Job Interviews from the Dark Side, Pt. 5

Continuing with my many nightmarish job-interview experiences, I'm diving deeper into experiences with interviewers' questions that appear to violate applicable employment law. One of the most awful moments in a job seeker's life is when the interviewer asks inappropriate questions that appear to be in violation of applicable employment law. It's a lose-lose situation: if you object to the questions, you'll get no job offer, if you try and go along with the questions, it's a sneak preview of what you'll have to put up with if you get the job. 

Although my experience with the interviewer who was so obsessed with my history of giving or not giving birth was troubling (see my blog posted July 24, 2023), my job-interview experience with a man who was head of a public relations agency may have been even more bizarre. I sent him my resume and either he called me or I followed up, I'm not sure which. 

Yes, the public-relations man said, he was very impressed with my resume, and he'd like to discuss it with me further. I expected him to ask me about my knowledge, skills and experience with public relations, campaigns I'd worked on, my clients, my contacts, my time at a talent agency, my time as a music journalist. 

Instead he asked me questions that seemed more appropriate for a dating show than a job in public relations. He didn't ask anything that was obviously inappropriate in the sense of sexual harassment, but he asked a barrage of personal questions. Where was I born? What was my hometown? What high school did I go to? Where were my parents born? Where did they live? What work did they do? Where did they go to school? Did I have any brothers or sisters?

I finally got tired of ducking and dodging and simply said, "I'm not comfortable that you're asking all these personal questions." Instantaneously he went from cordial to not-cordial, mumbled something about he'd call if he had an opening, and hung up. 

Illegal questions include anything that may focus on your sex, race, age, color, creed, ethnic origin, medical history, marital status, disability, or any other class protected from unlawful discrimination. These include but are not limited to questions about your birthplace, marital status, your personal life, and anything else not directly relevant to job performance. Anything not directly related to your skills, abilities and qualifications is none of the employer's business. That includes whether or not you have children and what your childcare arrangements are, or what country you were born in, or your parents were born in. That's your business, not the employer's.

At one job-search workshop I attended, a speaker said, "You won't get these questions if you interview with a Fortune 500 company. They have lawyers that review the interview questions. But if you get out to an interview with A-B-C company somewhere, you'll be surprised how often they still ask these kinds of questions."

I reported the conversation with the public-relations man to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing here in California. Just like what happened regarding the interviewer who wouldn't stop harping about whether I had children, the agency gave a tepid non-response, like they were in a hurry to take the complaint off their hands, anything to wiggle out of actually taking action on it. The agency's intake consultant took my complaint, only to close it a few days later because, she said, I couldn't show that the conversation with the public-relations man was in response to any actual job opening.  

So what to do when employers ask inappropriate questions that may violate applicable employment law? I know I'm not the only job applicant who's encountered such a situation more than once. Many interviewers are apparently either unaware of applicable law--although ignorance of the law is not a defense--or else they just don't care. Their attitude may be that, if someone doesn't like the questions, "so sue me already" while knowing full well that a job-seeker has neither the money nor the time for suing. Supposedly here in California at least, there's a state agency--the Department of Fair Employment and Housing--to turn to, but it's understaffed and underfunded, and complaints that don't, in the agency's eyes, promise a big pay-off, can fall through the cracks.