How to Handle Illegal Interview Questions

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Debbie Benami-Rahm, a career expert with DBRcareerservices.com, let's talk a little bit about how to handle illegal interview questions. A disclaimer before we proceed is, that I am not a legal consultant but I have had a lot of experience in the interview and hiring and selection field. From my experience, a lot of times when an illegal question is asked in an interview, it's really traced back to the fact that the interviewer hasn't had the proper training and exposure as to what not to ask. Some of the protected classes that actually are illegal to ask about in an interview or even in an application process are birth date, place of origin, religion, ethnicity, marital status, sexual orientation, disabilities, whether you have children or not. Questions like that comprise questions that are not be asked during the interview process. So what do you do, if you're asked one of those questions? You want to make the best impression possible in the interview. You don't want to get into a confrontation with the interviewer, especially if they don't even realize if it was a question they shouldn't have asked. So the best advice at this point is, to answer as briefly as possible and then to move on and not confront the interviewer during the process."