Be Aware of Discrimination in Interviews

Kate's Blog has an interesting post about the dangers of Facebook - and other social networking sites - which may help you prevent employers from seeing too much information. But if you aren't sure what information an employer SHOULD see, I'd like to help. This entry will discuss some legalities of hiring people, including what aspects of you are legally protected from discrimination as well as the unprotected information, and how this effects you, the interviewee.

The Civil Rights Act was created in 1964 and revised in 1991. This protects six groups of people from discrimination under the following criteria:

1. Race
2. Gender
3. National origin
4. Religion
5. Age
6. Disabilities
   

Other groups that are protected through different laws in the US (depending on state) include: pregnant women, Vietnam veterans, and members of the gay, straight, or bisexual communities.

So if those things are protected, what isn't? Well, depending on the state, some important non-protected information includes: marital/family status, transgender status, political beliefs, criminal conviction, social origin/status, etc. I think, for college students, political affiliations are an important aspect that is not protected. Facebook asks where you place yourself in the grand scheme of politics. If you're willing to answer this question on your profile, be aware that employers may see this along with any of the other unprotected aspects.

Now that you know some of the important laws regarding hiring/firing people, you should also know what this means for you. When interviewing with a company, there are some illegal questions you should be aware of. Anything pertaining to the protected criteria listed above, for example, is off limits. Some less experienced interviewers may fall prey to asking about these things on accident, while others are clearly digging for the information. Be careful to side-step these questions even if the person intends no harm.

An example would be an employer saying, "Wow, you look really young. What's your secret?" This could be a completely innocent way of asking another woman about her skin care line. But it may also be a way to probe for the applicant's age. A more blatant attempt to break the law would be, "You look too young to want a full-time job. How old are you exactly?" This is clearly an illegal question.

You have a few different options for answering illegal questions. Using the same age example as above, you could say,

"I may look young, but I'm more than capable of handling the position."

This is a good way of avoiding a direct answer, while still being polite. If you'd like, you could say outright that the question is illegal and you'd prefer to move on to another topic. However, this may offend the interviewer. If you're really interested in the job, that's not something you'd want to do.

Now, I've only scratched the surface of the sticky subject of hiring/firing people. This topic has a lot of grey areas that I have no time to cover and no way of knowing every little detail, exception, and example. I simply want people to be aware of this information when entering into the job search.