Sadly, for any job seeker, illegal job interview questions are a lot more common these days than we’d like them to be. If you don’t know how to navigate those kinds of question, you could miss out on a good job opportunity. But first what is an illegal job interview question?

The questions are fairly common, but the answers are anything but easy. What year were you born? Are you married? Are you planning to have a family? As a job seeker, how are you supposed to handle these illegal job interview questions? Whether out of ignorance or wilful disregard for the law, interviewers can sometimes ask interview questions of job candidates that are not legal. Any question an interviewer asks should relate to your work skills and your experience.

Interview questions that aren’t about your ability to do the job are, for the most part, off-limits. However, sometimes an interviewer asks a question that seems like a “getting to know you” question. It might be something like, “What do you like to do on weekends?” “What kinds of hobbies do you have?” “How long have you lived here?” While innocent on the surface (and they likely are), without realising it, you could be answering an illegal interview question.

In order to avoid getting flustered, I’m going to show you how to handle illegal job interview questions.

My advice to you is to ask a “clarifying” question. Forget the first impulse to attack or make assumptions about the interviewer that this person knows what they are asking is an illegal job interview questions. You need more information as to why the question was asked in the first place. You might say something like this,”I’d be happy to answer that question, but I’d like to understand a little bit more about how it’s relevant to the job.” That way the interviewer will have to clarify how it affects your role for the job.

This way you will understand if they know its an illegal job interview question or not. At this point, you can decide to either answer the question (because you know it was innocent) or maybe say, “You know, I hate to say this, but that is technically an illegal interview question and I’d really prefer not to answer.” It’s totally your choice. But now, you’ve at least got something to work with, so that you have a reason to give your response in either direction.

https://everyevery.ng/how-to-handle-illegal-job-interview-questions/