Illegal Interview Questions
I just got off of a call with a very type A recruiter who asked me whether I pay for health insurance myself and if I had children who were covered under it. I’m not confrontational, therefore I didn’t tell him outright that it was an inappropriate question.
What would you recommend I do? I want to apply for the job, but if his aggressiveness and inappropriateness is any indication of the type of people I would be interviewing with then I’m not interested.
If you let yourself be derailed by inappropriate questions you’ll limit your career too much. People should not ask those questions, but that’s more their problem than yours.
So ignore that the questions are inappropriate and answer them. Or, if the question is illegal and the answer will hurt your chances of getting the job, give a lie for the answer. (Because the whole point of the law is to make sure you are not penalized for the answer.)
Get the job first, and then decide if the inappropriate quesitons mean you don’t want the job. But don’t judge the rest of the company based on one person. Get the job and then make your decision – after all, if you don’t get the job, you have no decision to make.
Penelope