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Welcome to Career Tools. This is Sarah and I'm Mark. Today's podcast, Answering Illegal Interview Questions, Part 2 of 2.
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As always, our content has been crafted by humans me and now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are what interview questions are illegal. Actually illegal. What do I say when asked an illegal interview question? And should I leave an illegal interview? Sarah, isn't it funny we went from illegal questions to illegal interview? Quite something. Quite serious.
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I like it. Very serious. If you want answers to these questions and more folks, keep listening. We don't often get to come to Canada, but when we do, we are incredibly excited. After all, it is my home country. Next week I'm going to be in Toronto. That is May 6th and 7th. And the following week, on May 12th and 13th, I will be in Vancouver. So if you are out there and you're part of the Manager Tools, Career Tools or Executive Tools community, you are interested in joining us at an Effective manager or Effective Communicator event and you're at or near or want to go to Canada. We hope you join us there. Visit us online at manager-tools.com register to find those events and sign up today.
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So now, after you've directly answered the question, try and address the concern that the manager may have which is causing him or her to ask the question. For example, he asks, are you married? You could say, I am. Happily. I'm lucky that my spouse is very supportive of my career. Right. That might allay fears that the hiring manager has about your spouse's career being more important than yours, or that you see this as a job until you have children. Another example, how old are you? You can answer, I'm 51. I found that wisdom comes with age. And I'm lucky that I still have the energy I had in my 20s. In fact, I still feel 25. And I'm pretty sure Wendy and I wrote this together and I gave her that. I still feel 25. I'm told I don't look 65. I don't really care how I look, other than I need to be professionally presentable. But if somebody asked me how, I might say older than you, you know, and say, sorry, kidding. 65. Be direct and candid in a polite way and dismiss the issue. Now, again, remember, the question is probably not illegal, but they may. You may be worried that they're going to choose to discriminate against you based on that. Okay, but what you don't want to do is discover later. Oh, that meant nothing to me. It was small talk. Whatever I Thought you killed it until about halfway through the interview. And then I felt like I lost. I didn't get your best. And so because I didn't get your best in an interview, I'm not gonna. Not gonna hire you. Like, well, that's the point where I thought you asked an illegal question. No, it's not illegal. I mean, we have a bunch of women here. We have pregnant women, we have. We have elderly men, we have people in wheelchairs, we have people with mental health issues and so on. It's fine. All that stuff is okay. The question is, how ethical are you? How good a person are you? How skilled are you? Can you do the work? Can you excel? Can you be a good teammate?
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And can you show me that in an interview, which is something you can't do?
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Yes. Which you hear.
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You're all inside your head about it.
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Yeah, you're all up inside your own head. Exactly.
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All right, so the next piece then of our guidance is don't call them on their error. And folks, calling your interviewer out is going to ruin the interview for both you and for them. If you say to your interview interviewer, I'm not answering that question. It's illegal. The hiring manager is going to feel stupid that they didn't know and stupid that they got called out, worried that now they've offended you. Confrontational if they think it's reasonable to have asked that question. And folks, there are two base emotions. They are love and fear. And every single one of the emotions the your interviewer is going to feel if you call them out is going to be based upon fear. And an interviewer who associates you with fear is very unlikely to employ you.
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Yeah. So rather than telling you what not to do, we'll tell you what to to do. Don't show any sign of having heard a question that was in the least bit gray. Pretend it didn't happen other than answering it. Okay. As we said earlier, smile and answer cheerfully, with gusto. If the interviewer does have concern, you'll have given a very positive response to their concern. If they don't, and they were just clumsy, you've been kind in ignoring their fumble and given another, hopefully another, and another, and another enthusiastic, positive answer. There's no downside of doing that.
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And folks, of course, what this means is don't just walk out on your interview. Not calling them on their error means you don't get up and leave in a huff. And leaving in a huff would be really making the error obvious. What's more, it's going to make you the subject of stories like the guy that walked into the closet. And what if you want to work in another department later and this hiring manager says to that potential hiring manager, yeah, they just got up in the middle of our interview and left. Do you think the new manager is going to bring you in to interview? I doubt it. And yeah, it may not be fair because that new manager didn't get the whole story. But that's the way things go, folks. And your name will follow you everywhere. So don't taint the waters.
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Yeah, and don't forget points one and two of our guidance here, what we started with, which was you may not be right about what's illegal and don't assume ill intent, at least at first. You may be wrong. How bad would it be to lose an opportunity you're interested in enough to go to the interview? And clearly there's some sort of match. We always tell people if you're getting an interview, you already can do the job. It's just a question of fit now. And so interviews are a chance not to lose. You lose it or you can prove it. But it's not a question of I don't think he or she can do the job. If the screening was done, well, you can do the job. And now it's just a matter of choosing best among several, perhaps different candidates. People are always telling us that there aren't enough opportunities out there. Don't lose one over something you could have controlled.
