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Should the company be allowed to ask such questions?

My answer to this question is my personal belief in my best attempt to put thought onto paper without the intention of being disrespectful towards anyone.

I believe a company should be allowed to ask any question they feel would help them determine the right candidate for a specific job (although I do believe to be inappropriate and would not ask).  During the interview process not only is the company vetting the candidate but the candidate should be vetting the company.  If a company dares to take their questions to this level without providing explanation of why they are asking, the candidate should not have to answer the question, could ask for additional detail, and/or decide the company does not align to their morals and therefore not a company they want to work for.  If they choose to answer the question even though they feel uncomfortable, I would challenge that individual in making that decision to answer.  I struggle with government deciding what a company can and cannot do in terms of who they hire, fire, and service.  If a company chooses to discriminate for whatever reason, I would hope the current employees, future applicants, and customer base would respond and react accordingly.  I have what society would consider a “mixed” family, my children are half Caucasian and half Hispanic, with two being females.  When it is time for them to get a job and an employer asks them for example “which race do you relate more to,” or something along those lines, I would hope they stand up and tell that employer “thank you for your time, but this company is not a good fit for me.”  If a company takes their hiring, firing or service practices to certain levels, the employees and customers could and should react.  These actions only hurt the company and if someone does not agree they have the right to part ways from that company whether they are an employee or customer.  Some may question “what if a person really needs a job?”  My main counter response would be that each individual has to determine what boundaries they are willing to cross and what they are willing to allow others.  If one determines a job is the most important than they should go ahead and answer inappropriate interview questions, but I would hope no matter what each of us would put our morals, ethics and values above money.

As others have mentioned, where does the line start and end?  How can we say certain businesses or practices have the right to ask certain questions (churches) but others do not?  There is a strong push with organizations to focus on diversity in the workplace and I totally agree.  Unfortunately though, because of this I have seen more qualified individuals passed on only because they want to address the diversity of the team.  By doing so, the company is still discriminating just on a different level/different way.  Geoffrey Athey provided a good example of this, only difference in his example was diversity did serve a specific purpose and brought something to the team that was missing.  A good analogy would be sports. If you fill a team of just great athletes you will not be successful, each person needs to bring something to the team the others do not have, a specialty.

If a company chooses to discriminate towards any group they are only hurting themselves.  People will not want to work for them and will not want to purchase their product or service.  Companies should make decisions based on what is best for their company with what I hope is strong, positive morals.

How would the company prove the “job relatedness” of such a test?  When must the company prove the “job relatedness” of the test?

Companies may need to prove the “job relatedness” of such questions when it provides a disadvantage to a certain group type (gender, age, height, weight, etc).  Essentially, according to a workforce article (http://www.workforce.com/2000/04/01/interview-questions-legal-or-illegal-live-copy-2/), the company needs to assess the question that is being asked in two facets:

1. The intent behind the question

2. How the information is to be used by the employer

Often times, if a question is being asked like “How many children do you have?”, the intention may be to understand flexibility in work hours or travel time.  A more suited question then would be “Are you available to travel 50% of the time?”  This question, without discriminating on size of family, is more directed to what the hiring company is trying to evaluate versus inferring based on family size.

Should employers be restricted in their use of social media to make decisions of job candidates and current employees?

I believe anything and everything that is in the public domain companies should be allowed to be used when making personal decisions.  Employees are an extension of the company they work for.  Anything an employer does or says that could have a negative impact on the company should be used by that company to make necessary decisions.  The company has responsibilities to their entire employment staff and customers to represent certain values.  Individuals are not owed a job, it is a privilege to have a job.