Ms. Theologian,
Your response from yesterday reminded me of something:
Once I had a job interview, and I commented on the enormous photo of my potential employer’s kid (”Cute kid!”) and then she asked if I had children. She’s not supposed to ask, right? I didn’t know what to say, so I just answered truthfully (”yes”).
-Still puzzling over it
Dear Still puzzling,
Yes, “Do you have children” and the variant, “Do you plan on having children?” are considered big no-no’s. Also in the list are:
What is your religious background?
How old are you?
Do you have a disability?
Are you married? and
Do you have children?
There are actually a bunch more variants here (and feel free to browse the extensive information here at the EEOC on ways that folks discriminate) but the major questions really are above. Unfortunately inappropriate and/or illegal questions are much more prevalent in interviews than you might think.
The best strategy to formulate an answer may be to gauge what is trying to be discovered, and then address that. Did the interviewer need to know if you had children that would interfere with overnight travel? Did she purposefully (and deviously) place the giant kid photo there in order to solicit comments and ask job candidates about children? Was she just being politely reciprocal and doesn’t know the law? Was there some other reason?
Ms. Theologian sees at least three options for you, none of which is ideal:
1. Answering truthfully as you did;
2. Lying, which may have unintended consequences if you’re hired; and
3. Reminding the interviewer politely that the question is illegal, which is hard to do (one suggestion here).
Because Ms. Theologian is above all a practical theologian, she thinks that answering truthfully as you did and then moving quickly on is not a bad idea, providing you wanted the job and providing that the question was asked merely as a reciprocal sort of thing. But that doesn’t make Ms. Theologian very happy. After all, whether or not you have children should not be asked.
Readers, can you think of a nice way to say the question was inappropriate (one suggestion is linked to above) without jeopardizing the rest of the interview? The suggestion I’ve included above seems like it would kill your shot at the job.
-Ms. Theologian
If you’d like to write to Ms. Theologian, send an email to ms dot theologian at gmail dot com.
May 26th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Why is that more inappropriate than the “cute kid” comment that prompted it?
May 26th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
It’s more that it is potentially illegal for a potential employer to ask whether you have kids whereas it’s not potentially illegal to comment on a prominently placed photo of a kid. Moreover, job seekers are consistently told to try to connect with employers, which seemed (?) to be what the person was doing. Of course, socially speaking, I think it’s a fair question (Do you have kids?), but HR-wise, you don’t want to go there.
May 27th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Most of my interviews, fortunately, have been very professional, but I am fully expecting a few matters to come up in future that are not.
January 4th, 2010 at 4:40 am
I hadn’t even thought of these issues up until now. I would have thought that the interviewer was trying to connect with the interviewee by establishing some common ground. If, as suggested, the giant picture was a trick, that is very underhanded.