well, if not having facilities is a legal reason for not hiring women, then they will never have women, and never need facilities... so although I too am surprised with this argument, if it is an allowable decision, then I can see how there would forever be gender bias.

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

[Clickok]

How funny! Some kinds of interview needs have one public chairs and pop corn! :->

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Engaged in the learning of English grammar. ;)
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16) :badger:

[David Wulff]

I wouldn't care about an interviewee's sex, unless I was hiring prostitutes, but age can be important. If you are looking to hire someone for a five year project, and they are two years away from retirement, I would want to know. Likewise, if I was starting up a firm and needed experience onboard to gain investment, it would be an important factor. Don't hate the player. Peterchen has also listed some good reasons why. None of the restrictions prevent bias. Now it is simply the case that if an interviewer cannot determine the answer to an illegal question on their own then they will just not consider the candidate at all. It is just not worth the risk of getting it wrong. These laws are all made in good faith by people with no idea of the real world. It is PC gone insane. For example, some big UK recruitment companies are 'highly recommending' CV authors not to specify the year they left school, obtained a degree, or dates for anything prior to their most recent job, because that would accidentally expose the hiring managers to information about canditate ages, and open employers up to future lawsuits for discrimination. Now tell me that is to prevent bias and not utter madness. I challege anyone to. How long until you cannot ask a candiate their work experience, because it could be used to determine their relative ages? Or, even worse, it could be used to discriminate against the less-skilled candidates! My god, that could be straight out of a New Labour manifesto! Am I joking? I thought they were joking when they told us not to put our ages on our CVs. Personally, my age is a big asset to me when seeking work because coupled with my work experience it shows my strong commitment to my career and my work ethic (sadly both rarities today), and it allows me to filter out the employers I want to avoid without wasting the time to walk out of an interview. It works both ways, and now both sides are losing out.

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Ðavid Wulff What kind of music should programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
I'm so gangsta I eat cereal without the milk

[MrBic]

I've always told people: It's not what you know, it's who you know and what you can learn. In Canada, it's not as bad as in India (where the report was taken I asume). But let's look at construction. If a contractor needed to hire someone, he would hire a man 99% of the time because they're naturally stronger, can put up with more harasment on the job site, can work longer hours, and doesn't get as emotional. Sure it might be sexist, however, as far as a contractor is concerned, there's a job to be done and he wants it to get done as quickly and as proper as possible. I worked at a place where the employer would never hire anyone with an "accent". THe reason? The company delt with USA cops, and when they phoned in for support, he wanted them to talk to someone they could understand. I'm not saying they're the best roll-model employers, but when you look at it: A business exists to make money, not to employ people. If employing someone will lose them money they will not employ them.

[MrBic]

It depends on the building. Where I currently work (we're on the 2nd story, and parking is in the basement) there are no elevators or disabled access. The reason? THis building was built before those laws were made so it does not need to be upgraded to meet them as it was grandfathered in. We have single bathroom stalls, meaning only one person can go in them at one time, which means they're unisex, male and female can both use them. (yea no urinals, kinda annoying for the guys :(

[Steve Maier]

You also cannot ask.... (at least in the US) marital status if they have kids sexual preference if they plan to have kids soon (esp for a woman) I had to take a small class from a corporate lawyer before we started interviewing people at Texas Instruments. The interviewee can bring any of those things up but you had to steer clear from it if they did.

Steve Maier

[David Wulff]

Paul Watson wrote:

Eh? Which gender is incapable of piloting a vehicle?

He is referring to age, not sex. Pilots have mandatory retirement earlier than most other industries so they cannot afford to hire older people or they will not recoup their investment. As Jeffry says, it can take many years for pilots to gain the required experience in their field.

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Ðavid Wulff What kind of music should programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
I'm so gangsta I eat cereal without the milk

[MrBic]

Yea, I've seen that too. My boss and I actually google people he interviews to see where they pop up in the newspapers as far as weddings & children go so we don't need to ask them... I wonder if that's illegal too :D

[Clickok]

MrBic wrote:

I'm not saying they're the best roll-model employers, but when you look at it: A business exists to make money, not to employ people. If employing someone will lose them money they will not employ them.

Here in Brazil the companies receive government incentives if one small percentage of employers have some kind of disability.