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Yeah, and folks, we've said before, the object of an interview is to get an offer. If you see or hear something that makes you think twice about taking the offer, then you can choose not to go and work there. But let that be your choice, not their choice.
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Yes.
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Now listen, if it's exceptionally egregious, you may want to sue them later, but you'd probably want to do that after your job search was over and you found a new place to work and all that. But yeah, this is about you. Take care of you first, then worry about them.
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Yes, exactly. So next on the list, interview. Right, Actually interview. Okay, don't let that stupidity, if that's what it is, distract you. We already mentioned this, but we want to make it clear this is your opportunity. The job is yours to lose. Okay, Being distracted by the interviewer's ignorance, clumsiness, naivety, or even disagreeableness is your fault. Now let me say that again. Being distracted by their ignorance, clumsiness, naivety, or disagreeableness is your fault. Their disagreeableness, naivety, clumsiness and ignorance is not your fault. But letting that distract you is. You're in control of your emotions. How you feel is your fault. Don't let someone else influence whether you get the offer, irrespective of whether you're going to take it or not. That happens. You don't get to decide whether to take it or not until you have it. So go get it. Stay in the moment. Be awesome.
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Be awesome. Exactly. And folks, if you follow our guidance in the interviewing series and all of our licensees, career tools, manager tools, and executive tools licensees, have access to the interviewing series, you're going to have done a ton of preparation for this one conversation. You're going to know your strengths and your weaknesses and the experience you want the interviewer to have cold. And it shouldn't take much for you to take a deep breath, regroup, and move on to the next question. And that's the thing, right? If you're not prepared, a question like that can faff you. It can throw you off because you were already not that confident because you already didn't have your. Your things in a tight little basket. And now it just adds fuel to that fire. But if you're prepared, use the interviewing series, then it should be no problem.
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Yeah. Now you might say, well, why would I want to go to work for such a difficult manager? Well, first of all, in our experience, interviewers are often held with more than one manager interviewing at a time. There might be a section head, a manager, and an HR representative if the section head is asking difficult questions, but you really want to work for the company and you're not likely to have much contact with him because the manager is between you and the section head. You can ignore the fact that he's difficult after you get the job. Okay? On the other hand, if it's the manager's asking personal questions which make you uncomfortable but may or may not be legal, the opportunity still might be worth the time spent working for him. And managers move on all the time. And it may be that he's going to hire somebody else, but you do so well. They say, we should really hire her. We should really hire him. He's great. Know my colleague Mike? I want Mike, my buddy, to interview her or him because you're so great. Who knows, he might be interviewing elsewhere himself right now, and he may never be your boss. The idea that you get one legal question and therefore it's this is all a big fat lie and I want out is just a poor reading of the percentages. And it's a waste of all the energy it took to get you to where you are. So finish the race, win the interview, win the offer, and then decide how you're going to proceed.
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Yeah, and that's exactly it. What you don't want to do is make the decision now.
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Yes.
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In the interview, live time. You're already thinking about your interview preparation and how that fits with the questions that you're being asked. You're trying to develop a relationship with your interviewer, trying to address any concerns they might have. I mean, folks, you have enough going on right now. This is a really taxing mental effort. Don't try and add to that. Do I even want this job if I'm going to have to work with them? I mean, it's just. It's too much. It's already enough. You don't need to have something that additionally stressful added to the mix. You just don't stick to your game plan. Answer the questions as best you can, be enthusiastic, be positive, and just finish the interview. Finish a strong interview.
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Next close. We're repeating this because we want to be super clear. Okay, close. For the offer, we have an entire podcast. You don't know what that is. We're going to explain it to you. We have an entire podcast on this in our interviewing series. It is my favorite cast in the interviewing series and I wrote every single one of them. Folks, in our interviewing series, we tell you when you close, you end the interview by saying, I want an offer. And here's why. Seven words. Why? Because wanting an offer is not the same thing as taking an offer or saying you will take an offer. It is just your desire out of the interview. You can still say no to an offer after the fact.
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And folks, our guidance around, and therefore our podcast around how to close is beloved by our community. It's going to be at the bottom of this cast. Linkable.
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Oh, yeah, that's right.
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You can click on that thing and listen more to it. Because, folks, if everyone else you meet beyond this one manager hiring manager that you don't like that asks you this bad question, if everyone else you meet is scrupulous and lovely, don't judge the entire organization for one idiot. Of course, if it's an ugly pattern with this one person and that one person would be your boss and you don't think the opportunity is worth it, then of course say no. If it's bad enough, tell HR about it. But again, don't tank your own interview when you could win the day. And then, I mean, I would go so far, in a very Machiavellian way to say, wouldn't it be even better to stick it to them by going through the entire process and then say no because they wanted you and you refused because of their behavior? I mean, very Machiavellian. I know that was very negative. Very negative.
