Discussion 1 – Questions and Their Purpose

Some of you know that my background is in law so I feel the need to pass along information regarding the legal practices of conducting a job interview. This is governed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This government agency has set regulations on job interviews so that every job applicant gets treated the same way. Obviously the purpose of the interview is to find the right applicant and try to minimize the risk that they will fit in and do the job well/correctly. However, interviews are only allowed to ask very surface level/general questions so as not to discriminate between applicants.
Read the following that indicate what is legal and illegal to ask in an interview:
Employment Inquiries
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-answer-inappropriate-interview-questions-2061334 (Links to an external site.)
https://www.thejobnetwork.com/how-to-combat-illegal-interview-questions/ (Links to an external site.)
Please respond to the following 4 prompts:
1) What is something you might think about differently next time you are in a job interview? (4 points)
2) Are these restrictions helping or hurting the applicant? (3 points)
3) I would like you to practice writing questions.  Most of the time interviewers need to get the questions pre-approved and based on how they word and frame the question they may still be inquiring about some of these topics. There can be a lot of gray area. I would like you to write a question two ways: illegal vs legal but still asking the same thing more or less.  (4 points)
Example:
Illegal: How old are you?
Legal: Because we serve alcohol in this restaurant we need someone who is over the age of 21. Are you older than 21 years old? (You may answer no or yes but you still don’t need to offer an age, but many do)
4) Since this is a discussion please respond and offer insight to at least two peers. (4 points)