Not in HR, but am involved in the hiring process. We are not allowed to ask personal questions. Cant talk about family or personal background. If i ask a question about someones family and they tell me they have 5 kids, and they dont get the job because we found a better candidate, they have a clear and obvious path to file a discrimination case.

"I didnt get hired because they knew i had 5 kids and they assumed I wouldn't be able to dedicate time to the company yada yada."

" i told them that my religion was xyz and they knew my religious holidays dont align with their holiday schedule and they didnt hire me because they didnt want to make new policy to allow me my time and give me my protected right to religion"

Its just easier to not

[–] iamdefinitelyoverthirteen@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

My go to is "what do you do for fun?". It accomplished the same goal of getting an idea of the candidate as a person without getting into personal/family life. Most people love to talk at length about their favorite shit if they think someone is interested in listening.

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

What is this for, absolute bullshit? You want to find somebody who fits in the team, that's exactly why you want to get to know them during the hiring process. It's the same BS as that people shouldn't have pictures on their resume in the US. It's not like you can see based on first name and lastname(s) or if they even have second,. third, fourth etc names where the person generally has roots in a lot of cases. If you want to discriminate you can based on name as well.

Edit: Companies shouldn't discriminate, but not adding certain info to your resume or not asking certain questions isn't going to help against discrmination.

[–] Sc00ter@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

Just to be clear, i didnt say it was to prevent discrimination, i said it was to prevent a credible discrimination lawsuit

[–] TheOneAndOnlyDeath@feddit.nl 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just curious, but doesn't this mean that this system is easy to bypass? Just because you don't ask about their family doesn't mean they are not going to share it. Just saying something like "enjoying the summer so far?" As a conversation starter could trigger a "oh yeah, spending it with my 5 kids" response.

And someone who already knows that a discrimination case could be made can just easily put his religion or family or whatever into whatever response they feel like even if it doesn't make sense for the question.

It just seems easy too easy for someone to be able to do this just because they said something. Or does it only apply if you ask?

[–] Sc00ter@lemm.ee 9 points 2 days ago

You gain an extra level of deniability if you dont ask. Also its about how its received by the interviewee. If i ask how your summers going and you offer up you have 5 kids, thats different than me asking if you have kids. If i bring up your family situation or kids, the natural question arises, "why would he care about that?" And it can guide the mind to discrimination. People are aware of the fact that having kids have a preception in the corporate world, and if they dont want that to influence the process, theyre not going to offer it up. But just like anything, if someone wants to file a frivolous law suit, theyre going to find a way