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One of my favorite writers, tell me
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what's better revenge than you want me to work there and I don't want to work there because of your behavior. I mean, that burns.
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Yeah. In fact, one of the things we say in the interviewing series available to all of our licensees is that the definition of an offer, folks, is not what you think. Somebody telling you about the salary and that they really want to hire you, that's not the offer. An offer is when control passes from the company to you.
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Yeah.
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And if you think about it, if you make it through an interview with some clumsiness in it, but you decide the clumsiness is serious enough that you believe it's pervasive or not overcomeable by you, or it may be an indicator that concerns you, you can go through the process, get an offer, and now the moment you have the offer, you have all the control and you can say no. And you can say, and by the way, I think you guys probably ought to talk to that hiring manager who interviewed me. He said a couple of things that at best were naive, at worst were borderline illegal. And that did play into my decision. Not completely, but it did play into it. And don't do that with a vengeful heart. Don't do that with a mean spirited tone in your voice. Be professional about it. Give them this form of negative feedback in a way that is respectful. We tell you when you get, if you're a manager, when you give positive or negative feedback, you give it in the same tone. Because the purpose of all feedback is to encourage the right behavior in the future. Negative feedback is not about punishing the past. It's about encouraging the right behavior in the future. Meaning if it's positive feedback, please, more of the same. And if it's negative feedback, please change that for the better.
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Okay, now we get. Actually, this is my favorite part of the cast because I've already alluded to this, but I have said this bit about asking the question not being illegal a hundred times. And people just are blown away when they realize what the law actually is. Although it is, as we said as we started the show, constantly changing. So let's give me some guidance here on what's illegal and what's not illegal. We can't give super specific guidance. We have Career Tools listeners in over 190 countries and territories, and what's legal in one country is not in another. Right. And we hope that people will be listening to this cast in 20 years. And in fact, if I'm not mistaken, this cast was recorded 20 years ago.
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Yeah, almost 20 years ago. I actually, I think it was a 2011.
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Oh, no. Okay, so it's 14 years. 15 years ago.
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15 years ago, yeah. So 2011, I think.
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Yeah. And that goes to one of our guiding principles here at Manager Tools. We give specific, actionable guidance, and it is always timeless and not timely. We don't tell you about the interesting management or interviewing fad of the day. We talk about what has worked and will continue to work for the next hundred years. We can give you a guide, though, to how the law works around these things. For the record, I'm the only person I think I hold, I don't hold the world record, but among my friends and all the people in the community, I would be interested in hearing from somebody who said they have testified in more than seven wrongful termination or discriminatory hiring practice, court lawsuits. In court, I have testified and my clients won, all seven of them. But that said, we can give you a guide to how the law works. Most laws tend to be structured this way, at least in the Western world. And the protected classes tend to be different depending upon where you are in the world.
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Yeah. So, folks, if you apply for many government jobs, you're going to be given an application form and a sheet that asks for ethnic background, age disabilities, and a host of other questions, which in general parlance is illegal. Which. So then you might ask yourself, or you might ask us, well, why then is a government agency allowed to ask me them? Well, it's not, as many people think it is, that they have an exception. In fact, most government agencies in our experience follow the letter and spirit of the law and go further than most commercial enterprises.
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Definitely. They are so risk averse.
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Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And the reason they can ask those questions, even though they are so incredibly risk averse, is because asking the question isn't illegal, folks.
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She's going to say that again. And this is the most important line in this podcast, because this podcast is titled Answering Illegal Interview Questions, because that's the nomenclature of how people talk about questionable practices in hiring. They say illegal interview question, Sarah, Say it again.
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Yep, they do. The reason government agencies who are so strict in following the spirit of the law, ask about your ethnic background, age, and disabilities is because asking the question is not illegal. It's not illegal, folks. The only thing illegal about it is making an answer or making a decision based upon the answer you're given to the question itself. That's the only part that's illegal is, is. Is the doing something with the answer that results in a negative consequence for the candidate. But asking the question itself, there's. There's. There's nothing illegal about that.
