by Irene Lizarraga

Created on: June 23, 2009   Last Updated: October 22, 2009

In the US and many other countries, there are very clear rules about what constitutes work discrimination that influences greatly what you can ask or be asked on a job interview. Sometimes the interviewers ask them in good faith when they are trying to get perfectly legal information, and sometimes they just don't care. In both cases, the person being interviewed has a right to refuse to answer and, if there's suspicions of discrimination happening afterwards, fill an official complaint or a lawsuit.

This article is an overview of some of those questions and will be useful both for people being interviewed and for the good intentioned interviewers who are using the wrong words or just make some chitchat asking about the family...

Race or origin
Asking somebody where is he from can be considered trying to discriminate due to origin, same as asking what languages somebody speaks. If the job requires it is perfectly ok to ask if the possible employee speaks a particular language as it's part of the required skillset.

Gender and marital status
Questions about husbands and wives, number of children or plans about having children are totally off limits. If, for example, the employer wants to know if the family life of the interviewed person is compatible with overtime or lots of travelling, the questions can be asked as based on previous employment ("How many nights on average did you spend away from home for work reasons in your previous employments?") or asking how they would affect the employee personally ("Would regular overtime conflict with your current life habits?"). If some of those questions are only asked to a certain subgroup of candidates it can be considered discrimination as well. For example, if only women are asked about overtime it might be a clue that the interviewer is interested in knowing if childcare responsibilities will affect the candidate's performance.

Religion
Asking somebody if they observe any kind of religious holidays or festivities is also out of bounds. It is ok to ask about availability on holidays and weekends, and other questions about the actual capability of the candidate to perform a particular duty, but being asked about specific religious holidays is not.

Sexual orientation
Asking about partners or anything related to the bedroom life of the candidate is definitely a no no. And could be considered quite rude as well in most cultures.

Disability
Asking about a disability or chronic illnesses is considered discriminatory, but you

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