Interview Questions Employers Must Avoid

Where are you from? Are you married? And what year did you graduate high school?

These questions seem pretty innocent and could be considered icebreakers in many contexts. But in the context of interviewing candidates for a job, you want to be really careful — because these questions could actually lead to fines.

They could be considered discriminatory.

“Where are you from?” could be considered geographically discriminatory. When you ask about whether someone’s married or not, you could be discriminating on the basis of sexual preference or even if someone’s planning for a family. If you ask what year someone graduated high school you could be asking about how old they are, which is also prohibited.

And if you find yourself asking these questions in an interview, or if there are complaints that you’re asking these type of questions in an interview, it could lead to penalties of $2,000 to $5,000 for the first infraction and $5,000 to $10,000 for the second infraction.

So if you want to play it safe, if you want to do the right thing, avoid these types of discriminatory questions and also save yourself some money.