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Right. As long as the agency or the company asks every candidate about their ethnic background or. Or what, whatever else. Right. Or their disabilities, but doesn't make hiring decisions based on that information, they're fine. They're fine. What normally happens is that information sheet not only doesn't have your name on it, but it's separated from your actual performance in the interview. That's just the identification for the job. It's separated from the rest of your information almost as soon as you submit it. It's entered into a database because they want to be able to grade themselves on how well they're doing in outreach to people who may be disadvantaged, or they want to be able to see whether or not there's disparate impact, even though somebody interviewed somebody completely appropriately. But it sure seems like we don't hire anybody who's disabled here. That's what is known as disparate impact. And they would have to defend a process that doesn't appear to hire people who are physically disabled, but in fact are as mentally capable as any other normal adult person with the background and in training that they have. The agency also wants to attract a wide range of candidates. This is true of every organization. Right. And so they want to measure whether or not they're outreach, whether they're advertising, whether they're marketing, whether they're sourcing and recruiting. Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah, absolutely. And folks, as an interviewee, as a Candidate. The important thing to remember about interview questions and legality is it is illegal for an employer to to recruit new employees in a way that discriminates against them based upon a selection of items from race, color, religion, creed, sex, including pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation, ethnicity, political affiliation, mother tongue, citizenship, medical conditions, gender identity, marital status, military veteran status, use of legal and illegal drugs, height, weight, and socioeconomic class. It is not illegal to ask questions about those issues, but to make decisions based upon the answers to those issues.
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And since you can't tell during the interview if you're going to be discriminated against because of your answer to the question, answer it and move on. If you find later that you didn't get the job, then you can consider whether it's worth bringing a case or reporting to someone something that you think might be potentially, in your case, discriminatory.
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Yeah, that's exactly it. So, folks, to wrap it all up, if you get asked a question in an interview that makes you pause, take a breath, answer it graciously, address the concern behind it, and keep on going. Don't let one clumsy question derail the entire conversation. You've done all of the work, you've done all of the preparation. You want the offer, and the offer is still yours to get.
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Yeah. In an interview, getting the offer is the goal. Taking the offer is not the goal. You're not supposed to be thinking about whether or not you want the offer in the interview. Because if you're thinking about wanting or not wanting the offer, you're not thinking about getting the offer. You can decide later. You only get to decide if you get it. You don't need one iota of your brain power spent on anything other than how can I be the most persuasive, the most energetic, the most ethical, the most kind, the most generous person in this thing. I can assure you it doesn't include wondering about that. That question you were asked 15 minutes ago, that's giving away the outcome of your interview to someone who probably didn't even mean to rattle you.
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Yeah. And folks, so much of the conversation around this topic starts from the assumption that there is such a thing as illegal questions. But we've made it pretty clear today that there really aren't illegal questions. What's really illegal is making a hiring decision based upon certain information, not asking about it, but making decisions based upon it. So the best thing you can do is let go of that framework entirely and just focus on answering the question that's in front of you right now, no matter how incompetent the interviewer, stay in your game, close, strong, and get the interview. And then if you saw something that genuinely gives you pause, you can turn it down. But that's your choice to make, it's not theirs to make.
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Yeah, this is fun. I remember recording this. However many years ago. I had a very different podcasting setup. I was in Texas and not California.
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This is a good cast. It's one that so few people, so many people think about, know about, worry about. Maybe is the wrong word, but it's a thing in people's minds. And then to actually learn that there aren't illegal entry questions is just like, what?
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Well, the example that I use all the time was people say, well, common wisdom is this. And I say, dude, you understand you can't say that because the whole point of the phrase common wisdom is that wisdom isn't common individuals. Wisdom is reserved for people who are really quite wise. And so common wisdom is very the same as illegal interview questions. Now, I will caveat that since we did this, there is the example of Philadelphia that has a law, or I think they still have the law in the books. This was during the whole pay transparency mood about 10 years ago. And it is technically, it is illegal in the black letter of the law to ask a question about someone's salary. But what's interesting about that, I think I mean it technically, there are now, at least in Philadelphia, maybe other places, illegal questions. But what's interesting is it is still not illegal in Philadelphia or Pennsylvania for that matter, to ask about gender, race, sex, creed, all that stuff. It's illegal to discriminate on it, but it's not illegal to ask. Yeah, exactly. Awesome.
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Thank you, Mark.
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Thank you, Sarah. That was fun. Good time.
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Thanks folks. We hope this helped you. Now how Help us help others and tell all your friends. And of course follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only.
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Five stars only. Please.
Podcast Summary: Career Tools – Answering Illegal Interview Questions (Part 2)
Hosted by Sarah and Mark | Episode Date: April 30, 2026
This episode is the second part of a deep dive into “illegal interview questions”—a topic that creates anxiety and confusion among job candidates. Hosts Sarah and Mark aim to demystify what makes a question illegal, explain how to answer these questions effectively, and advise on how to handle interviews where such topics arise. They reinforce that the object of any interview is to get an offer—what you do with the offer comes later—and stress professionalism and control throughout the process.
By focusing on your preparation, keeping emotions steady, and remembering your ultimate objective—getting the offer—candidates protect themselves and maximize their career opportunities, no matter how challenging the conversation.
For further actionable interviewing guidance, the hosts recommend listening to their dedicated episode on how to “close” an interview, linked through their site for licensees.