Prohibited Practices in Job Interviews - Essay Example

Conducting job interviews is one of the indispensable processes that every organization or rather an employer has to take into account. The objective reason for this is to establish whether or not a prospective employee is suitable for the available job vacancy. The interview offers the employer a rare opportunity to seek in-depth knowledge regarding the applicant in aspects such as their background, work history, and skills. However, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) notes that there are some job interview practices that grossly violate the rights and dignity of the applicant and, therefore, prohibit them as unlawful. In this paper, I briefly review some of the prohibited practices during job interviews as well as review some of the questions that are generally regarded as unacceptable.

Title VII is a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that protects employees or prospective employees from discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (EEOC, 2014). It is applicable to governmental and nongovernmental employees in equal measure. Dissimilar to labor laws that do not cover managerial employees or wage and hour laws that exclude certain cadres of employees, Title VII applies to all levels and types of employees. Further on, the act covers United States citizens employed by American employers without the borders of the U.S. As pertains to non-U.S. citizens, they remain protected by the act as long as they are within the borders of the United States and not outside.

Several employment practices are prohibited by Title VII and employers unless they are careful, might find themselves unintentionally violating some of the provisions. Recruitment of new employees always elicits varied emotions among the applicant as well as the interviewing bench that may trigger acts of discrimination deliberately aimed at eliminating a certain cadre of candidates. Understandably, employers who are seeking a certain type of employee would go to any level to restructure and classify the questions in the interview with a deliberate intention of eliminating some candidates.

For example, when conducting job interviews, the law prohibits setting up tests that are based on the race, national origin, or gender of the applicant. Pregnancy or someone's disability should not be the reason why a person should be intentionally denied an employment opportunity. Also, since the U.S. state is a cosmopolitan society comprising people from different nations and of different races, the law prohibits employers from segregating and classifying job interview questions based on these variations.

Any act of discrimination during job interviews may result in dire legal actions against the employers. Therefore, while interviewing prospective employees, the recruiting panel should be careful not to ask questions that may be regarded as discriminatory. Read More