Although an Employers’ aim is to
gain important information during an interview, some questions can be
inappropriate and even illegal.
Although in our experience most
illegal questions are asked through ignorance they can still cause
embarrassment or have significant legal implications.
There are four kinds of unlawful
discrimination – direct, indirect, victimisation and harassment – and, in this
article I want to focus on the first two of these - direct discrimination and
indirect discrimination.
Direct discrimination is a lot
more obvious and is always illegal.
However, indirect discrimination
can be a lot more subtle and illegal interview questions with underlying
discriminatory suggestions can often be asked quite innocently. Some examples of this could be things like
“What did your parents do for a living?”, “How many sick days did you take last
year?” or "How far is your commute?"
Whilst not an exhaustive list of
every illegal interview question you may find it useful to follow this link for
some further examples of questions that Employers are not allowed to ask - http://www.aaronwallis.co.uk/questions-employers-are-not-allowed-to-ask.aspx
To conclude and to lessen the
risk of asking inappropriate or illegal questions, we recommend that companies
adopt a formal interview form that has been checked by a HR expert and to use
this as the outline for interviewing across all levels.
Written by Liam Oakes
Liam is the Office Manager at
Aaron Wallis and has been with the company for 3 years after having a career
with the RAF; Liam has helped hundreds of Sales Professionals secure a new
Sales role and ensures that Aaron Wallis runs smoothly.
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