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Hiring is a difficult job. Recruiters and hiring managers are bombarded with hundreds of résumés and must sort through them to find a few potentially qualified applicants. After that, interviewers have limited meeting time to gather as much relevant information as possible that will help them make a decision on a candidate who could spends years working for them. In addition to the stress of hiring the right person, employers are faced with the responsibility of hiring for the right reasons.
The Department of Labor (DOL) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have developed a clear set of protected characteristics that cannot be used as a reason to deny and applicant employment. Certain lines of interview questioning are perfectly innocent and are aimed to extract relevant information that is in compliance with lawful hiring practices. However, when worded in certain ways, these questions could lead to responses that employers are not allowed to consider when hiring.
Hiring practices are a recent target area of litigators as the DOL and EEOC ramp up investigations into questionable employer practices. This is another situation where business owners would be wise to take advantage of a human resources expert. Whether through a legal team that specializes in employment law, or through the compliance experts of a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), business owners should protect themselves by learning and implementing an approved, detailed interview process.
In her article, “11 Illegal Interview Questions That Are Actually Illegal,” Vivian Giang of Business Insider describes 11 situations where an interviewer might ask a question that seeks information they are legally able to request, but receives an answer they are not allowed to use in a hiring decision. If one of these questions is asked and that applicant is denied employment, the applicant could feel they were discriminated against and seek legal action. The best practice is to avoid these questions entirely to ensure an employer is not on the defensive end of a discrimination claim. The below infographic details these 11 questions and offers alternative questions that will avoid violations.
About BUSINESS INSIDER
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About the DOL
The Department of Labor (DOL) administers and enforces more than 180 federal laws. These mandates and the regulations that implement them cover many workplace activities for about 10 million employers and 125 million workers. For more information, visit DOL.gov
About the EEOC
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. It is also illegal to discriminate against a person because the person complained about discrimination, filed a charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination investigation or lawsuit. For more information, visit EEOC.gov
About SOI
SOI is a leading professional employer organization (PEO) for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) serving as a trusted partner in integrated human resource (HR) compliance, risk management, employee benefits, employment practices liability insurance (EPLI), and payroll processing. SOI is based in Charlotte, NC and supports tens of thousands of worksite employees throughout the U.S. For more information, visit SOI.com
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