How many children do you have? Questions regarding an applicant’s marital status, children, and childcare arrangements can be construed as being discriminatory. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it illegal to deny a female applicant employment because she has or is planning to have children.

Court rulings and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines prohibit the use of all preemployment inquiries that disproportionately screen out members of protected classes, are not valid predictors of on-the-job performance success, or cannot be justified by “business necessity.”38 A protected class is a group of people who share a particular characteristic protected by federal and/or state employment discrimination laws. A business necessity is an important business objective of the employer.
Although interview questions in and of themselves are not illegal, questions that can have an illegal impact in terms of a firm’s hiring should be avoided. The following are five interview questions that are likely to have a discriminatory effect on employment and that should be avoided.