Interviews are the usual starting line for pregnancy-discrimination suits and, more recently, FRD claims. I often get questions from clients or seminar attendees about the perils of interview questions.  A common theme is why is it that they shouldn’t ask candidates about their family, i.e., spouse, kids, etc. 

It seems natural. "Oh, I see you volunteer at the North East community center.  My kids take swimming lessons there.  Do your kids take any classes there?" Heck, I can give you a real-life example that happened to me last week. 

I was at the local greeting-card store.  As I was checking out, the [female] employee looks up and says enthusiastically, "Do you have any little ones at home?" 

I nearly choked on my Lifesaver.  I kid you not.  (No pun intended, really).  I stood there, mouth open, speechless. 

She turned around and grabbed a toy Schnauzer from a counter lined with little stuffed animals.  "You get one of these for free for a purchase of $20 or more."  I lifted my chin off the ground and nodded while she stuffed the toy toy (ok, pun intended) into my shopping bag. 

The employee was probably all of 23 years old.  She had no intention of forming opinions of me based on my answer to to her question.  She was just trying to give me the free toy.  But the question caught me off my guard. 

I can almost guarantee that if you went back to the store and asked her about it, she would have positively no idea who I was–one of many customers she’d seen that night.  She certainly would not recall what she’d said to me. 

It’s that easy.  Despite best intentions, it is so easy for an interviewer to ask a question that leads to a lawsuit.

Pregnancy Discrimination, Maternal Profiling, Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD), and Mother’s Day.  A natural combination.  You can add one more to that list.  Off-limit interview questions. 

When I teach seminars about best hiring practices, I usually get at least a few dirty looks when I talk about interview questions that should be avoided.  Employers and HR professionals often comment that interviews should be conversational to put the candidate at ease so the interviewer can get to know the "real" candidate.  Not a good idea.

Here’s why:

1. Every candidate that you interview except one is going to be rejected.  Remember that.  Every candidate except one goes home a loser. 
2. No one thinks they’re a loser.  No candidate who made it as far as the interview thinks that they shouldn’t get the job. Of course they should get the job! 
3. When rejected, blame-shifting is inevitable.  Do the logic.  If they were sure they were hiring-material but they don’t get hired, what can be the explanation?  Someone else made a mistake. (Namely, you, The Employer).
4. The interview becomes the target.  Well, what else is there?  The candidate had only one face-to-face interaction with The Employer–the interview.  Every word, every gesture, every question is analyzed to try to find what went wrong. 
5. Lawsuit. 

Sure, nobody likes a story with a sad ending.  But "it’s for your own good," ok? 

Interviewers (often untrained in employment discrimination) are just trying to make the candidate feel natural and at ease.  They want to know whether the interviewee will be a good fit, whether they have the technical skills needed, whether they understand the job’s requirements, etc.  They aren’t angling for prohibited information. 

But when a candidate doesn’t get hired, every question becomes suspect and the potential starter for a discrimination lawsuit. 

For those of you who want to know how to solve this problem, the best way to find out is to attend one of our seminars, especially those on lawful interviewing.  For now, I’ll say this: Every interviewer at every interview for every candidate should (no, must) use a script of pre-prepared questions.  And that script should be the same one used by every other interviewer for every other interview (at least for the same position). 

Autonomy in interviewing is a bad idea.

Maternal Profiling (a subset of Family Responsibilities Discrimination, "FRD"), is employment discrimination against a woman who has, or will have, children.  Firing a newly pregnant employee. Interview questions designed to elicit details about child-care arrangements.  Just in time for Mother’s Day, here are some key points for employers about this type of workplace discrimination.

Profiles of Maternal Profiling

In late April 2008, ABC News aired a piece on World News With Charles Gibson about Maternal Profiling.  As a follow-up to the piece, the ABCNews website posted an article called, Are You a Victim of Maternal Profiling, featuring women from Pennsylvania who had personally experienced this type of discrimination.

One woman believed that she was having trouble landing a new job because she was the mother of three.  She indicated that interviewers would often ask her outright whether she had any children.  She said that one employer told her that it would cost too much in health care.

Can He Ask That?

Can employers ask candidates whether they have children, or whether they have adequate child-care arrangements?   The answer is "yes," much to the surprise of many, including many of my HR clients.  Some states do have laws that prohibit these questions from being asked during job interviews.  But neither Delaware nor Pennsylvania are included among them.  So the short answer is, Yes, employers may lawfully ask job candidates about their "family status," including questions about whether or not the applicant has children, is married, etc.

Like Mom Always Said, "Just because your friends jump off a cliff doesn’t mean you have to!"

We teach a lot of seminars.  We counsel a lot of employers.  We answer a lot of questions.  And I can say with great certainty that we would never, ever, ever, advise our clients to ask something as foolish as "Are you planning to have children?" to anyone, and certainly not to a potential or current employee!

Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s smart, right?  No good can come of these questions.  So don’t ask them.  Just don’t do it.