private/personal questions during interview
private/personal questions during interview
(OP)
Hello,
Here is a sample, hiring manager asking during interview:
- Are you married ? How many children do you have ?
- Is your wife working ? what kind of job / degree did she has ?
- So your partner lives abroad...mmm...but how often do you visit each other then ?
So you know, this kind of funny things.
At some point you try to escape the questions or make the interviewer understand you are not very comfortable to answer.
In any case, damage are done as it reflects badly on the company and their practices.
Apart from even possible compliance concerns, the question is would you work for an employer like this even if they are willing to take you on board ?
Here is a sample, hiring manager asking during interview:
- Are you married ? How many children do you have ?
- Is your wife working ? what kind of job / degree did she has ?
- So your partner lives abroad...mmm...but how often do you visit each other then ?
So you know, this kind of funny things.
At some point you try to escape the questions or make the interviewer understand you are not very comfortable to answer.
In any case, damage are done as it reflects badly on the company and their practices.
Apart from even possible compliance concerns, the question is would you work for an employer like this even if they are willing to take you on board ?





RE: private/personal questions during interview
http://www.mtu.edu/equity/pdfs/whatyoucanandcantas...
RE: private/personal questions during interview
If the questions of married while one has on a wedding ring does not seem bad. if the interview is complete or just in small talk and children are brought up the question of how many is not odd. Now these questions have very different implications if the interviewee (job applicant) is female. If female, the answers can reflect on poorly either way; that's why one should not ask it.
If asked these questions in an awkward setting i would not want to work there if i felt uncomfortable but if they offered me a job and i thought the interviewer was just socially off but firm is good then i will let it slide (assuming something is offered).
Up to the person and the setting i suppose.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
And no, I would never answer questions like that, nor work for a company that asked them.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV
RE: private/personal questions during interview
To the questioner, say: "If you will put that (those)question(s) in writing on your company letterhead I will respond appropriately"
No, you will not get it in writing and you will not get the job but you don't want to work there anyway.
prognosis: Lead or Lag
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Maui
www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com
RE: private/personal questions during interview
- Steve
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Not that it's right but;
Married employees with children are considered better rooted and less likely to leave for flaky reasons (like love). I'm sure that's not even partially true, but that's the stereotype.
Working wife (plus kids) adds to the stability, but might affect an employees ability to stay late, work weekends, etc. Or she might get a transfer and have to pick up and leave.
Partner living abroad, means if it continues, someone's moving.
Please don't jump on me for this, but these are the feelings of some dinosaurs.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
TTFN

FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers
RE: private/personal questions during interview
-here solve this D.E. you have 5 minutes
I think it's reasonable for employers to ask such questions as they are just looking out for themselves.
However, the candidate has the right to refuse to answer.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
G. Coppola
RE: private/personal questions during interview
- Is it simply because those questions are offending privacy ?
- Is it based on your experience where you would have noticed in the past that such things are usually an indicator of potential abuses, misconduct from management, a signal that company will tend to mistreat you ? Maybe I am exagerating but just trying to understand people's feelings.
I am certainly not doing a survey but trying to sort out what is really wrong with companies asking such private questions and establish if my own reasons for feeling not comfortable with private questions during interviews are same as the large majority.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Haha! This made me crack up
I'd probably do the same if given a DE in an interview.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
G. Coppola
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
When I was in college at the job fair, there was a company asking everyone they interviewed to solve structural engineering problems. The word spread quickly through my peers, and most people avoided that company for the rest of the day. Any one of us likely could have answered the question, but it starts the entire relationship off on a bad foot.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
"What does the interviewer hope to gain by asking those questions? I don't understand why the answers would even matter to the employer. Can anyone provide some insight here?"
With the developments in medical insurance this may now be a moot point, and most of these questions in the USA are now illegal, but the interviewer could be fishing, to see if you would be a liability on their group insurance policy. Example, couple married a few years with one or no children, strong possibility of pregnancy with hit to policies bottom line.
Or wife working in high powered job, gets promotion and leaves area, hubby would be expected to follow, same thing with wife if hubby gets better job.
I will not even touch the spouse living abroad question.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
If they're thinking about insurance, a more relevant question or questions would be, "how's your health," "do you smoke," etc.
TTFN

FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Me: For now.
Them: You have children?
Me: Why, are you in the market to buy some?
Them: Is your wife working?
Me: She damn sure better be!
Sorry, I just can't take this topic too seriously. If someone asks me those questions, the answers above will probably come spewing out of my mouth. I wouldn't work there anyway, may as well have some fun at the interviewer's expense.
If you're disturbed by the interviewer's illegal questions, just wait until you accept an offer and go to deal with the HR weenies. Some of them will want your passwords, some will want to interview all of your relatives and neighbors, and some will want to participate in your next colonoscopy. That's a topic for a different thread, though.
Best to you,
Goober Dave
Haven't see the forum policies? Do so now: Forum Policies
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Giving or receiving end ?
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
G. Coppola
RE: private/personal questions during interview
PE, SE
Eastern United States
"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi
RE: private/personal questions during interview
We ask technical questions in interviews for engineers- right off the bat. No, we don't expect anyone to solve DEs on the spot, but we do probe the candidates' access to the fundamentals they should have learned in school. We want to understand the depth and breadth of the stuff they've learned on the job that is relevant to what we do. We also need to probe how they reason and think
As to personal questions: I'd give an honest answer to anything of that sort that they were willing to ask. If they're not going to hire me because I have a family, frankly I don't want to work there anyway.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Best to you,
Goober Dave
Haven't see the forum policies? Do so now: Forum Policies
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: private/personal questions during interview
"Why are you asking me? Aren't you "dX-pert"?"
As they say in Quebec, "There is le time and la Place for everything".
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Best to you,
Goober Dave
Haven't see the forum policies? Do so now: Forum Policies
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
I have had an employer give me a test during an interview before. This was a while back. They gave 30min to solve some fundamental engineering questions (on paper), and to do some CAD. No DE's involved lol.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
G. Coppola
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: private/personal questions during interview
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: private/personal questions during interview
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: private/personal questions during interview
What if the one in the middle was Romanian? [ponder]
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Dan - Owner
http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: private/personal questions during interview
The relative would still be a Pole, wouldn't they?
TTFN

FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers
RE: private/personal questions during interview
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: private/personal questions during interview
TTFN

FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529: Translation Assistance for Engineers
RE: private/personal questions during interview
I was once asked this question (when I was 20). I immediately said 4, and was told it was incorrect. For the rest of the questions I thought a bit more about..
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: private/personal questions during interview
- Steve
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Wellll, it depends on whether your certain that Romanian Pole holding up the 28 foot long French is a Slovak'er or a FastVak'er ....
RE: private/personal questions during interview
"FastVak'er" ? So I guess the Slovack'er will take the most days off ?
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Then again, the only time I was asked any similar question, I was a midshipman (apprentice officer basically) interviewing Admiral Rickover to see if I wanted to work in his reactor program. To his questions "Are you married?" "Are you going to get married?" "When? " I amswered ... "No, sir." "Yes, sir." "May 7th, sir."
Got hired by him.
Probably the only one who ever got hired by him while wearing cowboy boots.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
That is why the IOC won't sanction a marathon event in Prague.
They would have to pay overtime to the official that would have to stay at the finish line until the last racer crossed.
To Czech A Slow Valk.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Best regards, Morten (Denmark)
RE: private/personal questions during interview
words fail me.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
My approach to interviews is that I'll answer whatever they ask. I don't particularly care if they like the answer. People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. If I can't be honest during the interview, then what is the expectation of my conduct when I start work?
To MortenA:
Skol!
To btrueblood:
That observation is consistent with my observations here in the office: usually when I say something, people just shake their heads and leave. I have never been able to figure out why.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
If they hired some Czechs, that would solve the problem in Prague. As for Slovaks, maybe they are quicker in Bratislava.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
If you are offended by the things I say, imagine the stuff I hold back.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Unless the Slovaks were also sketched bad Czechs in cartoons in Brataslava.
Then they would be overdrawn on all accounts.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV
RE: private/personal questions during interview
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." L. da Vinci
- Gian
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Well, my same sex partner (who currently lives overseas) and I are waiting for this state to legalize marriage so that we can then adopt an African baby together as equal partners. Would we all be covered by your current medical plan? Oh, and do you guys do drug testing?
And then dare them NOT to hire me.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
Well, my same sex partner (who currently lives overseas) and I are waiting for this state to legalize marriage so that we can then adopt an African baby together as equal partners. Would we all be covered by your current medical plan? Oh, and do you guys do drug testing?
I just have a mental picture of the HR person squirming in their seat as you say this.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
- Are you married ? How many children do you have ?
May be he is thinking about how much insurance he will have to cough up for you.
- Is your wife working ? what kind of job / degree did she has ?
If your wife works, you may be called to do lot of taking care of kids, trips to the pediatrician, picking them up early from school, no baby sitter, can't take kids to day-care, got to stay at home cause wife's job is more important, therefore engineer will not be available.
- So your partner lives abroad...mmm...but how often do you visit each other then ?
Hummmm, then you will travel often overseas, including asking for unpaid leave, etc.. again, not available.
NOT Available means NOT Reliable.
RE: private/personal questions during interview
RE: private/personal questions during interview
But thanks for the smile.