What is your height? What is your weight? Minimum height and weight requirements have been found to be illegal under Title VII if they screen out a disproportionate number of minorities or women and the employer cannot show that these standards are essential to the safe performance of the job(s) in question.

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.