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Engaged in the learning of English grammar. ;)
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16) :badger:

[El Corazon]

Paul Watson wrote:

Give people a chance, don't let them be excluded before they get through the door. Even the nutters will find themselves pleasently surprised when their preconcieved notion about a genders ability to do a job is shattered by a stunning interviewee.

absolutely!! I even have a funny story there. My previous employer was interviewing for a computer data-entry position. He did prefer hiring women for the office, so no big surprise there, there were several applicants, phone interviews were done, and one person sounded younger than she was. I recognize her age because she gave her equipment experience. She had worked as a computer data-entry person back in the early Teletype remote-batch era, got married, had kids, raised them, they moved away, she wanted to go back to work. No problme to me, I didn't know it was a problem to the owner. Well she giggled a lot in the phone interview, so she really did sound young. Come interview day, the owner, myself, and the accounting manager were the interview panel, I chose the older lady, the two others chose a lady with almost no experience (but looked very nice). I asked, since we had a stack of growing reports if we could hire the other temporarily, she would get some new experience to help her get employed elsewhere, and some extra cash. Sure enough, the older lady accepted this proposal, they hired the younger lady full-time, the older lady part-time. The older lady did twice the volume of work in one hour as the younger lady did in a day. We were caught up from the loss of the previous data-entry lady in less than a week (she had been fired for owning a witchcraft book). But we had to keep bringing the older lady back because the younger lady couldn't keep up with the daily workload. Eventually the owner allowed the older lady to take the full-time position.

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

[peterchen]

Paul Watson wrote:

there are nutters who filter based on the sex written down in a CV or the sex the name implies.

It won't stop the nutters, they'll just do it more sly, more secretly. They'll just won't hire you because you look to old, to young, to male, to female, to greasy. (Oh wait, "greasy" isn't on the list.) It gives you a tool against the double-nutters, though, that discriminate and brag about it. But assuming that it doesn't help a lot to really even out things, the potential hazard of lawsuits, the additional minefield in an already very tense situation aren't worth it IMO.

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We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
My first real C# project | Linkify!|FoldWithUs! | sighist

[MrBic]

Here in Canada there are many things like this: -Fresh out of University. Government will subisidize 80% of their salary -Research Fund. Hiring someone to do research in a field not yet explored in Canada. Government will subsidize a lot of the funding/salaries -Hiring Disabled people etc.

[Bassam Abdul Baki]

David Wulff wrote:

I wouldn't care about an interviewee's sex, unless I was hiring prostitutes

I believe the term is working-girls. You sir are a true humanitarian for employing these women.

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"There are II kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who understand Roman numerals." - Bassam Abdul-Baki Web - Blog - RSS - Math - LinkedIn - BM

[El Corazon]

MrBic wrote:

to see where they pop up in the newspapers as far as weddings & children go so we don't need to ask them... I wonder if that's illegal too

If you are caught, yes. why should it matter? I have heard the stability bit before, but it rarely is true. They either are, or are not a stable investment, they either want to work for you or not, questions related to desire to stay, or desire to work for the company are better alternatives. I am divorced, no kids. If you were looking at me as an interviewee, does that mean I am a better or worse employee? Google shows ancient horrible raytrace images, bad poetry (a teeny good poetry), some workshop fliers where I spoke (but no trace of the actual presentations hehehehehe).

_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

[realJSOP]

Sometimes, it's a legitimate question.

"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001

[David Wulff]

Steve Maier wrote:

if they plan to have kids soon (esp for a woman)

That is absurd, and sadly it is the same here. Here's the extreme: I run a small business with a few fulltime employees. I hired them all based on experience, and (more important to me) future potential. If they want to start a family then they will have my full support, and if their position is still commercially viable when they want to return then they are welcome to come back again (their skill and potential is still going to be there). FWIW, I have offered very good contracts, better than most would find in the public sector, because I recognise that life needs to fit naturally with work for a happy employee. However, under UK law, I will have to pay them their full salary and benefits, and hire another person to do their job for anywhere from 6 months to 18 months. That is a temp at £30k + the original salary of £35k + the costs of training and about a month of downtime. In return the government gives me the equivalent of 5% of their salary back for my efforts. Taxed, naturally. I am required to find the additional £60k odd a year out of thin air. I wish my mortgage was that good a deal. I could just phone up and have the lender pay it off for two years while I had a new baby. Having children is a lifestyle choice. Employers should not be allowed to prevent it for any reason whatsoever but if the government wants the already struggling small businesses in this country to act as their social security blanket then they will need compensation. Anything less than 90% is an utter disgrace. If two of my employees left to start a family then I wouldn't even bother to look for a temp replacement. I would go straight to the bank, draw out all the money in cash to give to them then file for personal and business bankrupcy. At least that way cuts out the hassle of all the government forms for the same net result. Afterall, what is my life and the lives of my other employees worth compared to the social security of the few? I already pay for their social security -- before tax every £1 of their salary costs me £1.40 with 20p going into private pension funds for their retirement and at least 60p going to the treasury. 20p is in national insurance to subsidse future social benefits. After taxes the state is on a higher salary than my highest paid employee and they give small businesses fuck all in return. I'm sorry for the rant, but after yet more public